Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry [Paperback]

Sarah H. Hill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 1997

In this innovative study, Sarah Hill illuminates the history of Southeastern Cherokee women by examining changes in their basketry. Based in tradition and made from locally gathered materials, baskets evoke the lives and landscapes of their makers. Indeed, as Weaving New Worlds reveals, the stories of Cherokee baskets and the women who weave them are intertwined and inseparable. Incorporating written, woven, and spoken records, Hill demonstrates that changes in Cherokee basketry signal important transformations in Cherokee culture.

Over the course of three centuries, Cherokees developed four major basketry traditions, each based on a different material—rivercane, white oak, honeysuckle, and maple. Hill explores how the addition of each new material occurred in the context of lived experience, ecological processes, social conditions, economic circumstances, and historical eras. Incorporating insights from written sources, interviews with contemporary Cherokee weavers, and a close examination of the baskets themselves, she presents Cherokee women as shapers and subjects of change. Even in the face of cultural assault and environmental loss, she argues, Cherokee women have continued to take what they have to make what they need, literally and metaphorically weaving new worlds from old.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Far more than a survey of Eastern Cherokee women basketmakers, this is an in-depth study of tribal women's history, the ecological and social obstacles facing weavers and other artisans, and the pressures of society?mainly tourism?on their craft. Hill, an independent scholar with a doctorate in American studies, has done a staggering amount of research to produce possibly the definitive historical study of Cherokee women and their basketry. Indeed, the baskets often take second place to the powerful quotes?representing all periods from the time of white contact to the present?especially about the strength it took to remain hidden in the mountains on their own land when most of the tribe was removed to Oklahoma. But the baskets are the attraction here: a variety of materials (primarily cane, oak, honeysuckle, and maple) are used through the centuries in a variety and quality that remains amazing. More recently, ornamentation and novelty have replaced utility, but the baskets still have the tautness and beauty of the old forms, and the same designs persist. For more scholarly Native American collections.?Gay Neale, Southside Virginia Community Coll. Lib., Alberta
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Hill•s metaphorical examination of women•s roles through the various changes reflected in their basketry is masterful.

National Women•s Studies Association Journal

[A]n illuminating picture of the lives of southeastern Cherokee women.

Journal of Appalachian Studies

[S]hould be read by anyone with an interest in ethnohistory, Southern history, women•s studies, or material culture.

American Historical Review

Fresh and intriguing.

Journal of Southern History

Destined to become a classic reference text to which future scholars of Native American material culture will always return.

Atlanta History

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (June 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807846503
• ISBN-13: 978-0807846506
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #707,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an ambitious and groundbreaking study, August 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry (Hardcover)

A reviewer in The Atlanta History Journal says this book is "destined to become a classic reference text to which future scholars of Native American material culture will always return." It is, the review continues, "keenly attuned to how basketry figures in the spiritual and material lives of the Southeastern Cherokee." I agree with the reviewer, but this book is more than a study of material culture, it is a history of women told by looking at their beautiful, enduring work with baskets. There is nothing like it for learning Southeastern Cherokee history.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "beautifully written, brilliantly organized history", November 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry (Hardcover)

Using baskets, the oldest mother-to-daughter tradition still surviving among Cherokee women, Hill traces changes among Southeastern Cherokees and their environments over a 300-year period. Weaving New Worlds has just been awarded the Julia Cherry Spruill prize for the best book in Southern women's history published in 1997, and was described in the award as "beautifully written and brilliantly organized."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Resource, September 5, 2002

By 

Uyvsdi "Uyvsdi" (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry (Hardcover)

This book is fantastic. Hill covers an array of subjects about Cherokee life, family, politics, beliefs, oral traditions, aesthetics - all relating to the central theme of basket-making. Well-researched and documented. While maintaining excellent scholarship, Hill write in a natural, understandable manner free of academic jargon. Essential to anyone studying Cherokee culture.