
Mainline Mama
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Bahni Turpin
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By:
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Keeonna Harris
About this listen
A powerful exploration of self-resilience, family, and community from activist and prison abolitionist Keeonna Harris.
Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was “grown.” Within a year she was pregnant and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a “mainline mama,” a parent facing the task of raising a child—while still growing up herself—with an incarcerated partner.
In this triumphant memoir, Keeonna recalls her challenging journey as a mainline mama, from learning to overcome the exhausting difficulties of navigating the carceral system in the United States to transforming herself into an advocate for women like her—the predominantly Black and Brown women left behind to pick up the pieces of their families and fractured lives.
Keeonna speaks frankly about the forces that threatened to defeat her, how she learned to re - build her broken relationship with a mother who had lost trust in her, and how time eased the shame, guilt, and stigma of being a young Black teen mom with a partner behind bars. She offers inspiration and solace, showing how to create moments of beauty, humanity, and love—such as picking the perfect wedding dress for a ceremony in a state prison visiting room—in a place de - signed to break spirits.
Mainline Mama is about creating self-love and community—crucial acts of radical resistance against a prison industrial complex designed to dehumanize and to separate and shut away incarcerated individuals and their loved ones from the world.
©2025 Keeonna Harris (P)2025 HarperCollins PublishersRelated to this topic
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When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, her struggle to understand her place in the world as a person who is half-Black, half-white—yet feels neither—is amplified. Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child during the politically charged Jamaican exodus in the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily. Years later, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in.
By: Charlene Carr
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Becoming Spectacular
- The Rhythm of Resilience from the First African American Rockette
- By: Jennifer Jones
- Narrated by: Chanté McCormick
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Radio City Rockettes are as American as baseball, hot dogs, and the Fourth of July. Their legendary synchronized leg kicks, precise lines, and megawatt smiles have charmed audiences for a century. But there is a hidden side to this illustrious national institution. Like Gelsey Kirkland’s iconic Dancing on My Grave, Becoming Spectacular allows us to walk in Jones’ tap shoes—beautiful and glittering, yet painful and binding. Bringing into focus the wounded life of a trailblazer, this searing memoir is also a triumphant celebration of a spirit who refused to be counted out.
By: Jennifer Jones
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Pulling the Chariot of the Sun
- A Memoir of a Kidnapping
- By: Shane McCrae
- Narrated by: Shane McCrae
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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When Shane McCrae was three years old, his grandparents kidnapped him and took him to suburban Texas. His mom was white and his dad was Black, and to hide his Blackness from him, his maternal grandparents stole him from his father. In the years that followed, they manipulated and controlled him, refusing to acknowledge his heritage—all the while believing they were doing what was best for him.
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A memoir of forgotten memories
- By lgsd on 08-25-23
By: Shane McCrae
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Uncivil Liberties with Goldie Taylor
- By: Goldie Taylor
- Narrated by: Goldie Taylor
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Original Recording
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In this six-part series, journalist and host Goldie Taylor will take us on a journey to uncover key misunderstandings that Americans have about our relationship with guns. Goldie will also unpack her own complicated relationship with gun ownership. There are no easy answers. But if we are to find solutions, we’ve got to face facts, then start asking ourselves tough questions. This series aims to be that starting point.
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Thoughtful & Impacful
- By D Trigg on 11-12-24
By: Goldie Taylor
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People of Means
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Johnson
- Narrated by: Nancy Johnson, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope, carrying a suitcase and the voice of her father telling her she’s part of a family legacy of greatness. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and she’s thrust into a movement for social change. Freda is reluctant to get involved, torn between a soon-to-be doctor her parents approve of and an audacious young man willing to risk it all in the name of justice.
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Beautifully Told
- By Dr. Judy A. Alston on 02-19-25
By: Nancy Johnson
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Lovers Rock
- Seven Jamaican Love Stories
- By: Alexia Arthurs, Mateo Askaripour, Maisy Card, and others
- Narrated by: Elle Cleviden, Roger Cross, Tamika Katon-Donegal, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Original Recording
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Lovers Rock stars Jamaica: its language, its landscape, its vibe, its humor, its edge and its persistent, dogged beauty. These seven stories imagine strange, quirky, familiar and delicious encounters between people in search of romantic love in the twenty-first century. Featuring characters from of all walks of life, each story is connected by the unique vibe of Jamaican desire.
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I love the concept
- By K. A. on 02-26-25
By: Alexia Arthurs, and others
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Beauty in the Blood
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Carter
- Narrated by: Marie-Francoise Theodore
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Sarah Toomey is a successful young black lawyer, lovely but straitlaced–and afraid that she is losing her mind. Since the death of her mother, a force she can neither understand nor control is manipulating her memory and driving her to unexplained acts of violence and destruction. At the same time, Sarah is swept up in a highly charged relationship with a work colleague that portends a danger of its own. As she moves through her privileged life in New York, Sarah comes to learn how her past—her haunted history—is intertwined with America’s.
By: Charlotte Carter
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Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed
- 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora
- By: Saraciea J. Fennell - editor
- Narrated by: Avi Roque, Elizabeth Acevedo, Frankie Corzo, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora. These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth. Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community.
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Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is a treasure trove of essays and poems.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 04-04-22
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Gather Me
- A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me
- By: Glory Edim
- Narrated by: Glory Edim
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back. Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library.
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This book was EVERYTHING! 🖤✨️
- By Ms. Reece on 02-10-25
By: Glory Edim
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The Only Black Girl in the Room
- A Novel
- By: Alex Travis
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Genevieve Francis, a 25-year-old Black reporter, assumed she’d go into her fourth year at her newspaper job with a bigger story than the latest seasonal ice cream flavor. Instead, she’s relegated to doing copy edits and sensitivity reads on the articles her white colleagues write. So when Gen finally gets the opportunity to cover a prominent CEO’s gala, she leaps at the chance—this will be her biggest assignment to date. The only problem: The CEO is her ex, Jude, whose marriage proposal she publicly rejected four years prior.
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Amazing story of truth setting you free
- By C. Spyn on 01-21-25
By: Alex Travis
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The Life of Herod the Great
- By: Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah G. Plant - editor
- Narrated by: Blair Underwood, Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea.
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Absolutely Delighted
- By Whitney Williams-Black on 01-24-25
By: Zora Neale Hurston, and others