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All That She Carried

The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

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About this listen

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WINNER OF THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE

In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, 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.

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, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honours the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today.

©2023 Tiya Miles (P)2011 Audible Ltd Americas Black & African American United States
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We privileged wasps need to know this. However, the book could have had more impact were it not for the seemingly endless repetition. The reader did a fairly good job except for some rather idiosyncratic pronunciation.

Important subject but very repetitive

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Miles uses a single historical source to tell the lives of Rose and Ashley. Her methods are bold and great for allowing too often forgotten histories to be told. Awesome work

Amazing work

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Amazing insight into african American slavery this has left me with a greater understanding what african Americans went through

Beautifully read great story

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