Tiya Miles
Author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
About the Author
Tiya Miles is Professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story and The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts. Among other notable prizes and fellowships, she was awarded a MacArthur show more Foundation Fellowship in 2011. show less
Works by Tiya Miles
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (2021) 769 copies, 27 reviews
Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (2005) 159 copies, 2 reviews
The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (2017) 150 copies, 4 reviews
Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Significations) (2024) 144 copies, 3 reviews
Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era (2015) 74 copies, 2 reviews
Associated Works
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 (2021) — Contributor — 1,156 copies, 25 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Miles, Tiya Alicia
- Birthdate
- 1970-01-17
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Harvard University (AB | Afro-American Studies | 1992)
Emory University (MA | Women's Studies | 1995)
University of Minnesota (PhD | American Studies | 2000) - Occupations
- historian
public historian
writer
professor - Organizations
- Shabazz African American Center, Dartmouth (coordinator)
University of Michigan
Harvard University - Awards and honors
- Faculty Cornerstone Award (2006 | University of Michigan)
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Ohio, USA
Members
Reviews
My great grandmother Rose
mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of
pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my Love always
she never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother
— Ruth Middleton, 1921
This is a tour de force of historical craft. From this brief epitaph, embroidered on a simple cloth sack given by an enslaved mother to her child in the mid-nineteenth century, Tiya Miles spins out an show more exploration of the physical, emotional, and psychological histories of Black women in the United States. We can ultimately know very little about Rose or Ashley—even the identifications whom Miles provides for them here are probable rather than definitive—and that very fact causes Miles to grapple with what she terms “the conundrum of the archives.” How do we use the historical record to tell the lives those people whom that record often disdained to include? How can we tell the story of the humanity of those in the past when the surviving sources that do mention them—such as account books which list enslaved people as unnamed chattel—are such monuments to obscene inhumanity? A moving, thought-provoking read. show less
mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of
pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my Love always
she never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother
— Ruth Middleton, 1921
This is a tour de force of historical craft. From this brief epitaph, embroidered on a simple cloth sack given by an enslaved mother to her child in the mid-nineteenth century, Tiya Miles spins out an show more exploration of the physical, emotional, and psychological histories of Black women in the United States. We can ultimately know very little about Rose or Ashley—even the identifications whom Miles provides for them here are probable rather than definitive—and that very fact causes Miles to grapple with what she terms “the conundrum of the archives.” How do we use the historical record to tell the lives those people whom that record often disdained to include? How can we tell the story of the humanity of those in the past when the surviving sources that do mention them—such as account books which list enslaved people as unnamed chattel—are such monuments to obscene inhumanity? A moving, thought-provoking read. show less
Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era (The Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era) by Tiya Miles
Wow. Tiya Miles does a very good job of showcasing some of the popular ghost plantation tours in her book and dissecting them. I honestly didn't even get that ghost trails were a thing let alone ghost plantation tours.
Miles shows that for the most part, the stories told about slaves were not truthful at all, or if there are some truth to things (Delphine Lalaurie) some parts were embellished. She also gets into looking at how many African American women were portrayed in these stories. They show more were either Mammies, Jezebels, or Voodoo queens. They were shown to be sneaking, lying, or trying to seduce the poor slave owner and take him away from his wife.
I loved that she showed historical evidence and context in her book and showed that many things we believe about the south and plantations is fiction. It wasn't Gone With the Wind, people owned others and treated them terribly. You had to worry about being raped, being forced to "breed", and having your family sold off from you. It's still mind boggling to me anyone would be interested in doing any type of plantation tour.
Miles is able to peel back stories told about Molly and Matilda (see Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah), Delphine Lalaurie (see Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans), and Chloe and Cleo (Mrytles Plantation in Louisana) and have you see them as living and breathing women. If you are interested in hearing about these women, you can Google and include the word "ghost" and see what pops up. I do concur with Miles findings though and don't believe that most of the people described in this stories existed besides Matilda and Delphine.
I really loved the writing and there were a lot of passages I highlighted in this book.
I also loved that Miles included some information about Native Americas too.
I also never really thought too much about who was behind that whole Mammy thing that many people in the south seemed to talk about. Those that read and saw "The Help" showed that it got pushed into another generation until the Civil Rights Movement. Black women are either supposed to be motherly or we are shown as being "fast", or angry if we dare to speak up for ourselves. It's frustrating to be a black woman in this world right now.
The locations that Miles goes to in order to investigate this ghost plantation tours are Old Savannah, the French Quarter, and Louisiana plantations. show less
Miles shows that for the most part, the stories told about slaves were not truthful at all, or if there are some truth to things (Delphine Lalaurie) some parts were embellished. She also gets into looking at how many African American women were portrayed in these stories. They show more were either Mammies, Jezebels, or Voodoo queens. They were shown to be sneaking, lying, or trying to seduce the poor slave owner and take him away from his wife.
I loved that she showed historical evidence and context in her book and showed that many things we believe about the south and plantations is fiction. It wasn't Gone With the Wind, people owned others and treated them terribly. You had to worry about being raped, being forced to "breed", and having your family sold off from you. It's still mind boggling to me anyone would be interested in doing any type of plantation tour.
Miles is able to peel back stories told about Molly and Matilda (see Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah), Delphine Lalaurie (see Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans), and Chloe and Cleo (Mrytles Plantation in Louisana) and have you see them as living and breathing women. If you are interested in hearing about these women, you can Google and include the word "ghost" and see what pops up. I do concur with Miles findings though and don't believe that most of the people described in this stories existed besides Matilda and Delphine.
I really loved the writing and there were a lot of passages I highlighted in this book.
"African American bondsmen and bondswomen had been transformed into virtual ghosts, absent and yet eerily present in historical tours as invisible laboring bodies that made their owners’ fortunes shine."
"Enslaved black women on plantations were particularly vulnerable. Historians of black women in slavery have detailed the pervasiveness of sexual coercion and rape in a system that not only offered no legal protection for black women but also rewarded masters economically for forced sex and impregnation that resulted in the growth of the slave population."
I also loved that Miles included some information about Native Americas too.
"The enslaved African American ghost is the Indian ghost’s double. While the red ghost keeps alive the memory of Indian removal in U.S. history, representing white “terror and lament,” the black ghost marks the demonic spirit of possession through which Americans transformed people into things."
I also never really thought too much about who was behind that whole Mammy thing that many people in the south seemed to talk about. Those that read and saw "The Help" showed that it got pushed into another generation until the Civil Rights Movement. Black women are either supposed to be motherly or we are shown as being "fast", or angry if we dare to speak up for ourselves. It's frustrating to be a black woman in this world right now.
"As scholarship on black women’s history shows, the Mammy myth was called into discursive being by defenders of slavery in the 1830s who sought to challenge abolitionist critiques of the sexual abuse of slave women. Mammy’s image was embellished by memoirs of slaveholders’ children published during the Civil War as well as by tributes to her memory in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the Aunt Jemima pancake-mix brand and plans for a national Mammy memorial spurred by the Daughters of the Confederacy."
The locations that Miles goes to in order to investigate this ghost plantation tours are Old Savannah, the French Quarter, and Louisiana plantations. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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. show less
Reflective account of how Black women survived and loved under slavery and Jim Crow, using fragmentary materials—centered on Ashley’s sack, embroidered with Ashley’s story of her mother’s love when she was sold away from her mother at age 9 by her granddaughter. I see why people like this, but I kind of preferred Marisa Fuentes’ reconstruction of Black women’s lives in Barbados because its language was less flowery though no less forthright about what is forever lost about the show more lives of people who mostly left few material traces and whose archival traces are almost always written by their oppressors. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 11
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 1,656
- Popularity
- #15,515
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 50
- ISBNs
- 54
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- 1
- Favorited
- 2