Bailey's Café
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By:
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Gloria Naylor
About this listen
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.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Barbara McCulloh
- Length: 49 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
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Dated.
- By edie butler on 04-06-21
By: Allan Gurganus
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
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Really Enjoyed!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-08-19
By: Kuwanna Haulsey
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Mudbound
- By: Hillary Jordan
- Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Kate Forbes, Joseph Collins, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.
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May this South never rise again.
- By Betty on 03-25-12
By: Hillary Jordan
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Rush Home Road
- By: Lori Lansens
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Abridged
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When a 70-year-old woman finds a five-year-old girl abandoned on her doorstep, she is thrust into a sorrowful past that can only be conquered with the help of the girl who opened her memory - the very girl she is trying to save. This first novel, according to author Jacquelyn Mitchard, is one of "exquisite power, honesty, and conviction...quite nearly without flaws."
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filthy language and violent content
- By Anna on 12-16-11
By: Lori Lansens
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Ironweed
- By: William Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally – and fatally – dropping his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present.
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Darkly Lovely
- By Michael on 07-22-17
By: William Kennedy
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Fallen Angels
- By: Patricia Hickman
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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During the Great Depression, Jeb Nubey is running from the law when he meets three abandoned children. With nowhere else to go the group passes a stormy night in a comforting church. When they are discovered, a case of mistaken identity ensues. It seems the congregation has been waiting for their new pastor, a widower with three kids. Looks like more trouble for Jeb. Yet the chance for a steady job and three squares a day is too good to turn down.
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Touching
- By Christina on 11-11-04
By: Patricia Hickman
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Beyond the Pale
- By: Elana Dykewomon
- Narrated by: Elana Dykewomon
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Beyond the Pale - winner of the Lambda Literary Award - tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York.
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great historical fiction with a lesbian twist
- By Kelly on 11-25-13
By: Elana Dykewomon
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The Twelve-Mile Straight
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Henderson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
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Great read!
- By S. Clay on 11-01-17
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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What listeners say about Bailey's Café
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Letitia Hill
- 01-06-21
Fabulous!
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!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- RoxAnne
- 03-18-10
Bailey's Cafe
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.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Newarkborn
- 09-28-19
wonderful production. reads like a play.
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.
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- Africa
- 02-12-17
Great Read!!
Naylor tells an interesting tale grounded in historical facts surrounded by fantasy. Bailey's Cafe is a stopping point between here and there.
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- Racheal Backers
- 09-21-23
Love it!
This is a great story by a great cast! I was sad when it ended!
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- Sagashus
- 12-10-12
Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe...Wow!
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!
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Celeste
- 04-15-10
Pure Poetry
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tanaia White
- 06-20-22
A Decent Read
I liked the book. I wouldn't say I fell in love with the story or anything, but it was okay. It kinda fell off towards the end. The narrators were great.
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- Harlem Renaissance Woman
- 01-20-22
Very upsetting
I don’t know what I was expecting but it was not that. I’m going to have nightmares. I wasn’t expecting that.
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- EileenT
- 05-29-17
my favorite audiobook yet!
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.
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