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Gather Me
- A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me
- Narrated by: Glory Edim
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
A “dramatic [and] ingeniously crafted” (Los Angeles Times) memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl.
“A beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive and ever-growing love for words and for language.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison, Beloved
For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.
Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
Gather Me is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.
Critic reviews
“A highly person memoir . . . [Edim] shares how books became an escape and a classroom. Her book is most compelling when she describes her interactions with these books, including the ways she interpreted them initially and reinterpreted them upon subsequent readings. . . . This title is a strong and welcome addition to the genre of biblio-memoirs.”—Library Journal
“Professional bibliophile pays tribute to the books that made her…. Edim rose to prominence as the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, an influential and far-reaching literary organization. In Gather Me, she reflects on a lifetime of devoted reading. From childhood on, whatever was going on in Edim’s life, books were a constant presence in her survival and self-development. . . . Gather Me is a book for anyone who has ever loved books. A love story that attests to the power of literature.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Gather Me is a full and beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive, and ever-growing love for words, and for language. What a gift, to have that love reflected outwards.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year
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- Narrated by: Sharmila Devar
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism, political philosopher Serene Khader advocates for another feminism—one that doesn’t overwhelmingly serve white, affluent #girlbosses. With empathy, passion, and wit, Khader invites the listener to join her as she excavates the movement’s history and draws a blueprint for a more inclusive and resilient future.
By: Serene Khader
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Well-Read Black Girl
- Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
- By: Glory Edim
- Narrated by: Glory Edim
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? That feeling of belonging remains with readers the rest of their lives - but not everyone regularly sees themselves on the pages of a book. In this timely anthology, Glory Edim brings together original essays by some of our best black women writers to shine a light on how important it is that we all - regardless of gender, race, religion, or ability - have the opportunity to find ourselves in literature.
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I wish I had...
- By S. Hayes on 03-18-19
By: Glory Edim
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Leave the Girls Behind
- A Novel
- By: Jacqueline Bublitz
- Narrated by: Stephanie Cannon
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender—and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime.
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The Brothers Grimm
- A Biography
- By: Ann Schmiesing
- Narrated by: Eve Matheson
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on deep archival research and decades of scholarship, Ann Schmiesing tells the affecting story of how the Grimms’ ambitious projects gave the brothers a sense of self-preservation through the atrocities of the Napoleonic Wars and a series of personal losses.
By: Ann Schmiesing
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Mama
- A Queer Black Woman's Story of a Family Lost and Found
- By: Nikkya Hargrove
- Narrated by: Grace Porter
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Hargrove’s memoir picks up where Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy left off, exploring generational trauma and pulling back the curtain on family court and poverty in America. Moving and inspiring, Mama is an ode to motherhood and identity, to never giving up, and to finding strength in family and community.
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Smart powerful story of resilience.
- By Eric Jeuland on 10-27-24
By: Nikkya Hargrove
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Lifeform
- By: Jenny Slate
- Narrated by: Jenny Slate, George Saunders, Vanessa Bayer, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury.
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I laughed, I cried, ect
- By M on 11-06-24
By: Jenny Slate
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This Motherless Land
- A Novel
- By: Nikki May
- Narrated by: Weruche Opia, Florence Howard
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.
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I loved this story!
- By Dion Mcfadzean on 11-09-24
By: Nikki May
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Sunshine and Spice
- By: Aurora Palit
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani, Imran Sheikh
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Naomi Kelly will do anything to make her new brand consulting business a success. When she lands a career saving contract to rebrand the Mukherjee family’s failing local bazaar, she knows there can be no mistakes. But as the “oops” baby of a free-spirited Bengali mother, Naomi’s lack of connection to her roots represents everything Gia Mukherjee disdains. Enter, Dev Mukherjee.
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A charming debut!
- By Smitty711 on 09-17-24
By: Aurora Palit
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I Will Do Better
- A Father's Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love
- By: Charles Bock
- Narrated by: Charles Bock
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The novelist Charles Bock was a reluctant parent, tagging along for the ride of fatherhood, obsessed primarily with his dream of a writing career. But when his daughter Lily was six months old, his wife, Diana, was diagnosed with a complex form of leukemia. Two and a half years later, when all treatments and therapies had been exhausted, Bock found himself a widower—devastated, drowning in medical bills, and saddled with a daunting responsibility. He had to nurture Lily and, somehow, maybe even heal himself.
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Heartbreaking and heartwarming
- By Leesavee on 10-21-24
By: Charles Bock
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No One Gets to Fall Apart
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah LaBrie
- Narrated by: Sarah LaBrie
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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On a highway in Houston, Texas, Sarah LaBrie’s mother was found screaming at passing cars, terrified she would be murdered by invisible assailants. The diagnosis of schizophrenia that followed compelled Sarah to rethink her childhood, marked at turns by violence and all-consuming closeness. Digging into the events that led to her mother’s break, Sarah traces her family history of mental illness, from the dysphoria that plagued her great-grandmother, a granddaughter of slaves, to her own experience with depression as a scholarship student at Brown.
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Vivid and captivating
- By Elisa Williams on 10-27-24
By: Sarah LaBrie
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What We Wish For
- By: Melody Maysonet
- Narrated by: Gail Shalan
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifteen-year-old Layla Freeman likes to pretend her life is fine. After all, her mother is about to celebrate thirty days sober, and yeah, they’ve moved into a homeless shelter, but it’s only temporary, right? Her mom will get better, and in the meantime, it’s important that no one at school finds out where she’s been living for the past month. Layla has worked hard to build her reputation as a girl who doesn’t care what others think of her, but the truth is she does care—deeply—and she’s tripping over her own lies, especially to her best friend, as she tries to pretend nothing’s wrong.
By: Melody Maysonet
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Eight Very Bad Nights
- A Collection of Hanukkah Noir
- By: Tod Goldberg
- Narrated by: Jasmin Walker, Robb Moreira, Emily Lawrence, and others
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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This wry collection of Hanukkah noir features eleven stories by critically acclaimed authors that run the gamut from hardboiled to heartfelt, curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg. Across eleven stories, award-winning authors spin tales of family, corruption, buried treasure and delightful yet twisted capers that will entertain listeners through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights.
By: Tod Goldberg