All That She Carried
The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
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3.6 • 75 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives.
WINNER: Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Harriet Tubman Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Lawrence W. Levine Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award, Cundill History Prize, Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Book Award
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Vulture, Publishers Weekly
“A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language.
Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honors the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today.
FINALIST: MAAH Stone Book Award, Kirkus Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize, Chatauqua Prize, Women’s Prize
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Smithsonian Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, Book Riot, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s incredible how the history behind a single object can speak volumes about history as a whole. Through copious research, historian Tiya Miles tells the gripping, emotional tale of how, in the antebellum South, an enslaved mother named Rose passed a simple cotton sack to her daughter Ashley just before Ashley was sold. Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth Middleton eventually received the precious bag, embroidering it with vital information about its history. Miles plays detective throughout the bag’s journey, uncovering all she can about the family behind it and using their story to explore everything from the Black diaspora to the way female identity in American culture has often been cultivated through possessions. Miles weaves the tale with the soul of a poet, even adding a bit of her own family’s story to the mix. When the bag is viewed at its current home in a museum, patrons often require tissues—and we recommend being similarly prepared as you read All That She Carried.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MacArthur fellow Miles (The Dawn of Detroit) paints an evocative portrait of slavery and Black family life in this exquisitely crafted history. She frames her account around a cloth sack packed in 1852 by an enslaved woman named Rose for her nine-year-old daughter, Ashley, when the girl was sold to a new master in South Carolina. In 1921, Ashley's granddaughter, Ruth Middleton, embroidered the sack with Rose and Ashley's story, but it fell out of the family's possession and wasn't rediscovered until 2007. Miles pours through South Carolina plantation records to identify Rose and Ashley, and explores the physical and psychological lives of Black women via the original contents of the sack: a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans, and a braid of Rose's hair. For example, Rose's hair sparks a discussion of how enslaved women with lighter skin tones and longer, smoother locks were targeted for sexual assault by white men and violently punished by white women. Filling gaps in the historical record with the documented experiences of Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Keckley, and other enslaved women, Miles brilliantly shows how material items possessed the "ability to house and communicate... emotions like love, values like family, states of being like freedom." This elegant narrative is a treasure trove of insight and emotion.
Customer Reviews
Excellent, A Must Read
While slightly repetitive to make a point, this beautifully written book draws you in to its story of family survival through simple objects. All that remains of the sack creator are simple words that prove she and her offspring existed at all, more than most who did all they could to survive the horrors of slavery. An important meditation on family, the meaning of objects, and the importance of storytelling. A must read.