Ashley's Sack

This work, which some have noted reads like a poem, was embroidered on a cotton sack that will soon have a permanent home at a museum in Charleston, South Carolina. This sack, until recently on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, inspired a piece of literary, historical non-fiction by the author and professor Tiya Miles, who, in her 2021 National Book Award winning work All That She Carried: the Journey of Ashley's Sack, discovers and describes the contours of the lives of Ashley, Ruth, and Rose, even as she describes the artifact of the sack and the content it carried.