Welcome to The Weaver, a newsletter by me, Joanna Wolfarth
Here I weave together ideas about motherhood, art, nature, feminist explorations of power, life and so much more besides.
The name comes from one of my favourite images of parenthood, this 6th-century Indonesian broze of a woman with her loom feeding her baby.
So much of my writing happens in snatches of time between lecturing and family life. Putting my notebook to one side to feed a baby, pausing as I type to help my child rescue an errant football. For a long time, I worried about my divergent mind. But now I see the beauty in my ability to weave together fragments from different disciplines, including my own life.
There is a well-known Cambodian proverb which I treasure:
ផ្លូវវៀចកុំបោះបង់ which translates to don’t abandon the indirect road.
I read a lot, but rarely do book recommendation posts. If you are interested in what I’ve been reading, especially around exploring parenthood, you can find a my recommendations on Bookshop.org (*aff link).
About me
I’m an art historian, lecturer and writer. For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by how we make sense of our worlds through making things and telling stories.
I'm a specialist in Southeast Asian art history and currently teach at The Open University. Parenthood gave me the confidence to make a creative shift away from academic writing. During maternity leave, I pitched a personal essay to the Wellcome Collection, on my experiences of breastfeeding alongside cultural histories of infant feeding. The essay soon expanded into a book proposal. That book, MILK: An Intimate History of Breastfeeding, was published in January of this year, to very positive reviews and national press.
I now write nonfiction exploring cultural histories, memoir, feminism, our relationships to landscape, and more. My writing has been published in many outlets, including The Observer, History Today and Wellcome Stories. I am also the current writer-in-residence for the Urban Trees Festival and co-editor of the forthcoming book ASIA-ART-ACTIVISM.
What can you expect from The Weaver?
The newsletter serves as a space for me to explore ideas with you. You can expect:
short exploratory essays, half-formed ideas, and reflections from wherever my attentions strays
insights into the challenges and rewards of writing
news on my forthcoming work and events
notes from an apparently ‘disordered’ and ‘divergent’ mind
Why Subscribe?
Subscribing gets you access to the newsletter and website. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox. I promise not to spam you with loads of mail, and I will never, ever pass on your information to anyone.
…and why pay?
Some posts go out to everyone, for free. But others are for paid subscribers only. I made this decision because I draw on 20 years of thinking about art and philosophy as well as sometimes intimate details of my life. If you like my work in one form or another, a paid subscription is a wonderful way to support it and to give me the time and space to keep doing it.
As The Weaver develops, there will be also occasional paywall-only posts, as well as insights into the worlds of writing and publishing.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
