660 reviews for:

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

Tiya Miles

4.12 AVERAGE

kloughlin's review against another edition

4.5

emotional informative sad slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Slavery

Moderate: Physical abuse, Violence, Murder

Minor: Incest, Rape

libriomancer's review against another edition

5.0

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

cassandralh's review against another edition

4.0

informative reflective medium-paced

paulap's review against another edition

3.5

medium-paced

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This was a very empathetic way to look at the lives of the unfree in the US. The author starts to look at the situation during slavery by looking at the kind of objects that they owned and passed down to their children. She focuses in a family story from mother to daughter, but in general, it really looks at the humanity of the unfree during slavery and at how they lived, loved and went by. Very well written, and a fairly new way to look at things from a much more human way than political.

gabi_tron's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

rmla's review against another edition

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Difficult read, too much conjecture to be enjoyable for me. Clearly lots of research went into this, but it wasn't an easy read.

itsmeamethyst's review against another edition

4.0

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Was disappointed that [b:A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance|49247757|A Little Devil in America Notes in Praise of Black Performance|Hanif Abdurraqib|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606110758l/49247757._SX50_.jpg|62219511] did not win a National Book Award (nonfiction) last year, so I wanted to read this book which beat it.

This is informed speculation about the history of an artifact - an embroidered sack and especially the women who preserved it over generations despite being enslaved and separated (photo below). She expands on what was in the sack and the sack itself including looking into the history of food, hair, textiles, embroidery, and even love. Miles uses available contextual information to understand the human experiences of the women in this family and of the times they lived through.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Janina Edwards, whose narration style I really like. It is a slow journey but well worth the time and speculation.

brmills's review against another edition

2.0

dark emotional informative slow-paced

ssunier's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

shannon_camposdowdy's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced