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. 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.” Read more...

Recent Nonfiction Highlights: The 2024 Women’s Prize Shortlist

Suzannah Lipscomb, Historian