
Love, Queenie
Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star
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Narrated by:
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Sharmila Devar
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By:
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Mayukh Sen
About this listen
Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Her nomination marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father, broke through a racial barrier—but no one knew it. Oberon was "passing" for white.
In the first biography of Oberon in more than forty years, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and untapped archival material to capture the life of an oft-forgotten talent. Born into poverty, Queenie Thompson dreamt of big-screen stardom. By sheer force of will, she immigrated to London in her teens and met film mogul Alexander Korda, who christened her "Merle Oberon." Her new identity was her ticket into Hollywood. When she was in her twenties, Oberon dazzled as Cathy in Wuthering Heights opposite Laurence Olivier. Against the backdrop of Hollywood's racially exclusionary Golden Age and the United States's hostile immigration policy towards South Asians in the twentieth century, Oberon rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite.
Tracing Oberon's story from her Indian roots to her final days surrounded by wealth and glamor, Sen questions the demands placed on stars in life and death. His compassionate, compelling chronicle illuminates troubling truths on race, gender, and power that still resonate today.
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Story
On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar. Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”
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Great Read
- By Mia CB on 05-15-25
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The Trouble of Color
- An American Family Memoir
- By: Martha S. Jones
- Narrated by: Martha S. Jones
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones’s right to speak. Suspicious of the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, he confronted her with a question that inspired a lifetime of introspection: “Who do you think you are?” Now a prizewinning scholar of Black history, Jones delves into her family’s past for answers. In every generation since her great-great-great-grandmother survived enslavement to raise a free family, color determined her ancestors’ lives.
By: Martha S. Jones
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Jane Austen's Bookshelf
- A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
- By: Rebecca Romney
- Narrated by: Rebecca Romney
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. But Austen wasn’t a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers—and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work.
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Fascinating!
- By pjb on 05-31-25
By: Rebecca Romney
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Dictates of Conscience
- From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman
- By: Laurie Lee Hall
- Narrated by: Laurie Lee Hall
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Laurie Lee Hall’s growing-up years were defined by the conflict between her physical condition as a boy and her inherent identity as a girl. Unable to explain or resolve her gender dysphoria, she committed to living her adult life as a male. She joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, eventually becoming chief architect of its temples and an ecclesiastical leader. In her church and community, rigid adherence to gender roles is not only the norm, but the defining issue of a faith that doctrinally declares one’s gender as an “eternal identity.
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A real life account of the experience of a high ranking Mormon who comes out as transgender.
- By LSG on 04-18-25
By: Laurie Lee Hall
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Connecting Dots
- A Blind Life
- By: Joshua A. Miele, Wendell Jamieson - contributor
- Narrated by: Greg D. Barnett
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of four, Joshua Miele was blinded and badly burned when a delusional neighbor poured sulfuric acid over his head in a crime that shocked New York. It could have ended his life, but instead, Miele—naturally curious, and a born problem solver—not only recovered, but thrived. Throughout his life, Miele has found increasingly inventive ways to succeed in a world built for the sighted, and to help others to do the same. At first reluctant to even think of himself as blind, he eventually embraced his blindness and became a committed advocate for disability and accessibility
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Great story, breathy reader
- By marianne reynolds on 04-30-25
By: Joshua A. Miele, and others
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Confessions of a Video Vixen
- By: Karrine Steffans
- Narrated by: Karrine Steffans, Tyla Collier, Chanté McCormick
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Once the sought-after video girl, this sexy siren has helped multi-platinum artists, such as Jay-Z, R. Kelly and LL Cool J, sell millions of albums with her sensual dancing. In a word, Karrine was H-O-T. So hot that she made as much as $2500 a day in videos and was selected by well-known film director F. Gary Gray to co-star in his film, A Man Apart, starring Vin Diesel. But the film and music video sets, swanky Hollywood and New York restaurants and trysts with the celebrities featured in the pages of People and In Touch magazines only touches the surface of Karrine Steffans' life.
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Well written
- By Nathalie Gaspard on 06-21-25
By: Karrine Steffans
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Saving Five
- A Memoir of Hope
- By: Amanda Nguyen
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A brave and imaginative memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, detailing her healing journey and groundbreaking activism in the aftermath of her rape at Harvard.
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Beautifully written!
- By Amazon Customer on 03-05-25
By: Amanda Nguyen
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Say Everything
- A Memoir
- By: Ione Skye
- Narrated by: Ione Skye
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Gen X icon Ione Skye bares all in an achingly vulnerable coming-of-age memoir about chasing fame, desire, and true love in the shadow of her famous, absent father.
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Wow
- By santos on 03-11-25
By: Ione Skye
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You Didn't Hear This from Me
- (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip
- By: Kelsey McKinney
- Narrated by: Kelsey McKinney
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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As the pandemic forced us to socialize at a distance, Kelsey McKinney was mourning the juicy updates and jaw-dropping stories she’d typically collect over drinks with friends—and from her hunger, the blockbuster Normal Gossip podcast was born. With listenership in the millions, Kelsey found herself thinking more critically about gossip as a form, and wanting to better understand the role it plays in our culture. In You Didn't Hear This From Me, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling.
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Breaking down gossip
- By JASmall on 04-30-25
By: Kelsey McKinney
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Taking Manhattan
- The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America
- By: Russell Shorto
- Narrated by: Russell Shorto
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general.
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I really appreciated how the author continually related the past to what we see today.
- By Jaelyn Dean on 05-22-25
By: Russell Shorto
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Black Tunnel White Magic
- A Murder, a Detective's Obsession, and '90s Los Angeles at the Brink
- By: Rick Jackson, Matthew McGough, Michael Connelly - foreword
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen, Michael Connelly
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck? Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker’s two male roommates, one Black, and one white.
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How he was able to weave the background of the time period into the story helping the reader understand circumstances
- By Debbie Riley on 06-09-25
By: Rick Jackson, and others
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It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time
- The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote
- By: Bruce Vilanch
- Narrated by: Bruce Vilanch
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendarily bad productions. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business
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For show biz lovers
- By Sarasota on 03-07-25
By: Bruce Vilanch
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Care and Feeding
- A Memoir
- By: Laurie Woolever
- Narrated by: Laurie Woolever
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there’s more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.
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Ruined by dull narration
- By pinkwoo on 03-12-25
By: Laurie Woolever