Reviews

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

nadia's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective sad slow-paced

2.5

I was so excited for this book. I thought it might end up being my favourite out of the Women's Prize Nonfiction shortlist. The concept intrigued me!

Alas, I'm so incredibly sad to report that I found this book incredibly hard to get through. I really struggled. The book read like an academic paper, with a lot of repetition and conjecture. This speculative style of history just didn't work for me. I felt so detached from the central characters of the book because of it.

I'm especially sad that I didn't like All That She Carried given the important subject matter. I wanted to rate this book higher just because of the topic, but given my reading experience I just couldn't.

Final Women's Prize 2024 Non-Fiction Shortlist rankings:

1. How to Say Babylon
2. Code Dependent
3. A Flat Place  
4. Thunderclap
5. Doppelganger
6. All That She Carried

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Slavery

hphillips91's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

2.5

knitterscasket's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective

5.0

b_isa_reading's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective

3.75

plantonic_friendships's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.5

Great historical research. A very humanist POV on the lives of these women and individuals.

brayden_stalcup13's review against another edition

5.0

I read this for class and it was incredible. Constructing a whole history of slavery in the United States from long lost family heirloom is impressive. This story does an amazing job at showing the human, emotional impact of slavery instead of giving simple statistics or storytelling from a western point of view. The life of a slave was horrifyingly brought to life with this book, but if one wants to know truly learn about American Slavery, this is a must read history.

Additionally I just want to say Tiya Miles is a very inspiring historian, and I truly appreciate her work.

a_fret_argent's review against another edition

informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

artemisfloof's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

nataliecatalie's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

laura_corsi's review against another edition

3.0

The story of Ashley’s Sack is amazing and touching and harrowing. However, getting through this little book was quite a chore and I stopped reading it several times. To be fair, there are many brilliant details in here but it can be a bit of a treasure hunt to persevere to the good bits.