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

"This is a work of historical excavation. It concerns a sack that belonged to a girl called Ashley, who, when she was nine years old, was sold away from her mother Rose. Both were enslaved. This was the 1850s, and the sack was later embroidered by Ashley’s granddaughter, Ruth, who worked this incredible inscription that tells us almost everything we know about the story. It says: My great grandmother Rose Mother of Ashley gave her this sack when She was sold at age of 9 in South Carolina it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her It be filled with my Love always she never saw her again Ashley is my grandmother Ruth Middleton 1921 This book is what we can know about these women, the discoveries made about their identity, and the thousands of others whose stories cannot be told who experienced unimaginable horror. A people’s trauma. How does one tell history, when the archive is so limited? She thinks about methods for marking the absences on the page, and also looking for what she calls “the chorus of collaboration.” And, when necessary, extrapolating. It’s a very powerful work that makes one think of the horrors done to Black people during the period of enslavement in America."