02 April 2024
Profile Books is proud to announce that All That She Carried by Tiya Miles has been shortlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Described by Women’s Prize judge and fair fashion campaigner Venetia La Manna as, ‘vital … a bold and beautiful book’, historian Tiya Miles has crafted a deeply layered and insightful testament to the people who are left out of the archives. The winner will be announced at a prize ceremony on 13th June. Congratulations to Tiya and her fellow shortlistees!
Discover more about the New York Times bestselling history below.
In 1850s South Carolina, Rose, an enslaved woman, faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few items. 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 sack in spare, haunting language.
That, in itself, is a story. But it’s not the whole story. How does one uncover the lives of people who, in their day, were considered property? Harvard historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward. All That She Carried gives us history as it was lived, a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds.
