
I Just Keep Talking
A Life in Essays
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Narrated by:
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Nell Irvin Painter
About this listen
From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it.
Throughout her prolific writing career, Nell Painter has published works on such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Malcolm X. Her unique vantage on American history pushes the boundaries of personal narrative and academic authorship. Led by an unbridled curiosity for her subjects, Painter asks listeners to reconsider ideas of race, politics, and identity. I Just Keep Talking assembles her writing for the first time into a single volume, displaying the breadth and depth of Painter’s decades-long historical inquiry and the evolution of Black political thought—and includes a dazzling introduction and coda being published for the first time in this collection. From her mining of figures like Carrie Buck and Martin Delaney for their resonance today, to a deep dive into the history of exclusion through the work of Toni Morrison, to a discussion of the American political landscape after the 2016 election, Painter nimbly portrays the trials of a country frequently at war with itself.
Along with Painter’s writing, this collection offers her original artwork, threaded throughout the book as counterpoint and emphasis. Her visual art shows a deft mind turning toward the tragedy and humor of her subjects; pulling from newspapers, personal records, and original sketches, Painter’s artwork testifies to the dialectic of tremendous change and stasis that continues to shape American history.
These essays resist easy answers in favor of complexity, the inescapable sense of our country’s potential thwarted by its failures. This collection will surely solidify Painter’s place among the finest critics and writers of the last half century.
This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains artwork and other visuals from the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Nell Irvin Painter (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Nell Irvin Painter is one of the towering Black intellects of the last half century…[I Just Keep Talking] is more than an odyssey for the senses; it’s a revelation that will inspire courage in anyone seeking to express their truth.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
“Painter puts muscle and heart into history so that her readers can easily, but thoughtfully, draw the lines between past and present. Her history is inclusive, not in a pandering or self-consciously correct way, but because her artful telling of it is full of complexity that’s both beautiful and bracing.” —Robin Givhan, The Washington Post
“The essays in I Just Keep Talking show [Painter] repeatedly drawing attention to a plurality of Black American experiences. . .incisive. . .candid. . .full of surprises.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review
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- Narrated by: Alizah Holstein
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From the time she first felt called to its gates as a high school student fascinated by Dante and Italian thanks to a life-changing teacher, Rome has been a fixed star around which Alizah Holstein’s life has rotated—despite the fact that she bears no Italian heritage, and has never lived there long enough to call it home. In this kaleidoscopic yet intimate memoir, her shifting relationship to a vibrant city layered with human history becomes a lens on why we look to the past, on the mysteries of affinity and desire, and on what it means to grow up.
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The long road to finding your calling
- By Cath on 12-15-24
By: Alizah Holstein
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The Witching Year
- A Memoir of Earnest Fumbling Through Modern Witchcraft
- By: Diana Helmuth
- Narrated by: Diana Helmuth
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Diana Helmuth, thirty-three, is skeptical of organized religion. She is also skeptical of disorganized religion. But, more than anything, she is tired of God being dead. So, she decides to try on the fastest-growing, self-directed faith in America: Witchcraft. The result is 366 days of observation, trial, error, wit, and back spasms. Witches today are often presented as confident and finished, proud and powerful. Diana is eager to join them. She wants to follow all the rules, memorize all the incantations, and read all the liturgy. But there’s one glaring problem.
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Not for me
- By Moria Vulcanus on 01-06-25
By: Diana Helmuth
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Walk Through Walls
- A Memoir
- By: Marina Abramovic
- Narrated by: Marina Abramovic
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2010 more than 750,000 people stood in line at Marina Abramović's MoMA retrospective for the chance to sit across from her and communicate with her nonverbally in an unprecedented durational performance that lasted more than 700 hours. This celebration of nearly 50 years of groundbreaking performance art demonstrated once again that Marina Abramović is truly a force of nature.
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Fascinating read
- By V. Ledovsky on 11-20-16
By: Marina Abramovic
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Nothing's Bad Luck
- The Lives of Warren Zevon
- By: C. M. Kushins
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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As is the case with so many musicians, the life of Warren Zevon was blessed with talent and opportunity yet also beset by tragedy and setbacks. Raised mostly by his mother with an occasional cameo from his gangster father, Warren had an affinity and talent for music at an early age. After an impromptu performance in the right place at the right time, a record deal landed on the lap of a teenager who was eager to set out on his own and make a name for himself. But of course, where fame is concerned, things are never quite so simple.
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Great Content ......but
- By Art Lover on 06-26-19
By: C. M. Kushins
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Soil
- The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
- By: Camille T. Dungy
- Narrated by: Camille T. Dungy
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.
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Like medicine...
- By Broderek on 06-17-23
By: Camille T. Dungy
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A Wilder Shore
- The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
- By: Camille Peri
- Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
- Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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He was an ambitious but drifting writer from a prominent Scottish family. She was a tough Nevada silver miner’s wife, with children, when they met. Who could have predicted that Fanny Van de Grift and Robert Louis Stevenson would go on to create one of history’s great literary marriages? From their first encounter in France in 1876, Fanny and Louis’s partnership transcended societal expectations to become a literary union that was progressive, eccentric, and tempestuous, but always animated by a profound mutual respect
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Fairly interesting
- By Luke on 10-25-24
By: Camille Peri
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Lee Miller
- A Life
- By: Carolyn Burke
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Carolyn Burke reveals Miller as a multifaceted woman: both model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and mother, and, in later years, gourmet cook - the last of the many dramatic transformations she underwent during her lifetime. A sleek blond bombshell, Miller was part of a glamorous circle in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as a leading Vogue model, close to Edward Steichen, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso. Then, during World War II, she became a war correspondent - one of the first women to do so.
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A Unique and Beautiful Person
- By Cindy A. Ossias on 03-21-24
By: Carolyn Burke
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It Starts with One
- The Legend and Legacy of Linkin Park
- By: Jason Lipshutz
- Narrated by: Jason Lipshutz, James Fouhey, Helen Laser
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Linkin Park is one of the 21st Century’s biggest, and most important, rock bands. All it takes is one quick glance at the numbers—11 Top 40 hits on the Hot 100 and six No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, over a dozen massive tours, 27 major award wins, 100+ million records sold worldwide, over 30 million monthly Spotify listeners—to realize that when it comes to the metrics of music consumption and fandom, there’s no bigger group in recent memory. And yet, despite their enduring legacy within rock, there’s never been a full, comprehensive biography of Linkin Park—until now.
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Enjoyed hearing Linkin Parks Story
- By Daniel Pappalardo on 10-03-24
By: Jason Lipshutz
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Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother
- Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker
- By: Barry Sonnenfeld
- Narrated by: Barry Sonnenfeld
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Film and television director Barry Sonnenfeld's outrageous and hilarious memoir traces his idiosyncratic upbringing in New York City, his breaking into film as a cinematographer with the Coen brothers, and his unexpected career as the director behind such huge film franchises as The Addams Family and Men in Black, and beloved work like Get Shorty, Pushing Daises, and A Series of Unfortunate Events.
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The Kosher Cowboy Rides Again
- By Jay on 05-05-20
By: Barry Sonnenfeld
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The Color of Everything
- A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
- By: Cory Richards
- Narrated by: Cory Richards
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The Color of Everything is a thrilling tale of risk and adventure, written by a man who has done it all: he’s stood at the top of the world, climbed imposing mountain faces alone in the dark and become the only American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter. But it is also the story of a tumultuous life--a stirring, lyrical memoir that captures the profound musings of a brilliant and unquiet mind grappling with the meaning of success, the cost of fame, addiction, and whether it is possible to outrun your demons.
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Best book in this genre since Into Thin Air
- By E. Vaughan on 12-04-24
By: Cory Richards
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Art Is Life
- Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
- By: Jerry Saltz
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz, Mark Bramhall
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: Witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary listeners to fine art as few critics have.
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WRONG for audio program
- By Karen Lehrer on 11-07-22
By: Jerry Saltz
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Personality and Power
- Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Matt Bates
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the leading historians of twentieth-century Europe and the author of the definitive biography of Hitler, Personality and Power is a masterful reckoning with how character conspired with opportunity to create the modern age’s uniquely devastating despots—and how and why other countries found better paths. The modern era saw the emergence of individuals who had command over a terrifying array of instruments of control, persuasion and death. Whole societies were reshaped and wars were fought, often with a merciless contempt for the most basic norms.
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Great book, but needs work on human groups
- By Thomas F. Winterbottom on 12-07-22
By: Ian Kershaw
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Hollywood Ending
- Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Coleman
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty years ago, Ken Auletta wrote an iconic New Yorker profile of the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was then at the height of his powers. The profile made waves for exposing how volatile, even violent, Weinstein was to his employees and collaborators. But there was a much darker story that was just out of reach: rumors had long swirled that Weinstein was a sexual predator. Auletta confronted Weinstein, who denied the claims. Since no one was willing to go on the record, Auletta and the magazine concluded they couldn’t close the case.
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Compelling but too long, with some strange errors
- By bugsmeany on 11-16-22
By: Ken Auletta
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The Happy Bottom Riding Club
- The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes
- By: Lauren Kessler
- Narrated by: Hollis McCarthy
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Pancho Barnes was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and outmaneuvered the US government. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend.
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Never a dull moment
- By Matthew G A Vogelpohl on 06-19-24
By: Lauren Kessler
Author reader
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The History of White People was deeply influential to me so it's a pleasure to hear the personal details as she shaped much of my thinking.
Rich Work, Must Relisten
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