All That She Carried with Tiya Miles

The Extreme History Project: The Dirt on the Past

Join us for this thoughtful conversation with Dr. Tiya Miles about her new book, All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, A Black Family Keepsake. Dr. Miles is a renowned historian who, in this book, traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft an extraordinary testament to people who are left out of the archives. We dive into the book, and why Tiya felt compelled to write about this significant object. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and of love passed down through generations of women against steep odds. It honors the creativity and fierce resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties even when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today. We talk with Tiya about her process and why this story is important today as we, as a nation, struggle with how to understand our hard histories and reconcile our past in a way that can help us move forward together. Tiya Miles is professor of history and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Miles is the author of The Dawn of Detroit, which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, among other honors, as well as the acclaimed books Ties That Bind, The House on Diamond Hill, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, and Tales from the Haunted South, a published lecture series.