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Glorious
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard narrates Glorious, by Bernice L. McFadden, a novel set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. This is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path out of Waycross, Georgia, to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty. Woodard’s nuanced narration beautifully enhances McFadden’s imaginative blend of fictional and real events and people—such as Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, pianist Fats Waller, and shipping heiress Nancy Cunard.
Glorious poses the question that is the title of Langston Hughes’s famous poem: What happens to a dream deferred? It is an audacious exploration into the nature of self-hatred, love, possession, ego, betrayal, and, finally, redemption. Easter is not only a survivor, but also a creator, and a fearless blazer of trails.
Bernice L. McFadden is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including the classic Sugar and Nowhere Is a Place, which was a Washington Post Best Fiction title for 2006.
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Editorial reviews
Bernice McFadden's Glorious opens with an interesting premise. If the real-life "Fight of the Century" between Jack Johnson and James Jeffries hadn't occurred, then the life of our protagonist, Easter Bartlett, might not have taken the turns it did. She might not have been moved to leave her hometown of Waycross, Georgia; might not have met the strangely fascinating dancer named Rain; might not have ended up married to Marcus Garvey's would-be assassin; and might not have found herself a darling of the Harlem Renaissance.
Although the historical events mentioned in Easter's story most certainly occurred, Easter Bartlett is nothing but a figment of McFadden's imagination. The book, which is half Ragtime and half Beloved, is fresh for both reasons. While its fictional main character may be more engaging than the real figures that populate the story, the novel is written so that history serves as a supporting actor, a mirror to reflect the true drama of what's happening in Easter's world and the world at large.
As such, Glorious is filled with many voices telling many stories. The prose flows along swiftly, catching in its current a number of different places and social spheres. Alfre Woodard rises to this challenge with incredible talent and range. One moment she's an early-1900s white socialite, the next a Caribbean man freshly immigrated to America. She's totally competent in each new role, turning an exceptional piece of new literature into a kind of epic bedtime story, complete with colorful voices. Woodard rolls gracefully with McFadden's wild cast of characters, inhabiting each of their experiences, adding volumes to the mythical feeling of the work and, with McFadden's help, making us believe their stories. —Gina Pensiero
Critic reviews
- Audie Award Winner - Best Solo Narration - Female, 2011
"McFadden's lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth.... McFadden has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos." (New York Times Book Review)
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Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.
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Hard to follow
- By Nevada on 08-13-10
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Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
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Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
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Really Enjoyed!
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By: Kuwanna Haulsey
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The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
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Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender.
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Beautiful and Haunting Fairytale
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The Rock Orchard
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"Some women can touch a man and heal like Jesus. The man who sees sunrise from a Belle woman's bed will swear he's been born again." So begins Paula Wall's funny, poignant, and sexy novel, The Rock Orchard. Musette Belle could lay her hand on a baby's heart and see his life as if he'd already lived it. Even in death, she continues to shock the good citizens of Leaper's Fork, Tennessee, and her descendents are doing their best to carry on her legacy.
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Laugh Out Loud
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By: Paula Wall
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Madam
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- By: Cari Lynn, Kellie Martin
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New Orleans, 1900: Mary Deubler makes a meager living as an "alley whore". That all changes when bible-thumping Alderman Sidney Story forces the creation of a red-light district that’s mockingly dubbed "Storyville". Mary believes there’s no place for a lowly girl like her in the high-class bordellos of Storyville’s Basin Street, where Champagne flows and beautiful girls turn tricks in luxurious bedrooms. But with gumption, twists of fate, even a touch of Voodoo, Mary rises above her hopeless lot to become the notorious Madame Josie Arlington.
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Oh no no no no no
- By Robin on 08-11-18
By: Cari Lynn, and others
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Josephine Baker's Last Dance
- By: Sherry Jones
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating biographical novel, Sherry Jones spans Josephine Baker's early years in servitude and poverty in America to her rise to fame as a showgirl in her famous banana skirt to her activism against discrimination, and her many loves and losses. From 1920s Paris to 1960s Washington to her final, triumphant performance, one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century comes to stunning life on the page. With intimate prose and comprehensive research, Sherry Jones brings Josephine Baker into focus for the first time in a joyous celebration of a life lived in technicolor.
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Josephine Bakers Last Dance
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By: Sherry Jones
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Southern Gods
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Eric G Dove
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Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio statio - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.
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Big, Bold and Bright
- By John on 08-23-11
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Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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The Secret Life of Mrs. London
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San Francisco, 1915. As America teeters on the brink of world war, Charmian and her husband, famed novelist Jack London, wrestle with genius and desire, politics and marital competitiveness. Charmian longs to be viewed as an equal partner who put her own career on hold to support her husband, but Jack doesn't see it that way...until Charmian is pulled from the audience during a magic show by escape artist Harry Houdini, a man enmeshed in his own complicated marriage. Suddenly charmed, Charmian's eyes open to a world of possibilities.
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Who Knew...?
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The Kite Runner
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- Unabridged
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Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
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A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
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The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
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A beautifully written, unforgettable novel of a troubled marriage, set against the lush landscape and political turmoil of Trinidad. Monique Roffey's Orange Prize-shortlisted novel is a gripping portrait of post-colonialism that stands among great works by Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Andrea Levy. When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease.
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Disappointing.
- By Crystal on 10-31-12
By: Monique Roffey
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The Dressmaker's Dowry
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For listeners of Lucinda Riley, Sarah Jio, or Susan Meissner, this gripping historical debut novel tells the story of two women: one an immigrant seamstress who disappears from San Francisco's gritty streets in 1876 and the other a young woman in the present day who must delve into the secrets of her husband's wealthy family only to discover that she and the missing dressmaker might be connected in unexpected ways.
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Even two good narrators can't redeem this
- By RueRue on 03-27-17
By: Meredith Jaeger
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Blackmail, My Love
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Josie O'Conner travels to San Francisco in 1951 to locate her gay brother, a private dick investigating a blackmail ring targeting lesbians and gay men. Jimmy's friends claim that just before he disappeared he became a rat, informing the cops on the bar community. Josie adopts Jimmy's trousers and wingtips, battling to clear his name, halt the blackmailers, and exact justice for the many queer corpses.
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Fine Writing, Beautifully Read
- By CJ on 06-14-15
By: Katie Gilmartin
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What listeners say about Glorious
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- The Impatient Gardener
- 10-31-10
A wonderful story
I rarely write reviews simply for lack of time (if I had the time to write reviews I'd read more books instead of listening to them), but this book moved me to write one. It really shouldn't be missed.
Alfre Woodard does an amazing job narrating McFadden beautiful prose in this story that is at times so horrifying you will find your jaw dropping and will have you rooting for the central figure.
This book is so good it's one I'll probably go back and read. It deals with an important time in our country's history and intersperses real historical figures in with fictional ones.
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14 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Cheryl
- 11-22-10
Good Book - Entertaning and Educational
This was a beautiful story.Alfre Woodard brings such a rich tone to a deep story which shows the struggle, the sucess and the magnificant contribution African Americans have made to American literature. We know how much talent existed but do we really realize how much talent died under the weight of oppression?
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15 people found this helpful
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- Live_Love_Laugh_louder
- 03-20-14
A great story - a great listen.
Racism, love, hate, loss, jealousy, wanderlust, the desire for more, the time to move on, the black experience, the harlem renaissance ... all told through the life of Easter. Well written, well developed, and excellent narration by Alfre Woodard. It was hard to listen to at times but so worth it in the end.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Ladies First
- 11-14-18
Good read
Not my favorite of her novels but I love love her work and Alfre Woodard was a FANTASTIC!
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- Marilyn
- 11-22-11
Gruesome violence
I love Alfre Woodard and that was the reason why I chose this book. The subject matter also appealed to me. Unfortunately, near the beginning of the book there was a description of a pregnant woman's lynching that was so explicit and gruesome that I could not shake it from my mind. I have always been extra sensitive to any depiction of torture, so this may not deter other readers. I have put the book down, but do plan to try it again in a little more time..
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22 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Chrystal
- 12-15-10
Glorious is simply glorious and a wonder to hear
Glorious by Bernice L. McFadden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Audio Version - Narrated by Alfre Woodard
As much as I love having my books in hardcover format, I can not begin to express how delighted I was with the audio version of Glorious, (downloaded from Audible.com) - Author, Bernice McFadden's adaption of this period was excellent and the narration by, Actress Alfre Woodward was outstanding.
I felt I knew these wonderfully portrayed characters as they came to life; and I became emotionally invested as I experienced them and their plights and issues in this commanding thought-provoking epic of a novel with it's rich historical detail. What I didn't know, I learned from this, and I was reminded of what I already knew.
You may find certain aspects of this true-to-life work of fiction heartbreaking, cruel, nerve-wracking, and more - but you will also find it difficult to put down, because it will grip and hold your attention from beginning to end.
If you haven't read it or listen to it via audio, you are missing out on a remarkable experience. This is a novel that truly deserves to be adapted into an award winning movie.
*P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!
and available on Audible.com
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12 people found this helpful
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- mjayan+100630a
- 06-04-12
Good book
Good one! Thanks to Audible for having this in store. I would recommend this book to my family and friends.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Judy Kessler
- 10-06-17
This was GLORIOUS!
Alfre Woodard’s voice is like great, rich chocolate or smooth, fine wine. It’s hard to believe she did all the characters. I could have listened to her forever. And the story had me from GO! It’s hard to imagine the black experience in America, let alone the dismal post-slavery “freedom”, but this beautifully written book hit the nail on the head. It was enthralling and painful and totally captivating. Don’t miss it!
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- ayodele higgs
- 05-21-14
Excellent!!!
If you could sum up Glorious in three words, what would they be?
Real and Thought Provoking!!!
What did you like best about this story?
I loved the use of real people from history. The usage of real street and places in Harlem. I felt transformed in time. The story seemed true.
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- Tanesha Weaver
- 03-31-18
Didn't enjoy the ending
I really loved the story, just wished it had a better ending. Overall, I love all the works by this author
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