Faith Ringgold Quilt " We Came to America" (1997)

        Faith Ringgold's quilt catches your eye the moment you see it. The vibrant blue of the sky and sea fills the space with a cheerful yellow sun rising or perhaps setting in the distance. At a quick glance, it is a hopeful scene of what I presume to be escape slaves swimming from a burning ship in the distance. Then, you notice the contrast of the red in the water; the blood fills the scene. This is a scene of desperation and innocence of hoping for a better life while treading through turbulent waters. The figures' features are distorted and anguished. The figures are displaced, and bodies are in a state of movement. It almost looks like they are being boiled alive in the waves. Is the Statute of Liberty a beacon of hope or a false promise of safety? 

    The white clothing of the Statue of Liberty is a sharp contrast between the rest of the composition. This, along with the smoke from the torch, leads the eye to the burning ship. The ship is in the background, representing the past, and the Statue of Liberty is the future. The scene is encased in a colorful border that is cheerful. You would imagine a lovely scene inside those borders rather than the anguish of the swimmers. Still, even within the chaos of the image, there is hope. The eye is always drawn back to the large form of the state of liberty in the foreground, like a giant white beacon. The swimmers are in limbo. The water churns from the movement of the swimmers. I find it interesting that there is no land in sight, which enhances the desperation of the swimmers. Their current situation is still better than the burning ship in the background. There is no going back but only forward into the arms of the Statue of Liberty.

    I see that this is a story of a slave ship where the slaves burned the ship down and swam to the shores of New York, which at the time was more hospitable to free slaves. While it was better, the free slaves had no rights, and survival would be a struggle. This is a story of misplaced people who did not want to come to the Americas. They were plucked and sold like cattle and had to do whatever they could to survive. The Statue of Liberty is a figure of a black woman holding a black child. She is the backbone of America. This quilt represents the struggle that black Americans had to endure to become a part of this country. When I see the Statue of Liberty, I think of the land of the free and liberty to all, which is ironic because, when the Statue of Liberty was built, only white men had any rights and power. It is a facade that still lingers to this day. As a first-generation immigrant, I see the struggles and injustices that still remain. I see the looks and hear the nasty remarks towards my indigenous Peruvian mother. This is the land of the free to the colonizers. Everyone else gets the scraps. This makes me think of how a quilt is made of scraps and pieces of fabric, and America is a quilt of many different people. People who are trying to survive and have a bit of freedom and liberty. We are all in this together like a quilt.