by Nicole Nehrig
W.W. Norton & Company
8/19/2025, hardcover
SKU: 9781324074854
Knitting, sewing, embroidery, quilting--throughout history, these and other forms of textile work have often been dismissed as merely "women's work" and attached to ideas of domesticity and obedience. Yet, as psychologist and avid knitter Nicole Nehrig wonderfully explores in this captivating book, textile work has often been a way for women to exercise power. When their voices were silenced and other avenues were closed off to them, women used the tools they had--often a needle and thread--to seek freedom within the restrictive societies they lived in.
Spanning continents and centuries, With Her Own Hands brings together remarkable stories of women who have used textiles as a means of liberation, from an eighteenth-century Quaker boarding school that used embroidered samplers to teach girls math and geography to the Quechua weavers working to preserve and revive Incan traditions today, and from the Miao women of southern China who, in the absence of a written language, pass down their histories in elaborate "story cloths" to a midcentury British women's postal art exchange. Textiles have been a way for women to explore their intellectual capacities, seek economic independence, create community, process traumas, and convey powerful messages of self-expression and political protest.
Heartfelt and deeply moving, With Her Own Hands is a celebration of women who have woven their own stories--and a testament to their resilience.
Reviews:
"Unraveling commonly held assumptions of knitting as a pedestrian hobby requiring only basic skill and relegated to lowly female drudgery, Nicole Nehrig instead shows how this single act binds humanity, connecting women across generations and between continents. With Her Own Hands is a beautifully wrought anthropologic study, and necessary reading for anyone interested in the nature of creativity." -- Julie Satow, author of When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
" With Her Own Hands gives such a sumptuous insight into the profundity of simple threads. Rich with stories from so many cultures, Nehrig shows how the creation and embellishment of textiles not just gave a voice to those who were allowed none--but also power, hope, and fortitude across the ages." -- Aarathi Prasad, author of Silk
About the Author:
Nicole Nehrig is a clinical and research psychologist and a passionate knitter and textile crafter living in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a PhD in clinical psychology.