Emma Singer, ReMemory Quilt, recycled fabric, ribbon, stuffed earth, single-use catheter, 33 x 52″

The ReMemory Quilt is a way to preserve the flotsam of my life and my disability. I borrow the term “rememory” from Toni Morrison who uses it in Beloved to describe when Sethe, “remember[s] something she had forgotten she knew” (Beloved 61). As I get farther from the aftermath of my disabling spinal stroke — both temporally and physically — the objects I’ve saved along the way are often a source of rememory, reminders of a time when my body and my environment felt wholly unfamiliar. My brain has done the work of effectively smothering memories of these times, rendering them inaccessible without these objects of rememory.

I see the ReMemory Quilt as a way to explore these objects. In creating it I’ve found a way to engage with my grief and honor change.