As a working cotton mill, a space for varied types of manufacturing, and eventually as a project of historical preservation, the Slater Mill has played many roles in the history of Pawtucket. Leavitt’s work includes such illuminating images as a turn-of-the-century bicycle shop, a crowded mill scene in the early twentieth century, and the transformation of the site into a tourist attraction in the 1920s. This volume also shows how the site was re-configured as a community museum in the 1950s and ’60s, as well as how the industrial emphasis of the curators eventually resulted in the addition of a working water wheelto the site. Well-illustrated, with fact-filled text, Slater Mill is acharming look back at a pivotal part of Pawtucket life that will interest young and old alike.

Slater Mill (RI) (Images of America)

Arts & Photography

Leavitt, Sarah

Slater Mill Historic Site

Photography & Video

Arcadia Publishing

From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart: A Cultural History of Domestic Advice

Today's domestic-advice writers--women such as Martha Stewart, Cheryl Mendelson, and B. Smith--are part of a long tradition, notes Sarah Leavitt. Their success rests on a legacy of literature that has focused on the home as an expression of ideals. Here, Leavitt crafts a fascinating genealogy of domestic advice, based on her readings of hundreds of manuals spanning 150 years of history. Over the years, domestic advisors have educated women about everything from modernism and morality to sanitation and design. Their writings helped create the idealized vision of home held by so many Americans, Leavitt says. Investigating cultural themes in domestic advice written since the mid-nineteenth century, she demonstrates that these works, which found meaning in kitchen counters, parlor rugs, and bric-a-brac, have held the interest of readers despite vast changes in women's roles and opportunities. Domestic-advice manuals have always been the stuff of fantasy, argues Leavitt, demonstrating cultural ideals rather than cultural realities. But these rich sources reveal how women understood the connection between their homes and the larger world. At its most fundamental level, the true domestic fantasy was that women held the power to reform their society through first reforming their homes.

Parenting & Relationships

The University of North Carolina Press

As a working cotton mill, a space for varied types of manufacturing, and eventually as a project of historical preservation, the Slater Mill has played many roles in the history of Pawtucket. Leavitt's work includes such illuminating images as a turn-of-the-century bicycle shop, a crowded mill scene in the early twentieth century, and the transformation of the site into a tourist attraction in the 1920s. This volume also shows how the site was re-configured as a community museum in the 1950s and '60s, as well as how the industrial emphasis of the curators eventually resulted in the addition of a working water wheel to the site. Well-illustrated, with fact-filled text, Slater Mill is a charming look back at a pivotal part of Pawtucket life that will interest young and old alike.

Slater Mill

History

Americas

Arcadia Publishing Library Editions

What do you do when your outspoken, passionate, and quick-witted mother starts fading into a forgetful, fearful woman? In this powerful graphic memoir, Sarah Leavitt reveals how Alzheimer’s disease transformed her mother Midge―and her family―forever. In spare black and white drawings and clear, candid prose, Sarah shares her family’s journey through a harrowing range of emotions―shock, denial, hope, anger, frustration―all the while learning to cope with a devastating diagnosis, and managing to find moments of happiness. Tangles confronts the complexity of Alzheimer’s disease, and gradually opens a knot of moments, memories, and dreams to reveal a bond between a mother and a daughter that will never come apart.

Tangles: A story about Alzheimer's, my mother, and me

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

Freehand Books

In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink, and coloured pencil - for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics. The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love

Arsenal Pulp Press

In this powerful memoir the the LA Times calls “moving, rigorous, and heartbreaking," Sarah Leavitt reveals how Alzheimer’s disease transformed her mother, Midge, and her family forever. In spare blackand- white drawings and clear, candid prose, Sarah shares her family’s journey through a harrowing range of emotions—shock, denial, hope, anger, frustration—all the while learning to cope, and managing to find moments of happiness. Midge, a Harvard educated intellectual, struggles to comprehend the simplest words; Sarah’s father, Rob, slowly adapts to his new role as full-time caretaker, but still finds time for wordplay and poetry with his wife; Sarah and her sister Hannah argue, laugh, and grieve together as they join forces to help Midge. Tangles confronts the complexity of Alzheimer’s disease, and ultimately releases a knot of memories and dreams to reveal a bond between a mother and a daughter that will never come apart.

Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me

Religion & Spirituality

Skyhorse

Acclaimed cartoonist Sarah Leavitt has created a gold rush story like no other: a spine chilling account of one woman’s attempt to escape her past by travelling into the wilds of the Cariboo Agnes, Murderess is a graphic novel inspired by the bloody legend of Agnes McVee, a roadhouse owner, madam and serial killer in the Cariboo region of British Columbia in the mid-nineteenth century. Fascinated by Agnes McVee and her unverified reputation as a murderer (originating in a 1970s guide to buried treasure), Sarah Leavitt has imagined an entirely new story for this mysterious woman: Agnes’s life begins on an isolated island off the coast of Scotland with her terrifying paternal grandmother, Gormul, who is feared by the villagers as a powerful witch. Agnes is desperate to leave the island, but Gormul keeps her trapped, determined to have an heir to her land and her evil powers. With the help of her devoted friend Seamus, Agnes escapes to London, then on to British Columbia, settling in 108 Mile in the Cariboo region. Here, she assumes ownership of a roadhouse serving the Gold Rush Trail. But no matter how far into the wild she ventures, she can’t seem to rid herself of Gormul’s legacy, which haunts both her dreams and her waking life. Leavitt puts a decidedly queer twist on the story, moving from women’s passionate friendships in the gardens of St John’s Wood to female relationships in Cariboo. At the same time, the book grapples with the dangerous pre-conceived notion held by settlers that Canada is a “new world,” free of ghosts and history. Agnes, Murderess presents a tortured, complicated woman struggling to escape her past. It is a spine-chilling tale of ghosts and murder, friendship and betrayal, love and greed, fate and choice.

Agnes, Murderess

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Books by Leavitt, Sarah