Finding Oprah's Roots
Finding Your Own
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Narrated by:
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Dominic Hoffman
About this listen
“Before I have a big meeting or decision to make,” says Oprah Winfrey, “I go and I sit with the ancestors. Literally, I go and sit in my closet and I say their names. I just say their names so that when I walk into the space, I don’t walk alone.”
This audiobook will help millions of African Americans never again to walk alone. What’s more, it will show people of all races what the story of Oprah’s ancestors teaches - the legacy one generation bequeaths another, how who we are is startlingly influenced by the paths our ancestors have trod, and the extraordinary impact that even the most humble among us can have on future generations through the simple process of building a life for our loved ones.
In Finding Oprah’s Roots, prominent African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., shines a brilliant searchlight into the dark shadows that have enveloped African American ancestry. By assembling an elite team of historians and geneticists in coordination with PBS and using Oprah and her forebears as his chief example, Gates unveils a process akin to resurrection.
Finding Oprah’s Roots will not only endow listeners with a new appreciation for the key contributions made by history’s unsung but also equip them with the tools to connect to pivotal figures in their own past. For Oprah, the path back to the past was emotion-filled and profoundly illuminating, connecting the narrative of her family to the larger American narrative and “anchoring” her in a way not previously possible.
For the listener, Finding Oprah’s Roots offers the possibility of an equally rewarding experience.
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Critic reviews
Selected for New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, 2008
"This book is every bit as engaging as the [PBS] documentaries and offers helpful resources" (Booklist)
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- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping-off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
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Delusion shattering
- By Matthew A. Burnett on 06-12-20
By: Jesmyn Ward
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Disintegration
- The Splintering of Black America
- By: Eugene Robinson
- Narrated by: Alan Bomar Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a "Black America" with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book Disintegration, longtime Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson argues that, through decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered.
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Written for Popular Consumption
- By Catherine S. Read on 06-03-11
By: Eugene Robinson
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Master of the Mountain
- Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
- By: Henry Wiencek
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book - based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers - opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money.
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Clear, Insightful & Iconclastic History
- By R.S. on 04-18-13
By: Henry Wiencek
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The Lies That Bind
- Rethinking Identity
- By: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Narrated by: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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We all know how identities - notably, those of nationality, class, culture, race, and religion - are at the root of global conflict, but the more elusive truth is that these identities are created by conflict in the first place. In provocative, entertaining chapters, Kwame Anthony Appiah interweaves keen-edged argument with engrossing historical tales and reveals the tangled contradictions within the stories that define us.
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Not full of SJW nonsense
- By Frank on 10-22-18
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The Birth of a Nation
- Nat Turner and the Making of a Movement
- By: Nate Parker
- Narrated by: Nate Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This official tie-in to the highly acclaimed film The Birth of a Nation surveys the history and legacy of Nat Turner, the leader of one of the most renowned slave rebellions on American soil, while also exploring Turner's relevance to contemporary dialogues on race relations. More than just a tie-in, this book seeks to educate the listener as to Nat Turner's legacy and influence. By bringing together an array of artists and intellectuals, this book speaks directly to Turner's importance throughout history.
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This guy Nate Parker is officially my new fave!!!!
- By Marty Cohn on 11-15-16
By: Nate Parker
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Strangers from a Different Shore
- A History of Asian Americans
- By: Ronald Takaki
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 24 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In an extraordinary blend of narrative history, personal recollection, and oral testimony, the author presents a sweeping history of Asian Americans. This is a powerful and moving work that will resonate for all Americans, who together make up a nation of immigrants from other shores.
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Eye opening to the way immigrants are treated
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-20
By: Ronald Takaki
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Finding Samuel Lowe
- China, Jamaica, Harlem
- By: Paula Williams Madison
- Narrated by: Paula Williams Madison
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Thanks to her spiteful, jealous Jamaican mother, Nell Vera Lowe was cut off from her Chinese father, Samuel, when she was just a baby, after he announced that he was taking a Chinese bride. By the time Nell was old enough to travel to her father's shop in St. Anne's Bay, he'd taken his family back to China, never learning what became of his eldest daughter. Bereft, Nell left Jamaica for New York to start a new life.
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Fascinating
- By ayodele higgs on 01-27-16
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The Devil's Half Acre
- The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail
- By: Kristen Green
- Narrated by: Deanna Anthony
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre”. When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre”, a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams.
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Preachy
- By Elizabeth Combs on 09-13-22
By: Kristen Green
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Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
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California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
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Passing Strange
- A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
- By: Martha A. Sandweiss
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, Clarence King was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation". But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for 13 years he lived a double life - as the celebrated White explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a Black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd.
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Race and Identity
- By Roy on 03-22-10
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It Was All a Dream
- A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America
- By: Reniqua Allen
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched their parents and grandparents play by the rules, only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. They witnessed their elders fight to escape cycles of oppression for more promising prospects, largely to no avail. Today, in this post-Obama era, they face a critical turning point. Interweaving her own experience, Allen shares surprising stories of hope and ingenuity.
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Great statistics and facts
- By Eve on 05-18-19
By: Reniqua Allen
What listeners say about Finding Oprah's Roots
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Collector
- 05-07-24
Thorough & Entertainig
I learned so much about Oprah and respect her even more than before… and Gates was impressive.
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Overall
- HBB
- 06-15-19
Finding Oprah's Roots
Excellent However I am 83 years old and will follow Dr Gates "what to do" as much as I can. It was motivating for me. It reconfirmed my thinking and that of my father. The content made me even more proud to be African American. I watch Dr Gates on PBS.
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1 person found this helpful
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- lre410
- 10-02-13
Entertaining and informative - a rare combination
Where does Finding Oprah's Roots rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
It is difficult to compare - certainly not fiction - not complete history; in a class by itself.
What other book might you compare Finding Oprah's Roots to and why?
I have not seen a comparable book regarding genealogy
Which character – as performed by Dominic Hoffman – was your favorite?
n/a
What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?
The research information was helpful to me.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- ButterLegume
- 12-13-10
We all have roots.
Upon reflection, it is easy to understand why this book was written about Oprah -- everyone knows her. If someone wrote a book on, say, my roots, I'm sure it wouldn't go very far. But what used to make Oprah interesting now makes her ordinary. She's just another rich person who has traded the God she so loved for the "spiritual," read: money. It's sad really, because what an opportunity she was given.
Dr. Gates, the author, is wonderful, and I can't get enough of him. A smart, compassionate, fair man and I wish him much success with this, and other, titles.
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7 people found this helpful