I taught a class called Cotton at my New England university. In the course, we discussed the history of the crop, of the land, and the America commercial traditions of management, capital, and mortgaging, all of which came into being with plantation slavery. We wrote formal poems in response to contemporary news stories in which black men and women were being violently erased. At the end of the semester, my students pieced together a quilt. Each contributed a piece of cotton—a t-shirt, mask, or memento for the quilt’s border. Since this course, I’ve been fascinated by fabric, the violence of its history, and the long tradition of quilting that so often tells a story. All of this was on my mind when I came across Chasing Me to My Grave, a memoir/biography by Winfred Rembert, that recounts his experience growing up in the Jim Crow South, which for decades he has captured, scene-by-scene, memory by memory, on tooled leather. Just touching the images in his book—following the rows of cotton, the striped shirts of a chain gang—is a moving experience. And seeing how his hands have tooled trauma into so much beauty makes me return to his work over and again.
You can find Jen McClanaghan's poems in Issue 297 Autumn 2023. Order the issue now:
