02-06-2022
12:30 pm - 2:30 pm

ZOOM LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84257017624 

We could not have picked a better book to celebrate Black History Month. And, it’s no wonder that Professor Tiya Miles won the National Book Award for 2021 for All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack. Her writing is exquisite, uniquely informative, illuminating and painful to read, at times.  Lonnie Moseley will lead our discussion.  All are welcome!  Even if you didn’t read the book, please come to listen to the powerful and moving discussion. 

EXCERPT:

“For generations of Black people dispossessed of their freedom, belongings held a deep emotional valence, representing not only dreams but also ties to the people with whom one belonged by force. In this way, things linked kin together, materializing family members’ devotion even across insurmountable distance. In contrast to the Martins, who legally owned her, Rose owned very little. But Rose’s list of things to pack, as recorded by Ruth on Ashley’s sack, indicates where Rose placed her emotional investments. Some of the items Rose packed, like the pecans, might have been chosen in part for potential exchange value. But the list includes no prices or equivalencies, the items are not recalled as if they were ever intended for trade. These things were more meaningful to Rose, as understood by her descendant, for their symbolic, rather than their commercial, value. In silent rebuke of the emotionally bankrupt inventory of the slaveholder, Rose prized things that reaffirmed relational ties.” (p. 130-131)

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/11/16/all-that-she-carried-tiya-miles