-
Counting Descent
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $7.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Clint Smith's debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, is a coming of age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition. Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and political histories, all the while reflecting on the social construction of our lived experiences. Smith brings the listener on a powerful journey forcing us to reflect on all that we learn growing up, and all that we seek to unlearn moving forward.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Above Ground
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 07-28-24
By: Clint Smith
-
How the Word Is Passed
- A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.
-
-
Sincerely grateful read
- By Kelvin Dixon on 06-08-21
By: Clint Smith
-
Prequel
- An American Fight Against Fascism
- By: Rachel Maddow
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it.
-
-
The fight to keep democracy alive
- By Rex on 10-19-23
By: Rachel Maddow
-
The Poet X
- By: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers - especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, whom her family can never know about.
-
-
Better
- By KSS on 01-09-19
-
The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
-
-
Comprehensive and Cutting
- By Thomas Ray on 12-30-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
-
Citizen Illegal
- By: José Olivarez
- Narrated by: Jose Olivarez
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this "devastating debut" (Publishers Weekly), poet José Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between.
By: José Olivarez
-
Above Ground
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 07-28-24
By: Clint Smith
-
How the Word Is Passed
- A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.
-
-
Sincerely grateful read
- By Kelvin Dixon on 06-08-21
By: Clint Smith
-
Prequel
- An American Fight Against Fascism
- By: Rachel Maddow
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it.
-
-
The fight to keep democracy alive
- By Rex on 10-19-23
By: Rachel Maddow
-
The Poet X
- By: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers - especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, whom her family can never know about.
-
-
Better
- By KSS on 01-09-19
-
The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
-
-
Comprehensive and Cutting
- By Thomas Ray on 12-30-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
-
Citizen Illegal
- By: José Olivarez
- Narrated by: Jose Olivarez
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this "devastating debut" (Publishers Weekly), poet José Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between.
By: José Olivarez
-
Four Hundred Souls
- A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
- By: Ibram X. Kendi - editor, Keisha N. Blain - editor
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A chorus of extraordinary voices comes together to tell one of history’s great epics: the 400-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present - edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.
-
-
History never taught
- By Scott P ODonnell on 02-16-21
By: Ibram X. Kendi - editor, and others
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Slavery by Another Name
- The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- By: Douglas A. Blackmon
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an Age of Neoslavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.
-
-
Steel Yourself
- By Mark on 05-23-14
-
Opinions
- A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business
- By: Roxane Gay
- Narrated by: Roxane Gay
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society—state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women’s rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy—alongside more individually personalized matters: can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8 am meeting? In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication’s “Work Friend” columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights.
-
-
High expectations were surpassed, as expected
- By SageHolla on 03-16-24
By: Roxane Gay
-
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- By: Rebecca Skloot
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than 60 years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects.
-
-
The Secret Life of an American Cancer Cell
- By Cynthia on 08-10-13
By: Rebecca Skloot
-
Frederick Douglass
- Prophet of Freedom
- By: David W. Blight
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 36 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young man, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence, he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.
-
-
The sound of rollerskating in sand
- By Rico X Ludovici on 02-06-19
By: David W. Blight
-
With the Fire on High
- By: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago’s life has been about making the tough decisions - doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows that it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.
-
-
Whole life is slayed...
- By AudioBookHoe on 05-16-19
-
King: A Life
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
-
-
My Time
- By Susan on 06-18-23
By: Jonathan Eig
-
Tao Te Ching
- By: Lao Tzu, Sam Torode
- Narrated by: Amanda Brewer
- Length: 1 hr and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wise yet worldly, spiritual yet practical, the Tao Te Ching is beloved by seekers all the world over. This new edition features a lucid, poetic translation that makes the Tao Te Ching accessible to contemporary listeners.
-
-
Worth Listening Again and Again
- By Laurie Weiss, author on 07-31-18
By: Lao Tzu, and others
-
Inward
- By: Yung Pueblo
- Narrated by: Yung Pueblo
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
True power is living the realization that you are your own healer, hero, and leader. Inward is a collection of poetry, quotes, and prose that explores the movement from self-love to unconditional love, the power of letting go, and the wisdom that comes when we truly try to know ourselves. It serves as a reminder to the listener that healing, transformation, and freedom are possible.
-
-
Inward, Shallow
- By JMPGKC on 09-09-20
By: Yung Pueblo
-
Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching—yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.
-
-
How Did This Escape Me?
- By E. Pearson on 11-23-11
By: Ralph Ellison
Related to this topic
-
Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
-
-
THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
-
Waiting for Snow in Havana
- Confessions of a Cuban Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other - but with certain differences. The neighbor's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. Then, in January 1959, the world changed....
-
-
Poorly chosen narrator
- By LS on 02-10-16
By: Carlos Eire
-
Without a Map
- A Memoir
- By: Meredith Hall
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.
-
-
Not Your Average "16 and Pregnant"
- By Susie on 12-11-12
By: Meredith Hall
-
Priestdaddy
- A Memoir
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Patricia Lockwood
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.
-
-
Terrible narration--read, don't listen
- By Penelope on 08-06-17
-
New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
-
-
Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
Learning to Die in Miami
- Confessions of a Refugee Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
-
-
Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
-
Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
-
-
THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
-
Waiting for Snow in Havana
- Confessions of a Cuban Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other - but with certain differences. The neighbor's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. Then, in January 1959, the world changed....
-
-
Poorly chosen narrator
- By LS on 02-10-16
By: Carlos Eire
-
Without a Map
- A Memoir
- By: Meredith Hall
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.
-
-
Not Your Average "16 and Pregnant"
- By Susie on 12-11-12
By: Meredith Hall
-
Priestdaddy
- A Memoir
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Patricia Lockwood
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.
-
-
Terrible narration--read, don't listen
- By Penelope on 08-06-17
-
New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
-
-
Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
Learning to Die in Miami
- Confessions of a Refugee Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
-
-
Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
-
The Song Poet
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until one day a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good.
-
-
Beautiful, full of sadness, power, and heart.
- By Melissa L. Magana on 04-27-17
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
-
-
Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
-
Above Us Only Sky
- By: Michele Young-Stone
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Prudence Eleanor Vilkas was born with a pair of wings molded to her back. Considered a birth defect, her wings were surgically removed, leaving only the ghost of them behind. Growing up in Los Vientos, Florida, Prudence meets her long-estranged Lithuanian grandfather and discovers a miraculous lineage beating and pulsing with past Lithuanian bird-women.
-
-
I'm So Glad I Listened to It!
- By Elizabeth on 08-22-16
-
Bad Indians
- A Tribal Memoir
- By: Deborah A. Miranda
- Narrated by: Deborah Miranda
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This beautiful and devastating book - part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir - should be required for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.
-
-
Bad recording
- By Aspyn Maes on 09-18-21
-
Growing Things and Other Stories
- By: Paul Tremblay
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden, Graham Halstead, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of the national best seller The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts. A masterful anthology featuring 19 pieces of short fiction, Growing Things and Other Stories is an exciting glimpse into Paul Tremblay’s fantastically fertile imagination.
-
-
Paul Tremblay is totally nuts.
- By Gary & Jay on 07-07-19
By: Paul Tremblay
-
We Want Our Bodies Back
- Poems
- By: Jessica Care Moore
- Narrated by: Jessica Care Moore
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
-
-
Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
-
Light from Other Stars
- A Novel
- By: Erika Swyler
- Narrated by: Kyla Garcia
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach - if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.
-
-
How does she do it?
- By BLF on 07-30-19
By: Erika Swyler
-
If I Forget You
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Christopher Greene
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love. Told from alternating points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair.
-
-
Good, but not great.
- By Amazon Customer on 07-01-16
-
American War
- A Novel
- By: Omar El Akkad
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war.
-
-
Best listen in years
- By odin on 04-08-17
By: Omar El Akkad
-
After Visiting Friends
- A Son's Story
- By: Michael Hainey
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone.
-
-
Son's Search for Father Brings on Self-knowledge
- By sheila kehoe on 08-15-13
By: Michael Hainey
-
The Emissary
- By: Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani - translator
- Narrated by: Julian Cihi
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient - frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism.
-
-
Tedious. Waste of time.
- By Kenneth McGovern on 02-17-19
By: Yoko Tawada, and others
-
The Taking of Jake Livingston
- By: Ryan Douglass
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free, Michael Crouch
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston sees dead people everywhere. But he can't decide what's worse: being a medium forced to watch the dead play out their last moments on a loop or being at the mercy of racist teachers as one of the few Black students at St. Clair Prep. Both are a living nightmare he wishes he could wake up from. But things at St. Clair start looking up with the arrival of another Black student - the handsome Allister - and for the first time, romance is on the horizon for Jake. Unfortunately, life as a medium is getting worse.
-
-
Brings up too much trauma
- By TheColorNerd on 10-14-21
By: Ryan Douglass
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Above Ground
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 07-28-24
By: Clint Smith
-
How the Word Is Passed
- A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.
-
-
Sincerely grateful read
- By Kelvin Dixon on 06-08-21
By: Clint Smith
-
Citizen Illegal
- By: José Olivarez
- Narrated by: Jose Olivarez
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this "devastating debut" (Publishers Weekly), poet José Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between.
By: José Olivarez
-
Macbeth: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, is among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language. Promised a golden future as ruler of Scotland by three sinister witches, Macbeth murders the king in order to succeed to the throne. Tortured by his conscience and fearful of discovery, he becomes fatally enmeshed in a web of treachery and deceit.
-
-
excellent
- By Laura W. on 05-25-18
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
A Thousand Splendid Suns
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Atossa Leoni
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them, in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul, they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.
-
-
Completely brilliant
- By Suze Weinberg on 06-01-07
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
Above Ground
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 07-28-24
By: Clint Smith
-
How the Word Is Passed
- A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.
-
-
Sincerely grateful read
- By Kelvin Dixon on 06-08-21
By: Clint Smith
-
Citizen Illegal
- By: José Olivarez
- Narrated by: Jose Olivarez
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this "devastating debut" (Publishers Weekly), poet José Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between.
By: José Olivarez
-
Macbeth: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, is among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language. Promised a golden future as ruler of Scotland by three sinister witches, Macbeth murders the king in order to succeed to the throne. Tortured by his conscience and fearful of discovery, he becomes fatally enmeshed in a web of treachery and deceit.
-
-
excellent
- By Laura W. on 05-25-18
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
A Thousand Splendid Suns
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Atossa Leoni
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them, in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul, they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.
-
-
Completely brilliant
- By Suze Weinberg on 06-01-07
By: Khaled Hosseini
What listeners say about Counting Descent
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Crescent~Star
- 06-26-21
Beautiful Landscape
Enjoying this little, insuspecting gem.
Love the tone and breath of this pictureque, clean and crisp poetry/storytelling/conversation...
The narration is everything~it draws you in, up close and often leaves you suspended as a way to allow you to find your own landing.💝✍🏽
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Yadira
- 02-02-23
Amazing
What an amazing collection of poems reflesxting on Blackness and the Black experience written in lyrical verses. Highly recommend.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazoncustomer
- 07-23-20
Please Read!! You won’t be disappointed!
I’m not a poetry person at all. Clint Smith changed my mind with the way he tells his as well as African Americans stories eloquently with a rawness that’s can be denied.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- paisley
- 01-23-21
Powerful
Humor, sorrow and deep meaning and insight. The poetry is so powerful. A regular listen for me!!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Erika P.
- 09-02-22
Powerful
To feel these words doesn’t require a deep appreciation for poetry so much as a minuscule appreciation for humanity.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lorena
- 04-24-22
Clint Smith’s work needs to be on your bookshelves… virtual or physical
His work is beautiful and poignant and raw. And most of all, his work is so necessary.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- A.F. Edwards
- 01-20-24
Deep serious affection
I love Clint Smith's poems and his ability to embody them with himself. I believe him. and he takes me home.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dave Russo
- 02-28-21
Fabulous readings of these taut elegies and songs!
Really enjoyed this reading of Black elegies and praise songs by one of our best writers and thinkers.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dee
- 06-16-22
Amazing! A must read
One of those magnificent poets that makes struggle and life so simple yet so complex and beautiful.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- D
- 05-31-20
Get this book
Buy this book, you need to hear what it, so beautifully, has to say.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!