How To Make An American Quilt (1992) - Plot & Excerpts
Some have compared/may class this with Bridges of Madison County to some degree and while the "mush" factor is present there is SO much more to it -- and I loved the quilt theme -- like life, bits and pieces joined and changed and growing into a unique whole. I also loved the relationships of the women -- sisters, grandparent, parent and child, friends, rivals, the whole gamut. July 2010 - this has not lost it's oomph since I read it last. I think it is a keeper in the sense that it offers new "ah-ha's" on each return visit. I'm adding some rather lengthy quotes here this time through. I MUST also amend the "mush" factor comment earlier as I found it far less obviously present than my original statement might imply. I also discovered a much wider, deeper range of topicality than I recalled form my previous reading of this book. The range of ages of the characters allows for a broad swath of history to figure in the scenarios of their lives as presented in conjunction with the quilting themes. Very well done. This definitely retains its high marks in my opinion.First: pg.5Then Sam asked me to marry him.It seemed to me a good idea.Yet it somehow led me back to my educational concern, which was how to mesh halves into a whole, only in this case it was how to make a successful link of unmarried to married, man to woman, the merging of the roads before us. When Heathcliff ran away from Wuthering Heights, he left Cathy wild and howling on the moors, I am Heathcliff, as if their love were so powerful, their souls so seamlessly mated, that no division existed for them, save the corporeal (though I tend to believe they got "together" at least once), which is of little cocnsequence in the presence of the spirit.All of which leaves me wondering, astonished, and a little put off. How does one accomplish such a fusion of selves? And, if the affection is that strong, how does one avoid it, leaving a little room for the person you once were? the balance of marriage, the delicate, gentle shifting of the polished scales.Let me say that I like Sam tremendously. I love him truly.Second: pg.11 There is the Civil War, which is a conflict of the blood tie. No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows its own weakness, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still love with the force of hatred. Feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts thorugh life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied, and perhaps that is why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot, being only human, put asunder what God has joined together.Third: pg.12You want to keep these things in mind: history and family. How they are often inseparable. In the twentieth century you may feel that all those things that went on before have little to do with you, that you are made immune to the past by the present day: All those dead people and conflicts and ideas - why, they are only stories we tell one another. History and politics and conflict and rebellion and family and betrayal.Think about it.Fourth: pg.13Anna said, "This house is a strange house, haunted, I think it could be said. But it is an odd haunting, not as if something extra were here as much as something missing; not a void, only the powerful absence of a thing lost."Fifth: p.38Contemplate crumpling the paper pattern of the pictorial quilt. A pattern by its very nature, should repeat. It is your nature as well. To do as your mother did. As much as you hate it, as much as it grieves you.Sixth: p.39 Follow your parents' footsteps. This is what quilting is about: something handed down - skill, the work itself. Hold it in your hand. dondle it. Know in your heart that you long to rebel; look for ways in which you are different from your mother; know that you see her in yourself at your worst times. Laugh as you contemplate the concept of free will, individuality.Seventh: p.40 Once you love, you cannot take it back, cannot undo it; what you felet may have changed, shifted sl ightly, yet still remains love. You still feel -- though very small -- the not-altogether unpleasant shock of soul recognition for that person. To your dismay. To your embarrassment. This, you keep to yourself.Eighth: p.50 One more thing about partings; no two are alike.Ninth: p.89...you've reached the point in your life (oh, too long ago to remember) where you are too angry for "polite" conversation; you don't want to nurture or have your hand held in sympathy; why you even surprised yourself with wanting to rip the world from its axis. you want it to stop rotating one more frustrating day. And you suppose all this makes you not quite a woman and certainly not a man, but a complete outsider. And there you are.Tenth: p.107Waiting. The worst dream of the night, when you are parted from someone you love and do not know exactly where he is but you know he is in the presence of danger. you are suspended in a state of ignorance and worry and fear. It can tear you aprt like the razor teeth of a sudden beast. You are tormented by a desire to keep the one you love safe. But he may be in a far-off land, fighting a good war like Wolrd War II or an undeclared war like the Vietnam War. It makes no difference to you; these conflicts call forth men you have given birth to, men you have married, men who have fathered you. The men fight. The women wait. It takes the patience of Job.Eleventh: p.109,110The newest quilt is the Names Quilt, representing those Americans who have died youthful deaths from an incurable disease. This quilt is eclectic in its beauty (consider that America is the great melting pot and no two deceased are alike), staggering in its implication of waste. It covers nine acres and bears nine thousand names. Say it slowly: nin thousand. .... the quilt weighs tons. Cloth, thread, appliques individually weigh next to nothing but combined, bearing nine thousand patches, it is a heavy burden. It has the capacity to crush, It originally began as a 3X6-foot patch. Wonder at and decry its weight gain and growth; insist that it should have been stopped at, say thirty pounds. Express outrage that it ever grew to one hundred pounds. Be grief-stricken that it represents only 20 percent of htose deceased, does not even begin to measure those aflicted. It is a waiting disease. But all this may be too sad to contemplate if you are a beginner.Twelfth: p.127A Guyanese story says of black slaves that the only way they can be delivered from "massa's clutch" is to see the extra brightness of the moon in their lives. The darkness will always be ethere, but they can use the light of the moon as hope. The light of the moon. the dancing buffalo gal with the hole in her stocking.One can survive without liberation but one cannot live without freedom. You know it is essential to find one's freedom.Thirteenth: p.163Fusion, union, grafting, joining, sex, friendship, love; the difficult combination of disparate elements.Fourteenth: p.176 The quilters accepted Anna and Marianna, and no one ever made the mistake of saying, "We don't even notice color; they are just liek us." It was this recognition of thier differences that allowed the group to survive, not pretending to transcend them. The impulse to unify and separate, rend and join, is powerful and constant.Applicable to quilting and life?
"How to Make an American Quilt" is a patchwork of lives that make up a quilting group. The ladies all live in Grasse, California, a small town outside of Bakersfield. Otto wrote this short novel by interspersing chapters dedicated to quilting, in-between chapters dedicated to each of the quilters in the group. What I didn't figure out right away was that each chapter that described the quilting related to the character description of the next quilter. Each person was different and therefore each quilt that could be created by each woman, had different aspects to it. I have to confess I found the chapters on quilting a bit dull, and it is probably because I am not a quilter. I love to look at quilts; I love to feel them. But reading these chapters on the process of quilting was trying my patience. However, I understood what the author was attempting to do, to compare a quilt to a group of women whose lives were patched together and somehow made them one. The chapters that talked about the history of each character were very interesting, and I saw how they all were somehow connected to the others. Reading the book was a walk through history, as the women were of varying ages and spanned generations. We got to see Hy and Glady Joe as they are now, in their old age, but also what they were like in their younger years. We saw Anna and her daughter Marianna grow and mature as black women living in a white society. "Why are old lovers able to become friends? Two reasons: They never truly loved each other or they love each other still." "That is the true challenge--to work within a narrow confine. To accept what you cannot have; that from which you cannot deviate.""The truly terrible thing about this life, was not knowing what you want, but only able to recognize what you do not want. You have to spend so much time and energy trying to find it out, time that other people spent in pursuing of their desires." I read the book only because I loved the movie. I expected the book to contain more storyline and depth, but I was terribly disappointed in finding that the movie in fact was by far, more informative. I felt slightly disadvantaged reading this novel, after having seen and loved the movie dozens of times. When I realized the movie was based on a novel by Whitney Otto, I couldn't wait to delve into it. Because I love the movie so much, I found it very hard to be objective while reading the book. To it's credit, the movie follows the book very closely.The book itself was very original: comparing a quilt to love and life. It's blend of fiction and non-fiction was done successfully by Otto. However, one thing that lacked in Otto's book was a main character. It seemed that there were numerous supporting characters, and an attempt to create the main character Finn, and yet Finn had the least lines out of all of them. The ultimate conclusion that Finn draws -- that marriage isn't perfect but that she hopes her own is "wonderful," left me dissatisfied and asking "what else?" More of Purplycookie’s Reviews @: http://www.goodreads.com/purplycookie Book Details: Title How to Make an American QuiltAuthor Whitney Otto Reviewed By Purplycookie
What do You think about How To Make An American Quilt (1992)?
Really enjoyed this. I can definitely see how it would annoy some people; there's no real plot as such and it's written in a style that would drive lots of people crazy. But I guess I really liked the analogy of quilting to life and love and enjoyed the 'patchwork-y' nature of it. I liked learning more about the quilting group; what made them tick and their hidden selves that they didn't share with anybody. And I enjoyed the backdrop of american history as well, which I've always found interesting. I think I'll go back to this a lot and will find more in it each time, which is basically how I decide whether or not to give 4 or 5 stars.
—Sian
This book interleaves incidents from the lives of the quilters with philosophical rather than practical instructions for making a quilt. This is the third time I had tried to read the book, but it hadn't been able to engage me before. This was its last chance, and this time it did catch my imagination as I realised it was also a commentary on the changing role and expectations of women. In the 19th century, for example, when women had no vote, they had to "save your opinions for your quilt. Put your heart and voice into it. Cast your ballot; express your feelings regarding industrialization, emancipation, women's suffrage, your love of family." The idea of quilting reflecting society is a promising one, but I felt that it wasn't carried as far as it could have been. The book is full of loose philosophical thoughts about the nature of life, but it doesn't come to any great conclusion. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it well enough.
—Bookguide
This book was promising and had a lot of insights into marriage, Americanism, and life in general, but it just didn't deliver for me. The writing was good at times but other times it was really hard to follow, especially with the change in tenses in different chapters. The quilting information was interesting but it was sort of off-putting the way she addressed everything in the second person for all the "instructions" chapters. The characters seemed kind of bland and it was all just a bit depressing, mainly because there wasn't much story there. There were bits and pieces of a good story but when it was all sewn together the organization just wasn't very cohesive. I think she should have planned our her quilt more thoroughly before sewing.
—Camille Mccarthy
