Take a photo of a barcode or cover
656 reviews for:
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles
4.12 AVERAGE
656 reviews for:
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles
4.12 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Trafficking, Sexual harassment
The amount of research that went into this book is incredible. However, I really feel like this could’ve been a 20 page article and been more impactful. This was just entirely too long. I appreciate getting so much context for the items in the bag, but it just dragged. I probably wouldn’t have finished it if I weren’t reading it for school.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
What a beautifully tragic story of love. I’m still processing this book. I want to follow up on more research on the link between how the bag was packed with practicality, faith, and even magic. Miles wrote in such a fascinating way, highlighting the “violence of the archives,” and looking at the connections of materiality, bodies, history, and love. I’m going to have to return to this book so many times. I can believe I waited to read it for so long.
I liked this book and found the topic to be interesting. I just wish it had been told in a bit more of a storytelling style. It felt very academic, which is fair for this type of accounting told by an actual historian. I just fell like the content would be made much more accessible to a broader readership if it had a little different flair to the writing. It felt dry and a bit flat ar times.
A truly remarkable book that will remain with me for a long time. The story of Ashley's sack is about a homespun fabric artifact, a mother's love, and a historian's search as she faces the "conundrum of the archives" (history favors those with power/money, white/male) to tell this story. As the author takes us through the researched, "probable lives" of the Middleton family, the reader grapples with the continuous trauma of enslaved women and children, ripped apart from each other on the sale block or daily plantation life and the present and constant danger of abuse of all types.
I was drawn to each discussion of the bag's contents and the reminder that mothers, no matter their circumstances, are compelled to provide for their children. This is a tremendous book, I wish i had seen the sack when it was on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C.
I was drawn to each discussion of the bag's contents and the reminder that mothers, no matter their circumstances, are compelled to provide for their children. This is a tremendous book, I wish i had seen the sack when it was on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C.
The touching story of Ashley's Sack, this was so interesting to read, and so sad for me as a mother to think about the heartbreak of the forced separation between mother and child.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
In 1850s South Carolina, just before enslaved 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. From Rose's last resourceful gift to her daughter, Miles then follows the paths their lives and the lives of so many like them took to write a unique, innovative history of the lived experience of slavery in the United States.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced