Slave to the Needle

Slave to the Needle
Author: Aaron Bell
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2016-12-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780764352683

Professional tattoo artists and their clients showcase tattoo imagery in various forms, featuring traditional and neo-traditional Americana, Japanese themes, and New School designs. Find geishas, sugarskulls, dragons, and more executed with the utmost care and precision in this unique display of tattoo art that goes beyond the ordinary flash book to convey how inspiration makes its way from mind to skin. This celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the original Slave to the Needle tattoo shop in Seattle starts with an illustrated history of how the shop came to be--during the "Tattoo Renaissance" of the mid-'90s. There is a section dedicated to paintings and ink drawings of surreal and fantasy art and vibrant flash, followed by a collection of stunning sleeve, backpiece, and bodysuit designs created by the shop's owner, crew, and guests. This retrospective is a vital component to any serious tattoo artist or collector's library.

Sewing Stories: Harriet Powers' Journey from Slave to Artist

Sewing Stories: Harriet Powers' Journey from Slave to Artist
Author: Barbara Herkert
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 22
Release: 2015-10-13
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0385754647

An illuminating picture book biography of an artist and former slave whose patchwork quilts bring the stories of her family to life. Harriet Powers learned to sew and quilt as a young slave girl on a Georgia plantation. She lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and eventually owned a cotton farm with her family, all the while relying on her skills with the needle to clothe and feed her children. Later she began making pictorial quilts, using each square to illustrate Bible stories and local legends. She exhibited her quilts at local cotton fairs, and though she never traveled outside of Georgia, her quilts are now priceless examples of African American folk art. Barbara Herkert’s lyrical narrative and Vanessa Newton’s patchwork illustrations bring this important artist to life in a moving picture-book biography.

Through the Eye of a Needle

Through the Eye of a Needle
Author: Alec N. Mutz
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2010-09-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1450250882

Alec Mutzs childhood came to an end in 1939, when Nazi soldiers marched into his hometown of Tarnobrzeg, Poland. His life would never be the same. Within a matter of months his family was torn apart, and ten-year-old Alec found himself struggling to survive alongside his father, Samuel. Through the Eye of a Needle chronicles the life of a child who is forced to come of age in some of Hitlers most notorious concentration camps. Witness to countless acts of barbarity, he endures slave labor, beatings, starvation, and forced marching during his six years of incarceration. Yet with the support of his father, he lives to see the end of one of historys most epic human tragedies.

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker
Author: Jennifer Chiaverini
Publisher: Dutton
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2013-09-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0142180351

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini's compelling historical novel unveils the private lives of Abraham and Mary Lincoln through the perspective of the First Lady's most trusted confidante and friend, her dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley. In a life that spanned nearly a century and witnessed some of the most momentous events in American history, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born a slave. A gifted seamstress, she earned her freedom by the skill of her needle, and won the friendship of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln by her devotion. A sweeping historical novel, Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker illuminates the extraordinary relationship the two women shared, beginning in the hallowed halls of the White House during the trials of the Civil War and enduring almost, but not quite, to the end of Mrs. Lincoln's days.

Needle in a Timestack

Needle in a Timestack
Author: Robert Silverberg
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2019-08-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504058666

A collection of twenty classic stories from the Science Fiction Grand Master who “seems capable of amazements beyond those of mere mortals” (The Washington Post Book World). Needle in a Timestack is Robert Silverberg at his very best—intelligent, inventive, and visionary. This collection showcases his talent for thought-provoking science fiction, ranging in themes from time travel to space travel, the media to mortality. In the titular story—now a feature film by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley—a jealous ex-husband warps time in a vindictive attempt to destroy his former wife’s new marriage. Thirty-one identical sons have a shocking surprise for their mother in “There Was an Old Woman.” The prophetic “The Pain Peddlers” depicts reality TV in a way that allows viewers to revel in a voyeuristic, adrenaline-fueled rush. Also included are Silverberg’s Hugo Award–winning “Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another,” and the Locus Award winner “The Secret Sharer,” a Joseph Conrad–inspired tale of a ship captain drawn into a strange alliance with a stowaway. The New York Times Book Review hailed Silverberg as “the John Updike of science fiction.” The stories in Needle in a Timestack unite us in our humanity, in the face of science, technology, and our own changing culture.

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes
Author: Elizabeth Keckley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 408
Release: 1988
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780195060843

Part slave narrative, part memoir, and part sentimental fiction Behind the Scenes depicts Elizabeth Keckley's years as a salve and subsequent four years in Abraham Lincoln's White House during the Civil War. Through the eyes of this black woman, we see a wide range of historical figures and events of the antebellum South, the Washington of the Civil War years, and the final stages of the war.

Wake

Wake
Author: Rebecca Hall
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982115203

A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post Part graphic novel, part memoir, Wake is an imaginative tour de force that tells the “powerful” (The New York Times Book Review) story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall’s efforts to uncover the truth about these women warriors who, until now, have been left out of the historical record. Women warriors planned and led revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history. Wake tells the “riveting” (Angela Y. Davis) story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always told her that enslaved women took a back seat. But Rebecca decides to look deeper, and her journey takes her through old court records, slave ship captain’s logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the “negro burying ground” uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere. Using a “remarkable blend of passion and fact, action and reflection” (NPR), Rebecca constructs the likely pasts of Adono and Alele, women rebels who fought for freedom during the Middle Passage, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts in Colonial New York. We also follow Rebecca’s own story as the legacy of slavery shapes her life, both during her time as a successful attorney and later as a historian seeking the past that haunts her. Illustrated beautifully in black and white, Wake will take its place alongside classics of the graphic novel genre, like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. This story of a personal and national legacy is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake.

Tattoo Machine

Tattoo Machine
Author: Jeff Johnson
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010-06-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0385530722

As the proprietor of the legendary Sea Tramp Tattoo Company, in Portland, Oregon, Jeff Johnson has inked gangbangers, age-defying moms, and sociopaths; he’s defused brawls and tended delicate egos. In Tattoo Machine, Johnson illuminates a world where art, drama, and commerce come together in highly entertaining theater. A tattoo shop is no longer a den of outcasts and degenerates, but a place where committed and schooled artists who paint on living canvases develop close bonds and bitter rivalries, where tattoo legends and innovators are equally revered, and where the potential for disaster lurks in every corner.

The Invention of Wings

The Invention of Wings
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2014-01-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0698175247

The newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection: this special eBook edition of The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd features exclusive content, including Oprah’s personal notes highlighted within the text, and a reading group guide. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better. This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved. Please note there is another digital edition available without Oprah’s notes. Go to Oprah.com/bookclub for more OBC 2.0 content

Taking Liberty

Taking Liberty
Author: Ann Rinaldi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1439108803

Based on an extraordinary true story, this young adult novel follows of one young enslaved woman’s struggle to take what is rightfully hers. When I was four and my daddy left, I cried, but I understood. He had become part of the Gone. Oney Judge is a slave. But on the plantation of Mount Vernon, the beautiful home of George and Martha Washington, she is not called a slave. She is referred to as a servant, and a house servant at that—a position of influence and respect. When she rises to the position of personal servant to Martha Washington, her status among the household staff—black or white—is second to none. She is Lady Washington’s closest confidante and for all intents and purposes, a member of the family…or so she thinks. Slowly, Oney’s perception of her life with the Washingtons begins to crack as she realizes the truth: No matter what it’s called, it’s still slavery and she’s still enslaved. Oney must make a choice. Does she stay where she is, comfortable, with this family that has loved her and nourished her and owned her since the day she was born? Or does she take her liberty—her life—into her own hands, and like her father, become one of the Gone?