A backdrop of t-shirts featuring brave statements about violence against women sets the stage for novelist Kathie Giorgio and poet Sarah Xerta to raise their voices into the mix, adding lyricism and story-telling to create a new depth of understanding.
The Clothesline Project (CLP) is a program started on Cape Cod, MA, in 1990 to address the issue of violence against women. It is a vehicle for women affected by violence to express their emotions by decorating a shirt. They then hang the shirt on a clothesline to be viewed by others as testimony to the problem of violence against women. With the support of many, it has since spread world-wide. The shirts are color coded to show the form of abuse and whether the victim survived the abuse they experienced.
- White represents women who died because of violence;
- Yellow or beige represents battered or assaulted women;
- Red, pink, and orange are for survivors of rape and sexual assault;
- Blue and green t-shirts represent survivors of incest and sexual abuse;
- Purple or lavender represents women attacked because of their sexual orientation;
- Black is for women attacked for political reasons.
