The Slaves Have Names: Ancestors of My Home

They lived alongside professors and waited on presidents. Yet, history has largely forgotten their names.

They were masons and nurses, teachers and field hands—two hundred and forty-six enslaved individuals owned by a man who wrestled with the very institution he profited from.

Raised on the very plantation grounds these men and women built, the author embarks on a quest to unearth their hidden histories. What begins as a localized excavation of her childhood home soon becomes a profound reckoning with the deafening silences in America's history—and in her own life.

A lyrical blend of creative nonfiction and meticulous historical research, this book explores American slavery and its enduring legacy not through sweeping generalizations, but through the intimate, painstaking search for the individuals left out of the archives.

"In the late afternoons sometimes, I walk up and talk to the folks who are buried in the undulating earth... Three stones bear words, gifts cut into rock – Ben Creasy, the carpenter, Jesse Nicholas, the stonemason, and Primus, the foreman... I don’t know how to solidify—to give storied flesh—to these rough marks hewn deep into stone."

Discover the voices waiting to be heard in this evocative journey through memory, land, and legacy.