Sewing Voice

Abstract

At the beginning of August 2014, the army of ISIS executed a genocide of the Yezidi (Yazidi) people of the Sinjar province in Iraq. Thousands of older adults and men were brutally murdered, and thousands of young women and girls were forced into sex slavery. In 2015, the author founded the Spring of Hope Foundation Center and has been working since with the deeply traumatized escapees and released women and children on rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Many attempts were made by professionals to coax the women and girls to speak about their experiences and tell their stories in order to lift some of the burden on their souls, but to no avail. However, when the women themselves brought up the idea of sewing, it was taken up as a literacy practice that was used to assist the women and girls to cope with their traumas, raise their silenced voices, communicate their stories, and find agency as they tried to become functioning members of the community.