All That She Carried

Creative. Accessible. Powerful. Well researched.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it tells a compelling story about slavery, and if you haven't read about the horrors of slavery in the US it is a good place to start. (We don't need to teach “CRT”–just assign a couple of books like this and people will get the idea of how badly slaves were treated by whites.) On the other hand, if you have read about slavery, as most educated people have, this book adds only some texture to the story–the interesting detail of how enslaved women might value needlework in some kind of coping mechanism. But what I found lacking in the book is that its central narrative revolves around speculation. As much as the author tried to get concrete evidence, that evidence is mostly lacking and so much of the story is made up. It could have been done this way, for this reason, etc. It's all plausible, but not really history.

This was such a poignant book. We live in a society where we give lots of importance to materialistic things, so it's fascinating to explore how a single such item can convey the traumatic history of a whole group of people. While talking about how a single bag was passed down through generations, the author manages convey to us the horrors of enslavement, how the lives of enslaved women were for decades, and how difficult it was for them to even own something, let alone pass it down, when they themselves were considered property. Add to it the fact that families were separated very often, it's truly a story of resilience that the author narrates to us here.

Very compelling and engaging read and I would definitely recommend to readers who would love to read books about African American history from different perspectives.