All that she carried : the journey of Ashley's sack, a Black family keepsake / Tiya Miles.

A renowned historian and MacArthur "Genius Grant" fellow traces a single object handed down through three generations of Black women, from slavery and into the twentieth century, to craft an extraordinary meditation on people who are left out of the archives of history.

In 1850s South Carolina, Rose, an enslaved woman, faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few items. 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. That, in itself, is a story. But it's not the whole story. How does one uncover the lives of people who, in their day, were considered property? Harvard 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.

London : Profile Books, 2024.

xvii, 385 pages : black and white illustrations ; 20 cm

Originally published: New York: Random House, 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

National Book Award.