Black American Refugee
Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream
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Narrated by:
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Tiffanie Drayton
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By:
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Tiffanie Drayton
About this listen
Named "most anticipated" book of February by Marie Claire, Essence, and A.V. Club
"…extraordinary and representative."—NPR
"Drayton explores the ramifications of racism that span generations, global white supremacy, and the pitfalls of American culture."—Shondaland
After following her mother to the US at a young age to pursue economic opportunities, one woman must come to terms with the ways in which systematic racism and resultant trauma keep the American Dream inaccessible to Black people.
In the early '90s, young Tiffanie Drayton and her siblings left Trinidad and Tobago to join their mother in New Jersey, where she'd been making her way as a domestic worker, eager to give her children a shot at the American Dream. At first, life in the US was idyllic. But chasing good school districts with affordable housing left Tiffanie and her family constantly uprooted--moving from Texas to Florida then back to New Jersey. As Tiffanie came of age in the suburbs, she began to ask questions about the binary Black and white American world. Why were the Black neighborhoods she lived in crime-ridden, and the multicultural ones safe? Why were there so few Black students in advanced classes at school, if there were any advanced classes at all? Why was it so hard for Black families to achieve stability? Why were Black girls treated as something other than worthy?
Ultimately, exhausted by the pursuit of a "better life" in America, twenty-year old Tiffanie returns to Tobago. She is suddenly able to enjoy the simple freedom of being Black without fear, and imagines a different future for her own children. But then COVID-19 and widely publicized instances of police brutality bring America front and center again. This time, as an outsider supported by a new community, Tiffanie grieves and rages for Black Americans in a way she couldn't when she was one.
An expansion of her New York Times piece of the same name, Black American Refugee examines in depth the intersection of her personal experiences and the broader culture and historical ramifications of American racism and global white supremacy. Through thoughtful introspection and candidness, Tiffanie unravels the complex workings of the people in her life, including herself, centering Black womanhood, and illuminating the toll a lifetime of racism can take. Must Black people search beyond the shores of the "land of the free" to realize emancipation? Or will the voices that propel America's new reckoning welcome all dreamers and dreams to this land?
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Critic reviews
"Drayton has written an engaging book, which is one of my favorite kinds to read. There are things I agree with, there are things I disagree with, there are things that are new to me. I hope everyone reads it for that reason."
—Trevor Noah, The Daily Show
"Drayton’s rich storytelling reveals the complex roles ‘victims’ and ‘abusers’ play in ‘American racial stratification’ and offers a path toward healing for both. Those seeking to better understand the long-term effects of racism should pick this up." —Publishers Weekly
"…extraordinary and representative." —NPR
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A Must-Listen
- By Lauren on 04-14-10
By: Jayanti Tamm
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A Chance in the World
- An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home
- By: Steve Pemberton
- Narrated by: Steve Pemberton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A Chance in the World is the unbelievably true story of a wounded and broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.
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Good Book
- By Amazon Customer on 08-19-20
By: Steve Pemberton
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Apocalypse Child
- A Life in End Times - a Memoir
- By: Flor Edwards
- Narrated by: Flor Edwards
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first 13 years of her life, Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God. The group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that, as God's chosen people, they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would envelop the rest of the world in 1993. Flor would be 13 years old. The group's charismatic leader, Father David, kept the family on the move, from Los Angeles to Bangkok to Chicago, where they would eventually disband, leaving Flor to make sense of the foreign world of mainstream society around her.
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A truly unique background and story
- By Asaph on 04-13-18
By: Flor Edwards
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A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir
- By: Lev Golinkin
- Narrated by: Daniel Gamburg
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lev Golinkin's memoir is the vivid, darkly comic, and poignant story of a young boy in the confusing and often chilling final decade of the Soviet Union. It's also the story of Lev Golinkin, the American man who finally confronts his buried past by returning to Austria and Eastern Europe to track down the strangers who made his escape possible…. and thank them.
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Touching, moving Memoir
- By Daryl on 04-13-15
By: Lev Golinkin
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Dancing For the Devil
- One Woman's Dramatic and Divine Rescue from the Sex Industry
- By: Anny Donewald, Carrie Gerlach Cecil
- Narrated by: Anny Donewald
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of an NCAA Championship-winning basketball coach and a stay-at-home mom, Anny Donewald had a seemingly blessed childhood. Then, at thirteen, one of her father’s players sexually abused her, and Donewald embarked on a path toward self-destruction. When Donewald was convinced to compete in an amateur night at a strip club, she found herself drawn into a world of drugs, money, and flesh peddlers in Michigan and Chicago - and eventually Las Vegas’ hottest XXX clubs.
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blunt
- By nicole on 05-23-15
By: Anny Donewald, and others
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Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
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Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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The Scent of Water
- Discovering What Remains
- By: Naomi Zacharias
- Narrated by: Naomi Zacharias
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Follow Naomi as she talks to women working in brothels in Mumbai; survivors of an Indonesian tsunami in which more than 160,000 lives were lost; a young girl waiting on an operation to save her life; and victims of domestic violence horrifically burned by fire. Be still with her when she realizes the pain she feels in the face of these extreme injustices reveals a common struggle that exists within all of humanity. And rise with her as she wrestles with confusion over her identity, comes face to face with redemption, and then begins to understand her own story.
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- By Justicepirate on 05-21-18
By: Naomi Zacharias
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Trans Figured
- My Journey from Boy to Girl to Woman to Man
- By: Brian Belovitch
- Narrated by: Joel Froomkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Brian Belovitch has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City, Brian escaped many near-death experiences. Trans Figured chronicles a life lived on the edge with an unforgettable cast of characters.
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How utterly exhausting
- By Leah on 11-19-18
By: Brian Belovitch
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The House at Sugar Beach
- A Memoir
- By: Helene Cooper
- Narrated by: Helene Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.
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Can't recommend it
- By Taryn on 03-25-16
By: Helene Cooper
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Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
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Greetings from Utopia Park
- Surviving a Transcendent Childhood
- By: Claire Hoffman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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When Claire Hoffman's alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven - Iowa - to live in Maharishi's national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire's mother, Transcendental Meditation - the Maharishi's method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life - was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment just as their family fell apart.
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Very good book
- By Amazon Customer on 06-15-16
By: Claire Hoffman
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Find Me Unafraid
- Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
- By: Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson, Mandy Siegfried, P.J. Ochlan (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a foreword by Nicholas Kristof.
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A difficult and rewarding listen
- By R. MCRACKAN on 08-23-18
By: Kennedy Odede, and others
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Around the Way Girl
- A Memoir
- By: Taraji P. Henson
- Narrated by: Taraji P. Henson
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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With a sensibility that recalls her beloved screen characters, including Yvette, Queenie, Shug, and the iconic Cookie from Empire, yet is all Taraji, the screen actress writes of her families - the one she was born into and the one she created. She shares stories of her father, a Vietnam vet who was bowed but never broken by life's challenges, and of her mother, who survived violence both in the home and on DC's volatile streets. Here, too, she opens up about her experiences as a single mother.
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Around My way, Your Way & Every Woman's way
- By Yolanda on 10-26-16
By: Taraji P. Henson
What listeners say about Black American Refugee
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ishmael
- 06-11-22
Loved it
Great story. Great narration. Im a truck driver and listend to the whole book straight through.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-23-22
The Book I Always Wanted to Write
Ms. Drayton's comparison of the United States to an abusive romantic partner beautiful and thoroughly illustrates an analogy I've had for years. I suppose many people have had this idea, which makes it so relatable. Her story is similar to many stories and I'm thankful that she shared it with us. Both mundane and inspiring, this is a book that can benefit anyone who has ever spent time in or near the United States of America.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Aadam S.
- 09-01-22
Falling back in love with myself!!!!
THANK YOU MS. Drayton!!!!! This was an amazing piece of literature. This book not only drove you deep in to the realization with the status quo of the United States but put an * on the pollution we as black people endure. May your growth spread to all that need to hear it. I would suggest not only every black young girl and woman read this book, I also suggest black men need to pick it up too. Gave me a lot of insight into our mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers, and women friends realities. Things I simply didn’t consider. A must listen/read.
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- Sara Neufeld
- 08-26-22
A gripping story that is both personal and universal
Essential reading for white Americans (myself included) who genuinely want to understand institutional racism and its impact. A beautifully written testament to the power and resilience of a Black woman and her family.
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- Nana
- 03-16-22
Healing Home
interesting perspective on the impact of systemic racism and its tangents as well as what makes one a refugee. ìntellgent woman, good writer with terrible judgement when it comes to men and her personal relationships with them. Historical ìnformation and lead ins were good technique and can serve as a springboard for the reader's additional research. well written slice of life memoir.
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- Jamie Marich
- 11-23-22
Beautiful, Painful, Nuanced
One of the best memoirs that I’ve read in terms of the narrative being compelling and dynamic while also educating us. Thank you for your emotional labor Tiffanie to put this out there 🙏🏼
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- Carol Small the Realtor
- 10-19-22
Amazing must read for all Americans and any one else
The author was able to put into words the feelings I’ve had since being a small child. As an HBCU graduate I was able to come to terms with what happened to people of African ancestry in the Americas and the Caribbean through enslavement. Learning more about it and understanding that there are still people who support those ideals. Thank you Tiffany for bringing it all to life. I am happy that you are able to navigate your life and the challenges that were present it to you. I appreciate you I celebrate you thank you!
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- Patricia Jones Blessman, PhD
- 03-01-22
Facing the truth of America-the fallacy of the American Dream
Truth will set you free. The author lays out a thorough and compelling premise that America has an abusive relationship with people of color. She is fortunate that she had a viable option for living a life elsewhere.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tori Robinson
- 05-02-22
Fenominal read
This book is healing through it truth about reality and not the ignoring of the daily abuse of BW by the hands of society in all its pressures to assimilate that abuse to others.
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- Shabana
- 01-25-23
Thank you Sis!
I loved it and wasn't expecting to agree with your viewpoint. Thank you insight.
Glad I took a listen. Hope you are enjoying Sweet Sweet T-n-T!
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