Elizabeth Carmel Hamilton

“Figuring It Out” is a monograph devoted to the oeuvre of Alison Saar that examines her sculptures and prints thematically. Ranging through slavery and its afterlives, motherhood, mental health, domesticity, and nationhood/citizenship, the text is about how black women have survived and continue to persevere under white supremacy and misogyny in the United States by looking at the potent examples in Saar's work. The themes gleaned from the sculptures in Saar’s oeuvre are a microcosm of black womanhood in the United States.