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648 reviews for:
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles
4.12 AVERAGE
648 reviews for:
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles
4.12 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
emotional
informative
medium-paced
A meticulously researched study on sparsely developed part of history that is heart wrenching. The author uses the history of an embroidered sack to give us the opportunity to attempt to imagine and also appreciate how these incredible women survived and passed along incredible strength and courage and resilience from generation to generation!
This is more of a dissertation than a novel. Yet, rich with information and powerful with insight.
This is more of a dissertation than a novel. Yet, rich with information and powerful with insight.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
informative
medium-paced
I wanted to like this book better than I did. It traces, or attempts to trace, the likely origins of a cotton sack gifted to a young enslaved girl when she was about to be sold away from her family. The sack is retained by family members for at least three generations, when the text of an abbreviated slave narrative is embroidered on the fabric by a descendant. Given the fraught origins of this artifact of material culture, I expected the book would pull me in and keep my attention. And, parts of it did engage me as a reader. Since there is so little factual information that can be known about the sack or its owners, the author uses diligent research to uncover contextualizing information about the culture as well as contemporary examples. All of this extraneous material was interesting, but I think what I objected to was the overgeneralizing of the gathered information, supposing that the sack's owner felt or thought in ways that there is just no evidence of. Miles, in using this information, frequently second-guesses her comparisons by asking if it's too much of a stretch to believe that a certain thing, because it was true for a contemporary, is also true for the bearer of the sack. Each time she asks, I felt myself answering that yes, it was too much of a stretch. I hoped she would stick more to the facts.
I was skeptical that a historian could turn ten lines stitched onto a sack into a compelling narrative but here we are. Ashley’s sack is filled with a mother’s love, and though the specifics are sparse Miles is able to draw on contemporaneous accounts, textile history, and even discussion of the geography of Charleston and surrounding areas to describe the things Rose and Ashley may have experienced leading up to Ashley’s sale away from her mother at age 9. I’m also amazed that a book centered on such a heartbreaking personal moment and such a dark historical moment manages to be so uplifting and heartfelt — this is a story about love and survival against all odds, for Ashley and for her sack, discovered in a thrift store bin in Tennessee nearly 150 years after Ashley was sold. The book is full of speculation — after all, how much can one do with only ten lines? — but it never feels far-fetched or inaccurate. I loved everything about it.
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
This was a beautiful walk through time of one girl's history through the eyes of those who discovered her sack many years later.
The journey this bag has taken brought forth knowledge and understanding of what a slave had to endure to survive. The forethought Ashley's mother had to possess was not just for herself but her legacy.
The comment that hit hard was if you had to pack and run, think about what you would take that was most important to you. What would you put in the sack? But it was not the things that were important. It was Ashley herself and what she would need to survive.
This was as informative as it was hopeful and heartbreaking at the same time.
Listened to the audiobook and the narrator was so calming to listen to. I just fell into her words.
The journey this bag has taken brought forth knowledge and understanding of what a slave had to endure to survive. The forethought Ashley's mother had to possess was not just for herself but her legacy.
The comment that hit hard was if you had to pack and run, think about what you would take that was most important to you. What would you put in the sack? But it was not the things that were important. It was Ashley herself and what she would need to survive.
This was as informative as it was hopeful and heartbreaking at the same time.
Listened to the audiobook and the narrator was so calming to listen to. I just fell into her words.
I would compare this to reading the dissertation of a PhD candidate. Very thorough study of a primary document. Not really for a non-historian.
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I think this probably could have been a 4 star read if I had actually read a physical copy but for some reason I thought this was a memoir which I prefer to listen to in audiobook format. its not that the narrator or the writing was bad, i just struggled to stay focused while listening to this