About this item
In a display case in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture sits 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." Now, in this illuminating, deeply moving book inspired by Rose's gift to Ashley, historian Tiya Miles carefully 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 singular and revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States.
About the Author
Tiya Miles was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where most of her family still resides. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan on a tree-lined street with her husband, the academic psychologist Joseph Gone, their delightful twin daughters, and spirited 6-year-old son. Tiya's first book, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, was published by the University of California Press in 2005 and received four awards from historical, humanities, American studies, and Native American studies associations, including the Frederick Jackson Turner prize from the Organization of American Historians for the best first book in American history and recognition from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association as one of the ten most influential books of the first decade of the twenty-first century. She is also the author of The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2010, which was awarded three historical book prizes including the best book award from the National Council on Public History. Miles is the co-editor, with Sharon P. Holland, of Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country (2006) and has published various personal essays on race, feminism and identity as well as academic articles on women's history and black and Native interrelated experience. In 2011, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
