Stitching (in) Trauma: Constructing Identity in Thread Behind Prison Bars

This chapter discusses what it means to stitch identity, to stitch (in) trauma, and to stitch imagetextiles. It focuses on the material traces of identity performance in both Janie Terrero’s English suffragette signature handkerchief and Františka Albrechtová‘s Czech prisoner of war signature handkerchief. The chapter builds on Rodrigue’s use of imagetext to argue for the term imagetextile as apowerful way to represent trauma and as a robust “lens” to investigate stitched textiles as sites of discoursing during trauma and after trauma. Terrero’s handkerchief is much more than a performance of identity. This handkerchief can be read as a political protest, as an art object, and as an historical record of suffragette prison experiences, to name just a few. Albrechtová‘s handkerchief was a spiritual, creative, resistant artistic expression and a testimony to her traumatic experience and those of the ones imprisoned with her.