Blonde Roots
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Narrated by:
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Sandra James-Young
About this listen
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner
A provocative and "dizzying satire" (The New Yorker) that "boldly turns history on its head" (Elle) from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other.
What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would that have changed the ways that people justified their inhuman behavior? How would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers today? We see this tragicomic world turned upside down through the eyes of Doris, an Englishwoman enslaved and taken to the New World, movingly recounting experiences of tremendous hardship and the dreams of the people she has left behind, all while journeying toward an escape into freedom.
A poignant and dramatic story grounded in provocative ideas, Blonde Roots is a genuinely original, profoundly imaginative novel.
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A hugely imaginative tale that invites important debates, challenging fundamental perceptions of race, culture and history—Independent on Sunday
This brilliant novel will fulfil [Evaristo's] purpose of making readers view the transatlantic slave trade with fresh eyes—The Times
A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid's Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic.—Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast
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- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Piter Marek
- Length: 16 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1540, 12-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan's menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan's beautiful daughter Princess Mihrimah. A palace education leads Jahan to Mimar Sinan, the empire's chief architect, who takes Jahan under his wing as they construct (with Chota's help) some of the most magnificent buildings in history.
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I feel like I should like it more than I do
- By nyog on 04-19-17
By: Elif Shafak
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Tess of the Road
- By: Rachel Hartman
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In the medieval kingdom of Goredd, women are expected to be ladies, men are their protectors, and dragons can be whomever they choose. Tess is none of these things. Tess is...different. She speaks out of turn, has wild ideas, and can't seem to keep out of trouble. Then Tess goes too far. Tess's family decide the only path for her is a nunnery. But on the day she is to join the nuns, Tess chooses a different path for herself. She cuts her hair, pulls on her boots, and sets out on a journey. She's not running away, she's running towards something.
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Beautiful and Boring, Both.
- By Ryan on 04-05-19
By: Rachel Hartman
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Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan
- By: Robin Maxwell
- Narrated by: Suzan Crowley
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The only female student in Cambridge University’s medical program, Jane Porter is far more comfortable in a lab coat dissecting corpses than she is in a corset and gown sipping afternoon tea. A budding paleoanthropologist, Jane dreams of traveling the globe in search of fossils that will prove the evolutionary theories of her scientific hero, Charles Darwin. When dashing American explorer Ral Conrath invites Jane and her father to join an expedition deep into West Africa, she can hardly believe her luck.
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This Really Works...Great Story!
- By Kim Venatries on 09-28-12
By: Robin Maxwell
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Nowhere is a Place
- By: Bernice McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets. But Sherry is determined to know the full story. In a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.
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A Mother and Daughter Tear. It. Up.
- By Susie on 01-15-14
By: Bernice McFadden
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Henna House
- By: Nomi Eve
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Yemen in 1920: After passage of the Orphan's Decree, any unbetrothed Jewish child left orphaned will be instantly adopted by the local Muslim community. With her parents' health failing, and no spousal prospects in sight, Adela Damari's situation looks dire until her uncle arrives from a faraway city, bringing with him a cousin and aunt who introduce Adela to the powerful rituals of henna tattooing.
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historical fiction, read like an autobiography.
- By Anonymous User on 02-11-19
By: Nomi Eve
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The Incarnations
- A Novel
- By: Susan Barker
- Narrated by: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Who are you? You must be wondering. I am your soul mate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of 16 million in search of you. So begins the first letter that falls into Wang's lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang's previous lives - from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution.
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What was that you said?
- By cecil reniche-smith on 08-29-15
By: Susan Barker
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Copper Sun
- By: Sharon M. Draper
- Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifteen-year-old Amari witnesses the murder of her family and the destruction of her remote African village. She endures countless humiliations as she is beaten, branded, and forced to board a slave ship. The atrocities continue as she struggles through endless days of backbreaking work and daily degradation on a plantation.
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Wonderful Story
- By Gabrielle on 04-05-11
By: Sharon M. Draper
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Thousand Pieces of Gold
- By: Ruthanne Lum McCunn
- Narrated by: Emily Zeller
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Lalu Nathoy's father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his "thousand pieces of gold," yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly, as Lalu is later called, is sold to a brothel, sold again to a slave merchant bound for America, auctioned to a saloonkeeper, and offered as a prize in a poker game. This biographical novel is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for independence and dignity in the American West.
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Disjointed account of an extraordinary life
- By David on 05-01-15
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Wicked
- The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
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It's not easy being green
- By PangaeaReads on 07-30-08
By: Gregory Maguire
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Now & Then
- By: Jacqueline Sheehan
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna O’Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she’s trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them. Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.
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Loved This Book
- By Janina on 03-07-17
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Song of the Exile
- By: Kiana Davenport
- Narrated by: Cristine McMurdo-Wallis
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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This beautiful and haunting novel bares the soul of a Hawaiian-American family during World War II. As you share in the Meahuna family's misfortunes and triumphs, a sense of intense intimacy evolves. Cristine McMurdo-Wallis lets you savor the family members' remarkable, heartwrenching stories as they are revealed piece by piece in language rich with sensuous detail.
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Stunning Historical Novel
- By Mimi Routh on 05-27-19
By: Kiana Davenport
What listeners say about Blonde Roots
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Melinda Myers
- 07-26-23
Why??
I couldn’t finish this one. I think the author was trying to make us see what the world would be like if the race roles in slavery were reversed. In doing so, Black people are depicted to heinously that I didn’t want to listen anymore.
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