Inheritance
An Autobiography of Whiteness
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Narrated by:
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Will Collyer
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By:
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Baynard Woods
About this listen
In this unflinching, honest narrative, an award-winning journalist discovers his family’s heritage as slave owners in the South and grapples openly with his whiteness to inspire others to do the same.
"Bracing, candid, and rueful." —Kirkus
Baynard Woods thought he had escaped the backwards ways of the South Carolina he grew up in, a world defined by country music, NASCAR, and the confederacy. He’d fled the South long ago, transforming himself into a politically left-leaning writer and educator.
Then he was accused of discriminating against a Black student at a local university. How could I be racist? he wondered. Whiteness was a problem, but it wasn’t really his problem. He taught at a majority Black school and wrote essays about education and Civil Rights.
But it was his problem. Working as a reporter, it became clear that white supremacy was tearing the country apart. When a white kid from his hometown massacred nine Black people in Charleston, Woods began to delve into his family’s history—and the ways that history has affected his own life.
When he discovered that his family—both the Baynards and the Woodses—collectively claimed ownership of more than 700 people in 1860, Woods realized his own name was a confederate monument. Along with his name, he had inherited privilege, wealth, and all the lies that his ancestors passed down through the generations.
In this gripping and perceptive memoir, Woods takes us along on his journey to understand how race has impacted his life. Unflinching and uninhibited, Inheritance explores what it means to reckon with whiteness in America today and what it might mean to begin to repair the past.
©2022 Baynard Woods (P)2022 Legacy LitListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Brilliant...Inheritance delivers the kind of first-person account needed to fully understand whiteness. Woods seamlessly travels from generation to generation to explore his family history. This book is the perfect tool for explaining the other side of critical race theory. Both Black and white America will benefit from the narrative carefully woven by Woods. Both Black and white America will benefit from the narrative carefully woven by Woods. This will be one of the most important books of the year, I highly recommend it.”—D. Watkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, and We Speak for Ourselves
“[Told] with an unsparing eye and engaging style...Inheritance is an intimate, revelatory study in accountability and repair; I was rocked by this book’s candor and the force of its home truths."—Michelle Orange, author of Pure Flame
"A brilliant examination of white identity—searching, searing, ruthlessly honest, painful to read, yet impossible to put down. This is an essential book."—Wil S. Hylton, author of Vanished
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The Gift
- By M. Forsberg on 07-29-22
By: Pardeep Singh Kaleka, and others
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How to Find Your Way in the Dark
- The Sheldon Horowitz Series, Book 1
- By: Derek B. Miller
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate.
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Absolutely wonderful story.
- By George Thomas on 12-11-21
By: Derek B. Miller
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The Company You Keep
- By: Neil Gordon
- Narrated by: Donald Corren, Hillary Huber, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon years of safe underground life for the dangerous life of the road.
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Audiobook of the Year
- By connie on 05-13-12
By: Neil Gordon
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Loving Day
- By: Mat Johnson
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: In the face of the teenage girl he meets at a comics convention, he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl is his daughter, and she thinks she's white.
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Teen lit with heavy erotic imagery
- By Itinerant T on 08-26-15
By: Mat Johnson
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After the Eclipse
- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
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True crime memoir
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Sarah Perry
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The Cost of These Dreams
- Sports Stories and Other Serious Business
- By: Wright Thompson
- Narrated by: Wright Thompson
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most-read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive.
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Just great
- By ACK on 06-02-19
By: Wright Thompson
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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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They Said They Wanted Revolution
- A Memoir of My Parents
- By: Neda Toloui-Semnani
- Narrated by: Neda Toloui-Semnani
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.
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I learned so much. Great pacing, felt like I time-traveled
- By Jess Fuchs on 02-07-22
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Bluegrass
- A True Story of Murder in Kentucky
- By: William Van Meter
- Narrated by: Ed Sala
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely published journalist William Van Meter returned to his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky to research this harrowing account of a horrifying crime that occurred at Western Kentucky University. In 2003, attractive college student Katie Autry was found dead in her dorm room after being raped, stabbed, and set on fire. As Van Meter delves into the facts of the case, further disturbing information surfaces.
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Excellent!
- By brooke whitehead on 01-09-23
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Love, Africa
- A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival
- By: Jeffrey Gettleman
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past 20 years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there - and of his difficult, winding path toward becoming a good reporter and a better man.
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Loved this book!!!
- By Benjamin on 05-26-17
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Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
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Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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Born Bright
- A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America
- By: C. Nicole Mason
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Born Bright, C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.
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Solid Book
- By Daryl on 11-06-16
By: C. Nicole Mason
What listeners say about Inheritance
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Missy D
- 06-12-23
WOW!!
Started off slow but wow what a great read !!! I will definitely recommend this book
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- Colleen Coxe
- 07-24-22
An inspiring exploration of how family history and society shapes us all
This book offered a powerful and intensely personal look at what it means to be white and have benefitted from a economic and political system built on suppressing the rights of others. The buried truth that the author pursues about his family, and his honest journey of discovering the privilege of moving through the world as a white person is engaging and thoughtful. As someone who grew up in the American south, it gave me a useful framework for better understanding my family’s history, as well as some insight into the long arc of American history that brought us to our deeply divided present. The professional narration was fine, but I found myself yearning to hear the story in the author’s own voice.
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- Diane R. Kirk
- 02-10-23
Awesome
Great book - very intense and gripping. I could not stop listening to it. Loved it
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- KC
- 12-26-22
This helps me start a journey
Being from Memphis, TN, this book resonated w/me. Some of my genealogy uncovered that my paternal great-grandfather fought for the South, while my maternal great-grandfather fought for the North. I've got work to do! Lol
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-06-22
An Important Reflection
This was a worthy journey. I hope it inspires many more to push passed the fables of their family history and to connect the dots within themselves as this author has and continues to. I look forward to the abolition of all of us from this system. It requires what the author suggests in the 23rd chapter and on... Take the journey, some of us have been waiting generations and we're still waiting for the change to come.
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- R GLOVER
- 10-05-22
Wow!
Heard author on Code switch podcast and knew I had to read the book. Found myself googling his family online while listening. I laughed and was so intrigued. By his life of privilege. Awesome autobiography. One of few white peoples that get it!
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- Rachel A warren
- 07-06-22
Excellent audiobook, beautifully written book
Beautifully written book about race, family history, southern history, addiction, education, and how the author is able to confront his role in all of the above throughout his adulthood.
While the first half made me antsy at times, I realized over and over that he was describing actions and intentions similar to my own in the past (and sometimes present) and that’s what made me uncomfortable. But it was a good discomfort. The confronting kind you need to heal the hurt you cause and hold. As much as Baynard looks outward, in front of him, and to his family’s past, he looks inward, too. And he does so just in time, every time, to make him likable enough to care about what he will do next and how. His relationship with his wife, who is clearly a positive influence in so many ways in this story, is very moving. The high pitch discord between Woods and his father is both heartbreaking and hard fought right until the bittersweet end.
Knowing this book was edited by Krishan Trotman through Legacy Lit gave me confidence that this was a book worth reading. And I’m so glad I did.
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- es
- 01-05-23
Worth a second read
This book has opened a window that allowed the “air” of understanding that would probably never been share with the descendants of the enslaved.
I am truly blown away with Bay’s willingness to speak plainly and with as much honesty has he could muster in the writing moments.
I also admire his perseverance to unlock his family history, as well as the inclination of his family to share that history,however flawed, in family talks.
Many thanks for writing and then having the courage to publish 👏🏾🫶🏾👏🏾
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- Femina T. Ajayi
- 04-12-23
Good.
It made me go back and forth between being curious and frustrated. I liked it overall
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- Stan
- 11-18-22
One of the few whites who legitimately get it
Growing up as a person of color I could not help but feel resentment towards whites because of the entitlement and prejudice a lot of them carry. People like me get screwed over and left all sorts of messed up in this country’s white supremacist culture. This book ended up being fascinating because it dissects white supremacy from a white perspective. Explains why white people lie and live in a fantasy world disconnected from reality. It is because the comfortable lives they live were a result of cruelty in its purest form and it is a very uncomfortable fact for them to deal with. This book was able to put feelings that I carried for decades into words.
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1 person found this helpful