29 June 2010

The Clothesline Project is an organization that offers an outlet for survivors of domestic violence. Not only does it reach out to women who have suffered through domestic violence with care and support, but it also provides these victims with a very healthy and therapeutic way to express their own suffering. The victims use an artistic outlet by creating T-shirts that help them to cope with their emotions and express them in a positive way. By doing this, they are sending out a message to all women and victims of domestic violence that offers hope and light.

I have read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl before and this passage was always the one that resonated with me the most. It is very shocking and sad to imagine that this was the speaker's life. I feel the correlation between Harriet Jacob's piece and The Clothesline Project is simply to give the issue a voice. Jacob's makes a direct reference to this in her text, "In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right?" I feel that in writing about such a tragic issue and spreading it around through the production of T-shirts allows the problem to be heard. It suddenly makes it something that we have to talk about, not just something we can put into the dark and forget about. I feel this relates to what we were talking about in class, about concealing the truth and keeping things in secret. I feel as a society we do this mostly because we would like to imagine that there isn't really a problem to be addressed. I feel by creating different forms of art voicing such a horrible problem like domestic violence is taking part in the fight against it, and that is very important.