Tailor Made Verse

The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal as catalyst for artistic expression? While most viewed the accounts of victimization with outrage and then returned to their lives, at least one individual experienced a true cathartic awakening. Fueled by the rage she experienced in response to the ironic brutality and inhumanity suffered at the hands of a few "liberators," Terri Cartwright was called to create--in words, quilts, and illustrations--her unique perspectives on a dual history. These two histories, our current wartime experiences and the African-American struggle, converge in the author's understanding of Abu Ghraib as both a mirror for her self-exploration and a vehicle that transported her back to another time, when the conflict was in Vietnam. As history has regretfully repeated itself, the sentiments that the former and present wars engender strongly parallel each other. As a black woman in America, Terri Cartwright's treatment of war occurs almost as a secondary theme, at times eclipsed by the realities of her experience as a survivor of slavery's legacy. The author's focus on the treatment of "blackness," even against the emotional backdrop of war, was shared by other Americans, particularly during the Vietnam era when many black Americans were challenged about their reluctance to support the denouncement of foreign regimes through military action.