Mothers, daughters, and female identity therapy in how to make an American quilt

This essay reads the 1995 film How to Make an American Quilt as female identity therapy. Produced during a period when womanhood is contested and Mother is politicized, the film rescues female‐identification and the Mother‐Daughter symbolic from patriarchal matrophobia. The film forgives Mother for institutionalized motherhood and re‐inscribes Mother's presence and voice in the Daughter's narrative. Genealogy themes and quilting metaphors imagine a female‐defined Mother‐Daughter symbolic that privileges women's relationships with women as a source of love and identity. This script is not only progressive but also theoretically promising. Regardless of their differences, all women are daughters of women.