-
Finding Oprah's Roots
- Finding Your Own
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 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 $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
“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.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
In Search of Our Roots
- How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most African Americans, in tracing their family’s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying Black men and women even their names. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes 19 extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through US history and back to Africa.
-
-
Amazing
- By Placeholder on 04-17-19
-
The Trump Tapes
- Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Donald J. Trump, Bob Woodward
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Trump Tapes explodes with the exclusive, inside story of Trump’s performance as president—in his own words as he is questioned, even interrogated by Woodward, on the president’s key responsibilities from managing foreign relations to crisis management of the coronavirus pandemic. This is the job Trump seeks again. How did he do the first time? This is the authentic answer, laying bare his repeated failures, obsessions, and grievances.
-
-
The Trump Tapes
- By Melvin on 10-27-22
By: Bob Woodward
-
Tell Me Who You Are
- Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity
- By: Winona Guo, Priya Vulchi
- Narrated by: Winona Guo, Priya Vulchi, Elizabeth Liang, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this deeply inspiring audiobook, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi recount their experiences talking to people from all walks of life about race and identity on a cross-country tour of America. Spurred by the realization that they had nearly completed high school without hearing any substantive discussion about racism in school, the two young women deferred college admission for a year to collect first-person accounts of how racism plays out in this country every day - and often in unexpected ways.
-
-
Excellent stories shared!
- By Cynthia Heard on 04-05-21
By: Winona Guo, and others
-
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
-
Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race
- By: Debby Irving
- Narrated by: Debby Irving
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 25 years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn't understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction. As a teacher, she found her best efforts to reach out to students and families of color left her wondering what she was missing.
-
-
White people learning from White people
- By Hyli~Fav on 05-23-20
By: Debby Irving
-
The Vanishing American Adult
- Our Coming-of-Age Crisis - and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance
- By: Ben Sasse
- Narrated by: Ben Sasse
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From these disparate phenomena: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life. In The Vanishing American Adult, Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue.
-
-
A truly non-partisan essay on being an American
- By Anne on 07-06-17
By: Ben Sasse
-
In Search of Our Roots
- How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most African Americans, in tracing their family’s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying Black men and women even their names. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes 19 extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through US history and back to Africa.
-
-
Amazing
- By Placeholder on 04-17-19
-
The Trump Tapes
- Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Donald J. Trump, Bob Woodward
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Trump Tapes explodes with the exclusive, inside story of Trump’s performance as president—in his own words as he is questioned, even interrogated by Woodward, on the president’s key responsibilities from managing foreign relations to crisis management of the coronavirus pandemic. This is the job Trump seeks again. How did he do the first time? This is the authentic answer, laying bare his repeated failures, obsessions, and grievances.
-
-
The Trump Tapes
- By Melvin on 10-27-22
By: Bob Woodward
-
Tell Me Who You Are
- Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity
- By: Winona Guo, Priya Vulchi
- Narrated by: Winona Guo, Priya Vulchi, Elizabeth Liang, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this deeply inspiring audiobook, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi recount their experiences talking to people from all walks of life about race and identity on a cross-country tour of America. Spurred by the realization that they had nearly completed high school without hearing any substantive discussion about racism in school, the two young women deferred college admission for a year to collect first-person accounts of how racism plays out in this country every day - and often in unexpected ways.
-
-
Excellent stories shared!
- By Cynthia Heard on 04-05-21
By: Winona Guo, and others
-
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
-
Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race
- By: Debby Irving
- Narrated by: Debby Irving
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 25 years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn't understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction. As a teacher, she found her best efforts to reach out to students and families of color left her wondering what she was missing.
-
-
White people learning from White people
- By Hyli~Fav on 05-23-20
By: Debby Irving
-
The Vanishing American Adult
- Our Coming-of-Age Crisis - and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance
- By: Ben Sasse
- Narrated by: Ben Sasse
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From these disparate phenomena: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life. In The Vanishing American Adult, Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue.
-
-
A truly non-partisan essay on being an American
- By Anne on 07-06-17
By: Ben Sasse
-
Brit(ish)
- On Race, Identity and Belonging
- By: Afua Hirsch
- Narrated by: Afua Hirsch
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Afua Hirsch is British. Her parents are British. She was raised, educated and socialised in Britain. Her partner, her daughter, her sister and the vast majority of her friends are British. So why is her identity and sense of belonging a subject of debate? The reason is simply because of the colour of her skin. Blending history, memoir and individual experiences, Afua Hirsch reveals the identity crisis at the heart of Britain today. Far from affecting only minority people, Britain is a nation in denial about its past and its present.
-
-
Important read
- By L. Ingarfield on 01-04-23
By: Afua Hirsch
-
The Trayvon Generation
- Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
- By: Elizabeth Alexander
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Alexander
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the midst of civil unrest in the summer of 2020 and following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, Elizabeth Alexander—one of the great literary voices of our time—turned a mother's eye to her sons’ and students’ generation and wrote a celebrated and moving reflection on the challenges facing young Black America.
-
-
So much breath in this little book!
- By KMESH on 02-02-24
-
You Sound Like a White Girl
- The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
- By: Julissa Arce
- Narrated by: Julissa Arce
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this dual polemic and manifesto, Julissa dives into and tears apart the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. She combs through history and her own story to break down this myth, arguing that assimilation is a moving finish line designed to keep Black and brown Americans and immigrants chasing racist American ideals. She talks about the Lie of Success, the Lie of Legality, the Lie of Whiteness, and the Lie of English - each promising that if you obtain these things, you will reach acceptance and won’t be an outsider anymore.
-
-
Thank you!
- By mexime on 09-01-22
By: Julissa Arce
-
Black Titan
- A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire
- By: Carol Jenkins
- Narrated by: Susan Spain
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A.G. Gaston, the poor grandson of slaves, was born in the Deep South in 1892. Over the course of his extraordinary life, he amassed a fortune of over $130 million and a vast business empire. The story of his remarkable life is written with eloquence and grace by his niece, an Emmy¿ Award-winning journalist and her daughter, who holds degrees from Yale and Harvard.
-
-
Black Gold = Standing Ovation
- By 2Fresh on 01-20-16
By: Carol Jenkins
-
On Juneteenth
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.
-
-
A short but compelling combination of history and
- By BK on 05-18-21
-
Futureface
- A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging
- By: Alex Wagner
- Narrated by: Alex Wagner
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of a Burmese mother and a white American father, Alex Wagner grew up thinking of herself as a "futureface" - an avatar of a mixed-race future when all races would merge into a brown singularity. But when one family mystery leads to another, Wagner's postracial ideals fray as she becomes obsessed with the specifics of her own family's racial and ethnic history. Drawn into the wild world of ancestry, she embarks upon a quest around the world - and into her own DNA - to answer the ultimate questions of who she really is and where she belongs.
-
-
fun story
- By Michael Cook on 06-10-18
By: Alex Wagner
-
The Hemingses of Monticello
- An American Family
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 30 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.
-
-
Worried at first
- By Phillip Goodson on 12-13-08
-
Wandering in Strange Lands
- A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots
- By: Morgan Jerkins
- Narrated by: Morgan Jerkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the acclaimed cultural critic and New York Times best-selling author of This Will Be My Undoing - a writer whom Roxane Gay has hailed as “a force to be reckoned with” - comes this powerful story of her journey to understand her Northern and Southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America.
-
-
Not Just Black History -- It's All Of Our History
- By Ardee on 08-22-20
By: Morgan Jerkins
-
Ancestor Trouble
- A Reckoning and a Reconciliation
- By: Maud Newton
- Narrated by: Catherine Taber
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ancestor Trouble is one writer’s attempt to use genealogy - a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry - to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.
-
-
Crazy Evil Parents = Crazy Author
- By MiMi on 12-28-23
By: Maud Newton
-
South to America
- A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 16 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.
-
-
An incredible achievement
- By Tom on 02-16-22
By: Imani Perry
-
Sign My Name to Freedom
- A Memoir of a Pioneering Life
- By: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Narrated by: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for Black folk that followed.
-
-
How she stressed Creole, but I guess it was a badge if honor not being regular black.
- By Satisfied customer on 05-21-24
-
White like Her
- By: Gail Lukasik PhD, Kenyatta D. Berry - foreword
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Yoli on 06-06-18
By: Gail Lukasik PhD, and others
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)
Related to this topic
-
In Search of Our Roots
- How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most African Americans, in tracing their family’s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying Black men and women even their names. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes 19 extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through US history and back to Africa.
-
-
Amazing
- By Placeholder on 04-17-19
-
The Invisible History of the Human Race
- How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures
- By: Christine Kenneally
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. While some books explore our genetic inheritance and some popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy.
-
-
Who are you really. Who am I?
- By Annie M. on 10-28-14
-
The Hemingses of Monticello
- An American Family
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 30 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.
-
-
Worried at first
- By Phillip Goodson on 12-13-08
-
Wandering in Strange Lands
- A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots
- By: Morgan Jerkins
- Narrated by: Morgan Jerkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the acclaimed cultural critic and New York Times best-selling author of This Will Be My Undoing - a writer whom Roxane Gay has hailed as “a force to be reckoned with” - comes this powerful story of her journey to understand her Northern and Southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America.
-
-
Not Just Black History -- It's All Of Our History
- By Ardee on 08-22-20
By: Morgan Jerkins
-
Sign My Name to Freedom
- A Memoir of a Pioneering Life
- By: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Narrated by: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for Black folk that followed.
-
-
How she stressed Creole, but I guess it was a badge if honor not being regular black.
- By Satisfied customer on 05-21-24
-
On Juneteenth
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.
-
-
A short but compelling combination of history and
- By BK on 05-18-21
-
In Search of Our Roots
- How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most African Americans, in tracing their family’s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying Black men and women even their names. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes 19 extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through US history and back to Africa.
-
-
Amazing
- By Placeholder on 04-17-19
-
The Invisible History of the Human Race
- How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures
- By: Christine Kenneally
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. While some books explore our genetic inheritance and some popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy.
-
-
Who are you really. Who am I?
- By Annie M. on 10-28-14
-
The Hemingses of Monticello
- An American Family
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 30 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.
-
-
Worried at first
- By Phillip Goodson on 12-13-08
-
Wandering in Strange Lands
- A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots
- By: Morgan Jerkins
- Narrated by: Morgan Jerkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the acclaimed cultural critic and New York Times best-selling author of This Will Be My Undoing - a writer whom Roxane Gay has hailed as “a force to be reckoned with” - comes this powerful story of her journey to understand her Northern and Southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America.
-
-
Not Just Black History -- It's All Of Our History
- By Ardee on 08-22-20
By: Morgan Jerkins
-
Sign My Name to Freedom
- A Memoir of a Pioneering Life
- By: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Narrated by: Betty Reid-Soskin
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for Black folk that followed.
-
-
How she stressed Creole, but I guess it was a badge if honor not being regular black.
- By Satisfied customer on 05-21-24
-
On Juneteenth
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.
-
-
A short but compelling combination of history and
- By BK on 05-18-21
-
White like Her
- By: Gail Lukasik PhD, Kenyatta D. Berry - foreword
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Yoli on 06-06-18
By: Gail Lukasik PhD, and others
-
The Fire This Time
- A New Generation Speaks About Race
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Cherise Boothe, Michael Early, Kevin R. Free, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Delusion shattering
- By Matthew A. Burnett on 06-12-20
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Disintegration
- The Splintering of Black America
- By: Eugene Robinson
- Narrated by: Alan Bomar Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Written for Popular Consumption
- By Catherine S. Read on 06-03-11
By: Eugene Robinson
-
Master of the Mountain
- Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
- By: Henry Wiencek
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Clear, Insightful & Iconclastic History
- By R.S. on 04-18-13
By: Henry Wiencek
-
The Lies That Bind
- Rethinking Identity
- By: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Narrated by: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Not full of SJW nonsense
- By Frank on 10-22-18
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
This guy Nate Parker is officially my new fave!!!!
- By Marty Cohn on 11-15-16
By: Nate Parker
-
Strangers from a Different Shore
- A History of Asian Americans
- By: Ronald Takaki
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 24 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Eye opening to the way immigrants are treated
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-20
By: Ronald Takaki
-
Finding Samuel Lowe
- China, Jamaica, Harlem
- By: Paula Williams Madison
- Narrated by: Paula Williams Madison
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fascinating
- By ayodele higgs on 01-27-16
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Preachy
- By Elizabeth Combs on 09-13-22
By: Kristen Green
-
Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Race and Identity
- By Roy on 03-22-10
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
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.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Collector
- 05-07-24
Thorough & Entertainig
I learned so much about Oprah and respect her even more than before… and Gates was impressive.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
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.
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
- 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.
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
- 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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful