Bailey's Café Audiobook By Gloria Naylor cover art

Bailey's Café

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Bailey's Café

By: Gloria Naylor
Narrated by: Augustus Williamson, Medwin Johnson, Cedric Ward, Cheryl La Mar, Bonita Harvey
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Welcome to Bailey's Café, the most mythically real diner you've ever walked into. Presided over by Bailey and his helpmate, Nadine, it is a magnet that draws a wide variety of the "colored" people of 1948, each with a story to tell. Bailey tells us about his love for his strong, quiet wife, and shares his haunting memories of World War II.

Then, one by one, we hear from the café's regulars. There is Sadie, whose addiction to alcohol is second only to her mania for cleanliness; the oddly maternal Eve, whose bordello accepts only fresh flowers as legal tender; Sweet Esther, who takes nothing but white roses for her particular favors; Peaches, whose badly mutilated face is a sharp contrast to her beautiful body; Jesse Bell, who cannot overcome her lust for heroin; Miss Maple (whose real name is Stanley); and Mariam, the Ethiopian child who may be the bearer of a miracle.

Gloria Naylor, author of Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day, has created perhaps her finest work in Bailey's Café. Her wonderful chorus of characters tell tales of woe and fortitude, prejudice and pride. Naylor has transformed the trials of these outcasts into timeless truths about the strengths of people everywhere.

©1993 Gloria Naylor (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc. African American Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism Urban African American Historical Fiction
Rich Characters • Emotional Complexity • Wonderful Cast • Masterful Storytelling • Historical Grounding • New Experience
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This is my Favorite Book! I've read it once a year since it came out. To hear it has been Amazing! The Cast did a Wonderful Job, and created a New experience for me!

Fabulous!

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This is a wonderfully told stories within a story that takes one on a journey through the turn of the century. I loved it --a very visual narrative. Each individual story as rich, sad,and deep as the one that came before. Ms. Naylor has captivated me just as she'd done with The Women of Brewster Place. This book was worth every penny spent.

Bailey's Cafe

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Stanley's (Ms. Maple's) and Eve's characters were read so well, one would think. he, or she, was listening to non -fiction... as if their stories really happened.

wonderful production. reads like a play.

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Naylor tells an interesting tale grounded in historical facts surrounded by fantasy. Bailey's Cafe is a stopping point between here and there.

Great Read!!

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This is a great story by a great cast! I was sad when it ended!

Love it!

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What made the experience of listening to Bailey's Café the most enjoyable?

Gloria Naylor wrote an amazing book. She captured the nuances of people's struggles and turned them into art. This book is well written, emotionally intelligent and complex. It's smart and beautiful. It has added to my life.

What did you like best about this story?

THE STORY!

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

I like that the book had multiple narrators. It made it easy to follow.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

YES!

Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe...Wow!

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I don’t know what I was expecting but it was not that. I’m going to have nightmares. I wasn’t expecting that.

Very upsetting

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do not miss this one. I already loved gloria Naylor from reading mama day, so I figured this would be good. it was even better than I'd hoped. lots of sad in it, but it has a bigger story to tell than sorrow. Naylor was the real deal. she was a genius & will be missed. great cast of narrators. my favorite ensemble audiobook, and I've enjoyed others.

my favorite audiobook yet!

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Gloria Naylor presents a tour de force of storytelling, populated with characters so richly crafted that each one’s life vignette could be expanded into its own novel.

Bailey’s Café is a magical way-station for societal misfits. Although mainstream (White) society would pigeonhole the black or indigenous or female or crossdressing or Jewish characters as outsiders, the author does not judge them, rather she lets them be, just as they are.

Naylor uses steel-eyed realism to describe the violence and injustices her characters experienced that made them who they are. She does so without being overly graphic or sentimental. Many of the stories are downright funny. The book concludes on a hopeful endnote.

I’m nostalgic for the world that Gloria Naylor has wrought in Bailey’s Cafe and can’t wait to read another of her novels.

Tour de force of storytelling

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Gloria Naylor writes prose with the cadence of the Blues. She introduces characters that we prefer to overlook on the street, and allows the reader a glimpse into who they are deep inside.

Pure Poetry

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