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All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Top of the pile
78
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
41/100Critics
96/100Scholars
96/100Author:
Tiya Miles
Publisher:
Random House
Date:
June 8, 2021
Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction. In 1850s South Carolina, just before nine-year-old Ashley was sold, her mother Rose gave her a sack filled with just a few things as a token of her love. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered this history on the bag--including Rose's message that 'It be filled with my Love always.' Historian Tiya Miles carefully follows faint archival traces back to Charleston to find Rose in the kitchen where she may have packed the sack for Ashley.
What The Reviewers Say
... a remarkable book, striking a delicate balance between two seemingly incommensurate approaches: Miles’s fidelity to her archival material, as she coaxes out facts grounded in the evidence; and her conjectures about this singular object, as she uses what is known about other enslaved women’s lives to suppose what could have been..
[Miles'] lyrical account presents the obscene inhumanity of slavery while celebrating the humanity of its victims.
Miles is renowned for her ability to spin touchingly personal stories out of deeply researched material. Her latest tour de force centers on Ashley’s Sack, which is on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. From this single piece of history, Miles traces three generations of Black women from 1850’s South Carolina to the recent past, crafting her own indispensable artifact in the process..
... bold and innovative.
