More than I Imagined
What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew
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Narrated by:
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John Blake
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By:
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John Blake
About this listen
An award-winning journalist tells the “riveting” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) story of his quest to reconcile with his white mother and the family he’d never met—and how faith brought them all together.
“A compelling and courageous journey that bears witness to the realities of systemic racism, the complexity of identity within that system, and the possibilities of reconciliation.”—Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility
WINNER: The Christopher Award; The Illumination Award; The Nonfiction Book Award; Georgia Center’s “A Book All Georgians Should Read”; The Nautilus Award; Georgia Author of the Year Award
John Blake grew up in a notorious Black neighborhood in inner-city Baltimore that became the setting for the HBO series The Wire. There he became a self-described “closeted biracial person,” hostile toward white people while hiding the truth of his mother’s race. The son of a Black man and a white woman who met when interracial marriage was still illegal, Blake knew this much about his mother: She vanished from his life not long after his birth, and her family rejected him because of his race.
But at the age of seventeen, Blake had a surprise encounter that uncovered a disturbing family secret. This launched him on a quest to reconcile with his white family. His search centered on two questions: “Where is my mother?” and “Where do I belong?” More Than I Imagined is Blake’s propulsive true story about how he answered those questions with the help of an interracial church, a loving caregiver’s sacrifice, and an inexplicable childhood encounter that taught him the importance of forgiveness.
Blake covered some of the biggest stories about race in America for twenty-five years before realizing that “facts don’t change people, relationships do.” He owes this discovery to “radical integration,” which was the only way forward for him and his family—and is the only way forward for America as a multiracial democracy. More Than I Imagined is a hopeful story for our difficult times.
Praise for More Than I Imagined
“An incredibly moving memoir that both examines and complicates our understanding of race in America today, More Than I Imagined is overflowing with empathy and full of humanity.”—Clint Smith, New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed
“This is a book of gutsy hope and not of despair, of reconciliation and not of hatred. Both sides of the racial divide need the voice that Blake is uniquely qualified to offer.”—Philip Yancey, author of What’s So Amazing About Grace?
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Critic reviews
“This memoir surprised me over and over again. John Blake’s life reads like a thriller but, like his reporting at CNN, is packed with pockets of compassion and wisdom.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist
“More Than I Imagined is a powerful chronicle of John Blake’s journey that lays out a clear path toward racial healing—not just for his own family but the entire United States.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“More Than I Imagined testifies to the deepest truth that America cannot change unless Americans change. John Blake’s tender, powerful reckoning with his family’s history, secrets, myths, and divisions shows how we as a country can find a pathway to wholeness.”—Eric Liu, author of Become America
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- Unabridged
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My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.
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Heavy Topics & Satisfying Story
- By Oscar on 06-30-19
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As I Knew Him
- My Dad, Rod Serling
- By: Anne Serling
- Narrated by: Anne Serling
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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To Anne Serling, the imposing figure the public saw hosting The Twilight Zone each week, intoning cautionary observations about fate, chance, and humanity, was not the father she knew. Her fun-loving dad would play on the floor with the dogs, had nicknames for everyone in the family, and was apt to put a lampshade on his head and break out in song. He was her best friend, her playmate, and her confidant. After his unexpected death at 50, Anne, just 20, was left stunned.
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A Beautiful Tribute to a Wonderful Man
- By Becky on 04-12-20
By: Anne Serling
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Scars and Stilettos - 2nd Edition
- By: Harmony Dust
- Narrated by: Harmony Dust
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Scars and Stilettos: At 13, after being abandoned by her mother one summer and left to take care of her younger brother, Harmony becomes susceptible to a relationship that turns out to be toxic, abusive, and ultimately exploitative. She eventually finds herself working in a strip club at the age of 19, and her boyfriend becomes her pimp, controlling her every move and taking all of her money. Ultimately, she discovers a path to freedom and a whole new life.
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A religious book
- By Amazonbuyer on 10-12-21
By: Harmony Dust
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The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
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Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
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Invisible Child
- Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
- By: Andrea Elliott
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis has exploded, deepening the chasm between rich and poor. She must guide her siblings through a world riddled by hunger, violence, racism, drug addiction, and the threat of foster care.
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Narration is completely over the top
- By Heather on 10-14-21
By: Andrea Elliott
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Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
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Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
By: Justin Deabler
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Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
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Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
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Unforgetting
- A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas
- By: Roberto Lovato
- Narrated by: Roberto Lovato
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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An urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life, guerrilla warfare, intergenerational trauma, and interconnected violence between the United States and El Salvador, Roberto Lovato’s memoir excavates family history and reveals the intimate stories beneath headlines about gang violence and mass Central American migration, one of the most important, yet least-understood humanitarian crises of our time - and one in which the perspectives of Central Americans in the United States have been silenced and forgotten.
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Difficult to hear but important to know.
- By M. Lindquist on 12-18-20
By: Roberto Lovato
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Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
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Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
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Two Crosses
- Secrets of the Cross, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth Musser
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The glimmering Huguenot cross she so innocently wears leads her deep into the shadows. When Gabriella Madison arrives in the French village of Castelnau in 1961 to continue her university studies, she doesn’t anticipate being drawn into the secretive world behind the Algerian war for independence from France. And the further she delves into the war efforts, the more her faith is challenged. The people who surround her bring a whirlwind of transforming forces.
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Faith, Romance, Spies, and Fascinating History
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-19
By: Elizabeth Musser
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Black Boy
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.
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Outstanding
- By Trevin Harvey on 11-11-20
By: Richard Wright
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American Baby
- A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
- By: Gabrielle Glaser
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur, Gabrielle Glaser, Margaret Katz
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of women into surrendering their children.
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I felt the love of my birth mom...
- By Mary H. on 02-03-21
By: Gabrielle Glaser
What listeners say about More than I Imagined
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- She likes
- 12-18-23
Vulnerability
Mr. Blake expressed his most intimate thoughts of how society fills our heads with ideoisms of race and racism. The line that said you should forgive your neighbor, while he harbored unforgiveness towards his aunt standing waiting for him to speak to her. I felt I traveled the road with him until he found the answers to the questions the boy on him needed to live forgiven and free.
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- Karen Campbell
- 05-15-23
Should be required reading!
John’s story is powerful! His insights are raw, honest and thoughtful. I appreciate his take on the state of race relations in our country.
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1 person found this helpful
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- granny
- 05-04-23
Read this book!
We can never stop learning about life and racism - this is a beautifully written book about the author’s life of struggles and victories and everything in between. I learned a lot and found a new perspective on some things.
I’m not always a fan of author’s reading their own books, but this hit the spot.
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- Luciano Spiguel
- 05-12-23
Good life story illustrating race issues
This is the life story of the author, it presents in itself a lot of the racial issues in the US. As such, it shines.
The telling is good, but mid course it veers off a little into religion and some parts I could not tell if they were allegory or tried to pass as real events. This detracts a little from the whole because you wonder if previous parts can still be taken at face value.
Still, a good and important book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 09-28-23
Great read/listen
This really made me think about the connections I have in my life and the need to further diversify
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- Jane Marshall
- 06-22-23
A Must Read/Listen!
John Blake is a talented writer with a gift for storytelling. Listening to his voice via audiobook made the story come alive for me. John speaks from his heart as he shares how he processed and was able to learn and grow from family life experiences with racism, mental illness, faith, bias issues and finally forgiveness. The relationship building that John Blake has done over his lifetime is a blueprint for reducing racism in our society. Great read. Excellent book.
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- Middle age mom ;)
- 02-22-24
Authenticity of story
Loved that the story is more than meets the eye. About life, love and faith.
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- cynthia medanich
- 05-12-23
Walking in someone else’s shoes
I learned that relationships are work. Work on ourselves and on each other. They are not easy but don’t give up on them. And take them even if your not ready for them. Also there is more I can work on in my life. Get into the mix. Start fellowships in a safe friendly place like church and around food. Be humble, kind, excepting and open. I shared a few things with the author like a mom with mental illness, not having a close friend of another color, the need for a relationship with our Lord Jesus. The one with kind eyes and rather plain Jewish features. There are many more things I do not have in common with the author. That of Black. I’m not out going or Black. I’m a shy introvert white lady and have a few close friends. I’m happier alone with my art. I like my own company and hate conflict. I can painted people of color and found I love faces. But that’s me not the book.
I like the way the authors mind works. Having a seeking heart for wisdom, truth, honesty and hope. A visit from a ghost can happen and did. The weird part is why? A risk taker. Finding away to bring us all together as one people. I think his on to something about a shared love, goal and passion for understanding one another on this planet. Bring it all out into the light.
The bad in white peoples and black. The greatness in black peoples and white. White people need not fear. Change is needed and necessary. I pray it’s for the better. No more loss of any life of any color. I’m open to learning more and open to sharing this book to other white people I know.
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- mommabug
- 07-12-23
5 stars!! Must Read
John Blake is fantastic! I literally inhaled this book! I couldn’t put it down. Must read/ listen! 5 stars!
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- Jessica Miller
- 11-30-23
Beautiful and Inspiring - highly recommend
More Than I Imagined is engaging and beautiful, powerful and inspiring. John Blake had many opportunities throughout his life to grow angry, bitter, resentful, and to blame others for his circumstances. And few people would blame him if he had. But that is not what this story is about. Although some of the details of John's childhood are difficult to hear, his honest description gives the reader a better understanding of the challenges he faced and a greater appreciation of the fact that he even survived. His is a story that is interwoven with the pain of racism, unanswered questions, and doubts. But also courage, strong and sacrificial love, persistence, and ultimately forgiveness. While his spiritual journey is not the focus of the book, I found it to be one of the beautiful aspects of his narrative. In the midst of the painful things he experienced and witnessed, over time his life starts to reveal a slow but Divine redeeming - not only of his heart and relationships, but of others too. I was moved by his ability to see others in a new light, despite all he has lived through. I have read a number of biographies and I found myself thinking about this one again and again.
I listened to the book on Audible and I'm so glad that I did! John narrates it in his own voice, which makes it all the more powerful and poignant. As a listener, I felt like I was in a conversation with him, being introduced to his family and hearing his life story. I am so glad that he is willing to share both his life and his gift of writing with others!
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