A LANGUAGE OF STITCHES

From cotton fields in segregated 1930s Arkansas to gallery walls worldwide, Effie Mae Martin stitched a legacy entirely her own.

Long before she became the visionary artist Rosie Lee Tompkins, Effie was one of 15 children in a loving, faith-filled family of Black sharecroppers. Fieldwork was grueling, but sewing—taught by her mama—offered refuge. Effie dreamed of leaving the segregated South, where African American children were denied the same education and access as white youths. At 22, Effie moved to California, where she became a nurse, a wife, and a mother. After a mental health crisis led to hospitalization, she returned to sewing as a source of safety and healing. Using unconventional materials like velvet, charmeuse, and even old T-shirts, she broke from traditional quilting conventions to create bold, deeply personal and political works rooted in Black life, faith, memory, and survival. Eventually, collector Leon Eli began sharing Effie’s work with the world under the now-famous name Rosie Lee Tompkins, helping preserve her privacy. While the sparsely worded poetic format makes weighty topics like mental illness and segregation more accessible for younger readers, it leaves less room to dive into what made her quilt designs so groundbreaking and reflect on the broader impact of her work. Moore’s stunningly tactile gouache, watercolor, and collage illustrations are what set this book apart: Richly textured, they echo the layered, improvisational beauty of Effie’s quilts.

A visually stirring portrait of a remarkable woman.