The Silence of the Women

The Silence of the Women is the first full-length scholarly work devoted entirely to the textiles created by women of the Bamana people in Mali, West Africa. These traditional mud-dyed cloths have typically been treated as craft, but here, they are presented as a complex art form. Sarah Brett-Smith sensitively explores the hidden cultural testimony written into the mud-cloth patterns, documenting women’s silent visual commentary on the events that dominate their lives—excision, arranged marriage, childbirth, and death. Exploring both art-historical and anthropological considerations of technique, style, symbolism, and function in Bamana textiles, this book illuminates a previously understudied art and gives voice to the women who make it.