All That She Carried by Tiya Miles

This is a book that started as an idea, triggered by an exhibit in a museum. That is the greatest testimony to the power of exhibits and the effect that they can have on the viewer--that an object from the past inspires someone to dig deeper and we all understand a little bit more. This book started in a display case in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture with a rough cotton bag, called Ashley’s Sack, embroidered with just a handful of words that evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love, passed down through generations. In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose gave this sack filled with a few precious items to her daughter, Ashley, as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley’s survival as well. 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 bag in spare yet haunting language—including Rose’s wish that “It be filled with my Love always.” This illuminating and moving book inspired by Rose’s gift to Ashley, the author unearths these women’s faint presence in archival records to follow the paths of their lives—and the lives of so many women like them—to write a revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, from the viewpoint of black women in the United States. The cover has some beautiful handwork on it, but the book does not explore the history or the motivation behind crafting useful things in an artful way, but rather focuses on the family history that generations of American slaves lack and why that is inevitable given the parameters of enslavement.