Embroidery is a timeless craft that many of us associate with mothers and grandmothers, childhood memories and heirlooms. Eurydice Eve is a feminist author who spent the past twenty years handstitching her thinking out of the patriarchy.
But how do you go from embroidering 30ft long tapestries of giant female archetypes to wanting to change the lives of half of the world’s population by changing billions of minds? This contemporary Eurydice thinks so out of the box that she offers new perspective on the human condition. She gives us access to patriarchy’s best kept secrets, and a simple social fix that she calls a bridge to the future.
Who is Eurydice Eve?
If you have happened to walk past Eurydice Eve on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, where she has had an art studio for fifteen years, you might take her for a European art collector rushing to the next art fair. But behind the open demeanor and inquisitive eyes hides an accomplished writer who has lived on three continents doing field research. She uses embroidery to occupy busy time so she can transport herself outside the patriarchy. She stitches in order to think.
Born on Lesbos, Greece, Eurydice had just started fifth grade in Athens when she learned from a male teacher who noticed her birth certificate the common meaning of the word ‘lesbian.’ “My toponym was a stigmatized sexual preference,” she says, wide-eyed. “I felt shame and guilt. I felt compelled to hide my birthright and lie about my identity, and I also felt the insanity and the injustice of that.” A precocious writer, Eurydice suddenly felt there was no place for her in her beloved culture. “I had put my trust in logos, thinking that my skill with language would exempt me from the duties of my birth gender. But my language marked me as Other. As I entered puberty, my body marked me as Other also. No wonder Sappho remained the only famous Greek woman writer. What woman would dare follow her example, knowing what happened to Sappho’s reputation and literary output?”
Eurydice Became Obsessed with the Place of the Woman’s Body in Patriarchy
As a teenager, she tried on a male identity. When that didn’t make her less attractive and noticed, she ran from Heraklion, Crete to L.A. at fifteen. She stayed with a Californian librarian who introduced her to the American experiment. Eurydice found in America what she calls “the fertile chaos of post-patriarchy,” where humans could live free from past programming. At sixteen, she enrolled at N.Y.U. At twenty she was studying with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs at Naropa Institute while earning an M.A. in creative writing at the University of Colorado in Boulder when she was invited to publish her thesis as a book, f/32. f/32 became a literary cult phenomenon translated into many languages. The feminist press Virago asked her to write a sequel, f/32: The Second Coming. The Village Voice called f/32 “the definitive novel on female sexuality.”
Eurydice became a mother during the publication of her nonfiction book Satyricon USA by Scribner. Satyricon USA linked the sexual state of the union to an empire in decline. In A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier, Eurydice described America’s decay and loss of faith in established institutions. Spin magazine wrote that “Eurydice is the most authoritative and compelling writer of sex in the English language.” Eurydice vowed not to publish again until she could offer a practical solution to our cultural wars. She picked up handstitching to quiet her inner judge, defy the expectations of the literary marketplace, and buy herself time to freethink.
America inspired her to speak truth to power. Motherhood inspired her to revisit feminism. The result, twenty years in the making, is Eurydice’s ambitious proposal for Universal Mother Income (UMI).
Bringing Motherhood Into The 21st Century:
Eurydice now makes it her mission to promote mothers’ rights. “Culture invented money to replace natural bonds with cultural bonds. Financial dependence masks our natural dependence on mothers. Meanwhile mothers’ work remains unvaluated and unpaid. It’s time for mothers’ lib.”
Learn more details about Eurydice Eve’s groundbreaking proposal on her eponymous podcast, YouTube channel, substack newsletter and upcoming book.
Eurydice Eve on Universal Mother Income
