Join us to engage with this year’s Indiana One State / One Story read, All That She Carried by Tiya Miles. Dr. Erica Lawrence will lead our book discussion held at Town Clock Church (located at 300 E. Main St. in New Albany). A tour of the historic church will follow the discussion. Refreshments will be provided. Free copies of the book (yours to keep!) will be available at New Albany Central Library’s upper level Customer Service Desk for patrons who register for one of our book discussions.

About the book:

In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis, the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few precious items as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley’s survival. 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 bag in spare yet haunting language—including Rose’s wish that “It be filled with my Love always.” Ruth’s sewn words, the reason we remember Ashley’s sack today, evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love passed down through generations. Now, in this illuminating, deeply moving new book inspired by Rose’s gift to Ashley, historian Tiya Miles carefully unearths these women’s faint presence in archival records to follow the paths of their lives— and the lives of so many women like them—to write a singular and revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States.

One State / One Story: All That She Carried/Freedom Over Me is presented by Indiana Humanities in partnership with the Indiana Center for the Book and the Indiana State Library as part of Indiana Humanities’ Advancing Racial Equity Project, supported by Lilly Endowment.