Deftly
weaving together carefully composed images with colloquial writing, Carrie Mae
Weems inserts viewers into an engaging, ongoing narrative. Viewers peek through
the door to a tidy bedroom, its details ripe with suggestion. Atop a well-loved
quilt is the story’s trigger: “his hat was on my bed,” the text proclaims.
Weems’s narrative confronts the gender norms and prejudices bound to folklore,
common wisdom, jokes, and idiomatic expressions.