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All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake

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All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake
Format:  Book, Digital Audiobook, Ebook
Who It’s for:  Adults

In the year 1850, a slave named Rose gave her nine-year-old daughter Ashley this sack the evening before they were separated by auction.  The two never saw one another again. The sack was found in 2007 at a flea market by a woman who purchased it to sell on eBay.  The woman noticed the embroidered inscription on the sack that read:

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.

Rather than sell the sack, the woman donated it to Middleton Place Plantation Museum, where it currently resides.   In 2015, author Tiya Miles heard about the sack and began her research for All That She Carried, which describes the journey the sack followed between three generations of enslaved Black women.

By researching their customs, crafts, and culture, Miles reveals not only the journey that the sack took but more importantly the experiences of the Black women who passed this object down through four generations.  Very little can be found about these enslaved women in written archives other than their names on plantation property lists.  But through intense research, Miles has succeeded in piecing their stories together and sharing them with us in her book.

If you love history, you will appreciate all that Tiya Miles shares in her book about the experience of slaves, the talents and skills that they passed on to their children, the importance of the “things” they held onto, and most all, the love for their families that they never let anyone take away from them. All That She Carried is a must-read.

Find All That She Carried in our catalog.

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

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Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble

Format: Book

Who it’s for: Adults

If I asked you how you search for information, I bet your answer would be: “I Google it!” Safiya Umoja Noble’s book makes you take a long, hard look at how you find information, and who you trust to give you that information.

The author challenges the common belief that results are presented based on unbiased relevance.  She examines the algorithms that control the results, and discusses how the people who write those algorithms own biases can impact the results. The authors considers how racism and sexism are reinforces through these “algorithms of oppression” and why we should be critical of the search engines that have a monopoly on our information seeking habits.

This non-fiction book analyzes internet search results, focusing especially on Google, and what goes on behind the scenes to get you the results you see. You will never look at your search results the same way again.

 

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Hillbilly Elegy

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Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
Format: Digital audiobook
Who it’s for: Adults

J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio.  He is the grandson of a poor, uneducated couple who left their Appalachian roots at a very young age for a better life in Ohio.

Although part of the white middle-class in Ohio, J.D.’s family could never quite escape the Appalachian stereotype described as “uneducated and prone to impulsive acts of violence”.  Life for J.D. and his family was chaotic and dysfunctional, fraught with the social problems of his hometown including alcoholism, drug addiction, and constant money problems.

J.D.’s family struggled like many working-class American families from small towns do.  But J.D. was fortunate.  He had the constant love and support of his grandmother and extended family members. J.D.’s grandmother taught him that working hard matters as well as taking responsibility for one’s choices.

Hillbilly Elegy is J.D. Vance’s story of surviving the dysfunction of white working class America to become a graduate of Ohio State University and Yale Law School.  It is his own explanation of how the Appalachian values passed down from his grandparents actually helped him survive the stigma of the poor American and taught him that if he worked hard enough, he could make it.

The audio version of this book is narrated by the author.

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Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

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Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan
Format: Book
Who It’s For: Adults

After graduating from college and working for a year, Kelly Corrigan and a good friend decided to set out on the adventure of a lifetime.  Everything was great until they began to run out of money in Australia.  Instead of asking their parents to wire them money, Kelly and her friend decided to get jobs.

Kelly took a job as a live-in nanny for the Tanner family.  The mother of the family had just passed away after battling cancer.  Kelly was responsible for taking the children to school, doing their laundry, cooking their meals, taking care of them when they returned home, cleaning up after them, and getting them ready for bed.

Glitter and Glue is a memoir in which Kelly examines her relationship with her mother while being the substitute mother for the Tanner children.  The book is heartwarming.  Kelly has a style of writing that will leave you laughing and sometimes crying.  It will leave you thinking of your relationship with your own mother and reflecting on what it means for one parent to be the “glitter” and one parent to be the “glue”.  This is a book that you won’t be able to put down.

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Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World

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Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker
Format: Book, eBook
Who it’s for: Adults

What do you get when you cross a stand-up comedian with a math enthusiast? You get Matt Parker, and his chuckle-inducing book Humble Pi. Math typically works quietly behind the scenes of life, ensuring that your internet works, your train runs smoothly on its tracks, and the calendar marches steadily onward…until, suddenly, it doesn’t.

Parker reveals the math mistakes behind some of the world’s most spectacular failures, from a bridge collapse to a stock market meltdown to an election debacle. For an entertaining tour through humanity’s mathematical stumbling blocks, find it in the catalog.

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World

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The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann
Format: Book
Who it’s for: Adults

How should we feed and provide power to the growing world population? Many debates about this question come down to two conflicting beliefs. We all need to cut back or else everyone will suffer when we hit our ecological limits! says one side. No, we need MORE people doing MORE innovating, and technology will let us overcome all problems! counters the other.

People who espouse the former sentiment, Charles Mann argues, might be called “Prophets”, warning of doom unless we change our ways. The latter, techno-optimist point of view is held by “Wizards”, contending that the magic wand of technology will cause any apparent limits to evaporate.

In The Wizard and the Prophet, Mann examines the lives of two twentieth-century scientists whom you may never have heard of, but whose opposing views came to dominate our current discussions of pressing environmental and humanitarian problems. He uncovers the development of William Vogt’s prophetic beliefs and Norman Borlaug’s wizardly notions, then demonstrates how their philosophical descendants approach some of the conundrums facing humanity: sufficient food, adequate water, energy generation, and climate change.

Find it in the catalog, check it out, then supply yourself with both a dictionary and an open mind as you read this book. Mann will introduce you to both some new words (perfervid, anyone?) and some new thoughts about the key issues of our time.