
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 AudioCritic 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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In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: Coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women.
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fascinating book almost ruined by the reader
- By braingirl on 08-13-24
By: Susannah Gibson
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The Rebel's Clinic
- The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
- By: Adam Shatz
- Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller.
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Brilliant book, unbearable narration
- By Rachel Mihuta Grimm on 03-18-25
By: Adam Shatz
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The Return of Great Powers
- Russia, China, and the Next World War
- By: Jim Sciutto
- Narrated by: Jim Sciutto
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 dawned what Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History.” Three decades later, Jim Sciutto said on CNN’s air as the Ukraine war began, that we are living in a “1939 moment.” History never ended—it barely paused—and the global order as we have known it is now gone. Great powers are reinvigorated and determined to assert dominance on the world stage. And as it escalates, this new order will affect everyone across the globe.
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Disappointing
- By Douglas Peifer on 03-14-24
By: Jim Sciutto
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Private Revolutions
- Four Women Face China's New Social Order
- By: Yuan Yang
- Narrated by: Crystal Yu, Gabby Wong, Kae Alexander, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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While serving as the deputy Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times, Chinese-British journalist Yuan Yang began to notice common threads in the lives of her Chinese peers—women born during China’s turn toward capitalism in the 1980s and 1990s, who, despite the country's enormous economic gains during their lifetimes, were coming up against deeply entrenched barriers as they sought to achieve financial stability. This transporting and indelible book traces the journey of four such women as they try to make better lives for themselves and their families in the new Chinese economy.
By: Yuan Yang
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The Black Box
- Writing the Race
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s, legendary Harvard introductory course in African American studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—these writers used words to create a livable world, a home, for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society.
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Another outstanding Henry Loius Gates, Jr. history producion
- By melissa on 06-22-24
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Dead in Long Beach, California
- A Novel
- By: Venita Blackburn
- Narrated by: Lynnette Freeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles—and triples—down on posing as her brother.
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Great Literary Work
- By Dr Ag on 02-25-24
By: Venita Blackburn
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Salvage
- Readings from the Wreck
- By: Dionne Brand
- Narrated by: Dionne Brand
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her sense of self and the world, of what was possible and what was not.
By: Dionne Brand
What listeners say about I Just Keep Talking
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- R. MacDonald
- 06-21-24
Rich Work, Must Relisten
Painter is an excellent researcher. These details she brings out just pop. The analysis is very convincing although her arguments hew towards conventional politics. I feel the young American socialist movement has arguments and points which could deepen and nuance some of these things but I also am sensitive to the possibility that she might lose chunks of her older audience. I do wonder though, what age group is her audience?
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.
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- K D S
- 07-11-24
Author reader
What an amazing opportunity to hear the Author read her essays which cover a lifetime of research and deep insights
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