Women speaking through embroidery: using visual methods and poetry to narrate lived experiences

ABSTRACT

This article aims to highlight the ways in which visual methods can be used to narrate lived experiences. Additionally, I also draw from self-written poetry as a way to speak to the embroideries and using poems as a form of alternative analysis that assist in interpreting the embroideries. I embarked on a research project where I used embroidery as a visual methodological tool wherein participants could narrate their stories visually, as a way to shift from solely relying on text and the spoken language. The aim was to highlight various ways in which stories could be told and, commensurately, an acknowledgment of multiple forms of knowledge production is made manifest. The findings and various interpretations of the embroideries have been published elsewhere (see Segalo 2011, 2014, 2016; Segalo, Manoff & Fine 2015). On the basis of the foregoing, I argue that platforms need to be created wherein the academic space and ways in which information and knowledge are presented become open to multiple forms of representation.

KEYWORDS:

• embroidery
• poetry
• self-represent
• Setswana
• visual methods

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Ogodiseng Mokakale for the translation from English to Setswana. The time and effort he took to translate the poems is sincerely appreciated. The embroideries are used with the full permission of the embroiderers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Puleng Segalo

Puleng Segalo is an associate professor of psychology and a Fulbright scholar. She is the head of research and graduate studies in the College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa. She has dedicated her work toward the advancement of women in South Africa, at the level of economics, education, and their deep psychological sense of purpose and community. Her research interests are in visual methodologies, narrative research, decoloniality, gender, and participatory action research.