A Childhood
The Biography of a Place
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Narrated by:
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Matt Godfrey
About this listen
“One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New Yorker
The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural South
A Penguin Classic
Harry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when “the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years.” Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal autobiography of his first six years of life is an elegiac sense of community and roots from a rural South that had rarely been represented in this way. Interweaving his own memories including his bout with polio and a fascination with the Sears, Roebuck catalog, with the tales of relatives and friends, he re-creates a childhood of tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy.
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This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960s. Miss Jane Pittman has "endured," has seen almost everything and foretold the rest.
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At great listen
- By Susan on 11-11-08
By: Ernest J. Gaines
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Running on Red Dog Road
- And Other Perils of an Appalachian Childhood
- By: Drema Hall Berkheimer
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.
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Narrator’s attempt at a southern accent distracting to story
- By Ryan C. Bango on 01-05-22
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
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Chasing the North Star
- By: Robert Morgan
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free, Carra Patterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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On a moonless night in the spring of 1851, a young slave makes a bid for freedom with only the North Star to guide him. Best-selling novelist and historian Robert Morgan returns with a stunning new work of historical fiction.
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Not what we thought
- By bds on 05-07-19
By: Robert Morgan
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The Known World
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.
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A meandering audiobook...
- By Daniel on 09-03-04
By: Edward P. Jones
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The Hamlet
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation.
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The Long, Hot Summer
- By W Perry Hall on 07-30-17
By: William Faulkner
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Sula
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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Good against evil and a riotous story to boot
- By Karen on 04-11-11
By: Toni Morrison
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Cold Sassy Tree
- By: Olive Ann Burns
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around fast. If the preacher's wife's petticoat shows, the ladies will make the talk last a week. But on July 5, 1906, things take a scandalous turn. That is the day E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, elopes with Miss Love Simpson, a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee!
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A Feel-Good Story
- By Chrissie on 07-13-13
By: Olive Ann Burns
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Father and I Were Ranchers
- Little Britches # 1
- By: Ralph Moody
- Narrated by: Cameron Beierle
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
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The Moody family moves from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Experience the pleasures and perils of ranching in 20th Century America, through the eyes of a youngster.
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Very dissappointed , too much cussing.
- By Lovelessnomore on 05-29-15
By: Ralph Moody
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What listeners say about A Childhood
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Craig
- 08-22-24
My Progressive Friends Need to Read This Bio
Ever since I saw Harry Crews' cameo in the documentary, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, I've been fascinated by his writing. It's not as if Crews' writing is some sort of Southern Freak Show...it's not. What he does is tell the rest of us non-Southerners that Southerners are unapologetically who they are, that they usually survive their traumas and archaic ways, and that they willingly interface with the modern world without shame or malice. Harry Crews invites us to understand that Southerners need not apologize for how their sense of place has shaped them.
This biography is a lesson in humility for the reader (particularly new progressives). Keep an open mind, we are all Americans after all (unless you are not).
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- Autodidact
- 04-12-22
astonishing
in the very recent past, in the America I hubristically think I know, this stunning memoir, replete with unknown phrases and desperate humanity in it's beauty and terror, is recorded here. READ this!!!
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- Socialfit77
- 06-29-22
Thank god for Harry Crews
I absolutely love every book Mr. Crews has written. I never wanted this one to end. A sad, tough, humorous book that hits you in every spot human. It doesn’t get much better. RIP Mr Crews. Thank you for everything. JST-
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1 person found this helpful
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- Beingreal
- 05-07-22
A True Walk Through the Past
Loved it. So many fond memories of the time and places in spite of the many sad events.
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- Will Coppage
- 06-03-23
Amazing tale but wrong narrator
No big issues but Harry Crews reader deserves a tougher voice. More gruff and grit.
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- Steve
- 07-11-23
Great read
If you want, an excellent walk, back in time, told in the first person, this is a great read. Well written, great story.
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- Greg B
- 07-26-22
Story rings true
Short of a few exaggerations this book describes farming in Bacon county in the 30’s to 60’s. I heard some great storytellers at Cartertown grocery. Although by late 50’s many farmers had a lot more machinery to help. My grandfather was Jesse Boatright but by 1962, when I started coming up each summer, he had no sharecroppers. Though an uncle sharecropper all his life I later learned.
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- Philip S. Collins
- 10-04-23
Familiar Places
very cool story, well read, and i currently live on 8th St in Springfield (Jax) so that was a pleasant surprise to hear familiar places 🤙🏽😊
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- Geri B
- 07-24-24
Visceral Accounting of Childhood
I loved this story! It was brutal and beautiful all at the same time. It helped me to understand a time, place and people. Georgia in the 20’s and 30’s was hard living. I’m so glad that Harry Crews lent his voice and experience. Americana at its best.
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- Adam
- 05-16-22
Fantastic.
Even with only cursory knowledge of life growing up in the south, I found this fascinating and enjoyable.
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1 person found this helpful