ABSTRACT
Learning to quilt in girlhood and continuing on into death and beyond, Baba was devoted to the ongoing practice of patience, combining spirituality with creative imagination. In more recent times the people can read the life stories of the black women quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama and be awed by their lives and work. From the location of newly acquired acclaim, they find a public voice to speak about the hardships they faced day to day, living as they say “a starvation life” where everybody was just struggling to get by, to make a way out of no way. Fortunately, the Gee’s Bend quiltmakers have received national attention and as a consequence there may be greater awareness of the artistry of quiltmaking in the lives of poor and working-class southern black women. There are individual black women quiltmakers whose work will never gain public recognition.
