In Brief: Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian Women

By Hannah Rose Thomas. Plough Publishing House, 2024. 136 pages. $49.95/hardcover; $29.99/eBook.

This full-color book contains Hannah Rose Thomas’s portraits of Yazidi women from Iraq who escaped from captivity by ISIS; of Rohingya women who fled persecution in Myanmar; and of northern Nigerian women who survived abduction by Boko Haram and gender-based violence arising from the conflict between Christian farmers and Muslim nomadic herdsmen. A final chapter adds Afghan, Ukrainian, Uyghur, and Palestinian women.

Two of the chapters include a self-portrait that each woman did along with Thomas’s portrait of that woman. On the page beside each of these is the story the woman told the artist of what happened to her and the way she is surviving in the refugee camp. Thomas understands that through the telling of traumatic memories, we can heal. She has traveled to the refugee camps to listen; to share; and to teach art, especially self-portrait painting. She uses gold leaf in her portraits to convey the sacred value of each of the women in the light of the genocidal violence they have endured, because gold is traditionally symbolic of the sacredness of such journeys. Her portraits share their grief, their loss, and their suffering, and they are intended as “outpourings of lament for the broken realities of the world around us.”

Thomas has studied traditional art, making and using art materials from ancient traditions. Having traveled to work with women in many cultures and many circumstances, she has painted these portraits with her whole heart and likens this painting to prayer; it is surely an act of love. The portraits in Tears of Gold have been exhibited in two of Europe’s Houses of Parliament, in the International Peace Institute in New York, in Westminster Abbey, and in refugee camps. These portraits and the accompanying text have helped people everywhere understand what the women have endured and how they can help. This book brings us close to their experience, as the women look out at us from their portraits and share their words on the page.

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Rosalie Dance is a member of Stony Run Meeting in Baltimore, Md., and serves on its Immigration Working Group.