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

4.12 AVERAGE

shelby92's profile picture

shelby92's review against another edition

2.5
challenging informative reflective sad slow-paced
I appreciate this book bringing attention to this artifact and its context. I can see the effort and research Tiya Miles has put into her work. Unfortunately, this read a lot like a college essay that is going too long to meet a word count.  As much as I appreciate the effort, the editing just wasn’t there. 

swoody788's review against another edition

5.0
informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

moniipeters's review against another edition

4.0
challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced
readingspells's profile picture

readingspells's review against another edition

4.0
challenging dark informative reflective sad slow-paced
Learning about the early pioneers of the slave trade, the British, and how they used it to great wealth in Barbados and then moved it to the new colony of America really made me realise how this has been erased from historical teaching in our schools and it is not a recent thing. I am 51 and I was never taught any of this stuff. The result is a population who largely views slavery as a America problem.

This book uses Ashley's sack as a catalyst for telling us that history but also piecing together the lives of black women and children during slavery in the USA. It tries to give some voice to those stories despite there being very little archival records of their lives. 

I found lots of the history really interesting and again made me realise how much the 'slave story' has been white washed and even glorified in lots of media. With the rise of far right Christo-fascists in the USA who want to rewrite slavery as some sort of benevolent act books like this more important than ever. 
chutchinson's profile picture

chutchinson's review against another edition

4.75
informative reflective medium-paced
melc's profile picture

melc's review

DID NOT FINISH: 15%
Florrid, rambling and not enough about the journey of research and investigation into the women's lives. Just couldn't hold my attention as I felt the author was padding the book out with repetition and lack of anything firm relating to these specific women.

katielong84's review against another edition

3.0
informative sad medium-paced

suzehint's review against another edition

3.5
informative medium-paced

magicmountain's review against another edition

5.0
challenging reflective slow-paced
curatoriallyyours's profile picture

curatoriallyyours's review against another edition

3.5
challenging hopeful reflective slow-paced
This book was interesting and I’m glad to have read it. I learned about Ashley’s sack, a cotton sack embroidered with a family history of enslavement and separation, and deepened my knowledge of slavery in South Carolina. When talking about people in history where the record is scant there has to be some level of speculation based on what we do know of the period and place but I felt that, in trying to centre this sack, the author engaged in too much speculation and fell into the trap of talking too much about the people we do have more records about. I read this book because it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. So far I have only read one other book from the longlist - Wifedom by Anna Funder - and I think she does a better job of speculating in between the evidence we have about the subject. I’m not sure why this book made it to the shortlist but Wifedom didn’t.