Patchworks of Memory: Quilting Remembrance and Healing
Lisa Gail Collins, Literary Hub
March 2025
Nearly six decades after her father’s death, Arlonzia Pettway remembered vividly how in late 1941 or 1942 her mother, Missouri Pettway, newly suffering the loss of her husband and the father of their children, pieced together a quilt out of his old, worn work clothes. Approaching eighty at the time and a seasoned quilt maker herself, Arlonzia readily recalled this quilt made by her grieving mother—and involving her own bereaved assistance—within the small African American farming community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. […]