All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Name: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Author: Tiya Miles
ISBN: 9781800818224

Tiya Miles

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All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Tiya Miles

awards won

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All That She Carried won the National Book Award and the Cundill History Prize, and was a New York Times bestseller. In 1850s South Carolina, Rose, an enslaved woman, faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few items. 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. That, in itself, is a story. But it's not the whole story. How does one uncover the lives of people who, in their day, were considered property? Harvard 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. All That She Carried gives us history as it was lived, a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds.

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