New York, My Village
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Elnathan John
-
By:
-
Uwem Akpan
About this listen
A daring first novel in the great picaresque tradition - both buoyant comedy and devastating satire - by the author of the best-selling story collection Say You’re One of Them
Ekong Udousoro is a Nigerian editor undertaking a reckoning with the brutal recent history of his homeland by curating a collection of stories about the Biafran War. He is thrilled when a publishing fellowship gives him the opportunity to continue his work in Manhattan while learning the ins and outs of publishing. But while his sophisticated colleagues meet him with kindness and hospitality, he is soon exposed to the industry’s colder, ruthlessly commercial underbelly, boorish and hostile neighbors, and - beneath a superficial cosmopolitanism - a bedrock of White cultural superiority and racist assumptions about Africa, its peoples, and worst of all, its food. Haunted by the devastating darkness of civil war and searingly observant about the myriad ways that tribalism defines life everywhere from the villages of Africa to the villages within New York City, New York, My Village is nevertheless full of heart, hilarity, and hope.
©2021 Uwem Akpan (P)2021 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Half of a Yellow Sun
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Zainab Jah
- Length: 18 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a 13-year-old houseboy working for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who's abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
-
-
A Little Background Adjustment
- By Perkbrooke on 03-13-18
-
Say You're One of Them
- By: Uwem Akpan
- Narrated by: Robin Miles, Dion Graham, Kevin R. Free
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few listeners will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
-
-
Save your Money!
- By Michal A. Joyner on 11-20-09
By: Uwem Akpan
-
The Lincoln Highway
- A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel)
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
-
-
I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
-
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
- A Novel
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.
-
-
Very well written but...
- By Sasha on 05-31-22
By: Akwaeke Emezi
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
-
Best Read/Listen on Audible
- By Henry Posner on 09-22-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
Half of a Yellow Sun
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Zainab Jah
- Length: 18 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a 13-year-old houseboy working for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who's abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
-
-
A Little Background Adjustment
- By Perkbrooke on 03-13-18
-
Say You're One of Them
- By: Uwem Akpan
- Narrated by: Robin Miles, Dion Graham, Kevin R. Free
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few listeners will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
-
-
Save your Money!
- By Michal A. Joyner on 11-20-09
By: Uwem Akpan
-
The Lincoln Highway
- A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel)
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
-
-
I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
-
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
- A Novel
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.
-
-
Very well written but...
- By Sasha on 05-31-22
By: Akwaeke Emezi
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
-
Best Read/Listen on Audible
- By Henry Posner on 09-22-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Other Black Girl
- A Novel
- By: Zakiya Dalila Harris
- Narrated by: Aja Naomi King, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Heather Alicia Simms, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
-
-
Provocative
- By TDub on 06-05-21
-
Rules of Civility
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the last night of 1937, 25-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society - where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.
-
-
Bright Young Things in a Dark World
- By Michele Kellett on 08-13-12
By: Amor Towles
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.
-
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
Olga Dies Dreaming
- A Novel
- By: Xochitl Gonzalez
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, Inés del Castillo, Armando Riesco
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo” are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular Congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.
-
-
Funny, romantic, serious, substantial—all of these things and more
- By Diana on 01-07-22
By: Xochitl Gonzalez
-
South to America
- A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 16 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.
-
-
An incredible achievement
- By Tom on 02-16-22
By: Imani Perry
-
Seven Days in June
- By: Tia Williams
- Narrated by: Mela Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award‑winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love.
-
-
Better than the Reviews Say
- By Akuba on 09-26-21
By: Tia Williams
-
All Adults Here
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
-
-
What?!
- By LoisandClark on 05-20-20
By: Emma Straub
-
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- By: Junot Diaz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.
-
-
Wondrous Book!!!
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Junot Diaz
-
Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
-
Waiting for the Barbarians
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.
-
-
An Interesting Read For The Current Times
- By Jen on 04-05-20
By: J. M. Coetzee
-
Vagabonds!
- A Novel
- By: Eloghosa Osunde
- Narrated by: Arit Okpo, Atta Otigba, Eloghosa Osunde, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance.
-
-
One of the best books of 2022
- By Geonn Cannon on 03-19-22
By: Eloghosa Osunde
-
Chain Gang All Stars
- A Novel
- By: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- Narrated by: Shayna Small, Aaron Goodson, Michael Crouch, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
-
-
Can’t wait for more from this author!
- By Brian Sheldon on 06-04-23
Related to this topic
-
Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
-
-
Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
-
Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
-
-
Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
-
Good Muslim Boy
- By: Osamah Sami
- Narrated by: Osamah Sami, David Tredinnick
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Osamah Sami: a schemer, a dreamer and a madcap antihero of spectacular proportions whose terrible life choices keep leading to cataclysmic consequences...despite his best laid plans to be a good Muslim boy. By the age of 13, Osamah had survived the Iran-Iraq war, peddled fireworks and chewing gum on the Iranian black market, proposed 'temporary marriage' not once but three times, and received countless floggings from the Piety Police....
-
-
Funny, heartwarming and one of the best
- By Sylvia Green on 07-26-17
By: Osamah Sami
-
One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
-
-
An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
-
Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
-
The Wind in My Hair
- My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran
- By: Masih Alinejad
- Narrated by: Linda Henning
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A photo on Masih's Facebook page: a woman standing proudly, face bare, hair blowing in the wind. Her crime: removing her veil, or hijab, which is compulsory for women in Iran. This is the self-portrait that sparked "My Stealthy Freedom", a social media campaign that went viral. But Masih is so much more than the arresting face that sparked a campaign inspiring women to find their voices. She's also a world-class journalist whose personal story, told in her unforgettably bold and spirited voice, is emotional and inspiring.
-
-
An inspiring journey
- By Krishna Teja Rekapalli on 01-06-19
By: Masih Alinejad
-
Guapa
- By: Saleem Haddad
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother - the woman who raised him - catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend, Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar Guapa, who has been arrested by the police.
-
-
Guapa
- By Mah Maass on 08-25-16
By: Saleem Haddad
-
Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
-
-
Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
-
Good Muslim Boy
- By: Osamah Sami
- Narrated by: Osamah Sami, David Tredinnick
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Osamah Sami: a schemer, a dreamer and a madcap antihero of spectacular proportions whose terrible life choices keep leading to cataclysmic consequences...despite his best laid plans to be a good Muslim boy. By the age of 13, Osamah had survived the Iran-Iraq war, peddled fireworks and chewing gum on the Iranian black market, proposed 'temporary marriage' not once but three times, and received countless floggings from the Piety Police....
-
-
Funny, heartwarming and one of the best
- By Sylvia Green on 07-26-17
By: Osamah Sami
-
One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
-
-
An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
-
Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
-
The Wind in My Hair
- My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran
- By: Masih Alinejad
- Narrated by: Linda Henning
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A photo on Masih's Facebook page: a woman standing proudly, face bare, hair blowing in the wind. Her crime: removing her veil, or hijab, which is compulsory for women in Iran. This is the self-portrait that sparked "My Stealthy Freedom", a social media campaign that went viral. But Masih is so much more than the arresting face that sparked a campaign inspiring women to find their voices. She's also a world-class journalist whose personal story, told in her unforgettably bold and spirited voice, is emotional and inspiring.
-
-
An inspiring journey
- By Krishna Teja Rekapalli on 01-06-19
By: Masih Alinejad
-
The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
-
-
Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
-
Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
-
-
Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
-
Full Circle
- By: Michael Thomas Ford
- Narrated by: Blake Somerset
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
History professor Ned Brummel is living happily with his partner of 12 years in small-town Maine when he receives a phone call from his estranged friend - Jack - telling him that another friend - Andy - is very ill and possibly near death. As Ned boards a plane to Chicago on his way to his friend's bedside, he embarks on another journey into memory, examining the major events and small moments that have shaped his world and his relationships with these two very different, very important men.
-
-
To Every Season...
- By Donald on 10-01-13
-
Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
-
-
Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
-
In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
-
-
My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
-
The Submission
- A Novel
- By: Amy Waldman
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Claire Harwell hasn't settled into grief; events haven't let her. Cool, eloquent, raising two fatherless children, Claire has emerged as the most visible of the 9/11 widows who became a potent political force in the aftermath of the catastrophe. She longs for her husband, but she has found her mission: she sits on a jury charged with selecting a fitting memorial for the victims of the attack.
-
-
Some books were meant to be read...
- By Barbara on 02-24-12
By: Amy Waldman
-
Find Me Unafraid
- Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
- By: Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson, Mandy Siegfried, P.J. Ochlan (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a foreword by Nicholas Kristof.
-
-
A difficult and rewarding listen
- By R. MCRACKAN on 08-23-18
By: Kennedy Odede, and others
-
The Association of Small Bombs
- By: Karan Mahajan
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family's television at a repair shop with their friend, Mansoor Ahmed, one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb - one of the many "small" bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world - detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb.
-
-
A tragedy of manners
- By jdukuray on 07-22-16
By: Karan Mahajan
-
The Fox Hunt
- A Refugee's Memoir of Coming to America
- By: Mohammed Al Samawi
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in the Old City of Sana’a, Yemen, to a pair of middle-class doctors, Mohammed Al Samawi was a devout Muslim raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But when Mohammed was 23, he secretly received a copy of the Bible, and what he read cast doubt on everything he’d previously believed. After connecting with Jews and Christians on social media, and at various international interfaith conferences, Mohammed became an activist, making it his mission to promote dialogue and cooperation in Yemen. Then came the death threats....
-
-
Engaging and informative memoir
- By Mark on 08-02-18
-
After the Roundup
- Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
- By: Joseph Weismann
- Narrated by: J. Clark Allison
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 11-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated. A thousand children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt.
-
-
A “must-listen” book
- By Jonathan R Scupin on 09-25-18
By: Joseph Weismann
-
The World We Found
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best-selling author and PEN and Beyond Margins Award finalist Thrity Umrigar’s acclaimed novels “resonate with rich prose and vibrant depictions of India” ( Booklist). In The World We Found, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta - once friends at the University of Bombay - reconnect 30 years later when Armaiti is diagnosed with cancer. Coming together, all four women are forced to reexamine their lives.
-
-
Good story but performance not so much!
- By Alisha on 09-13-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
-
Shadow of a Century
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.
-
-
Loved this book!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-14-20
By: Jean Grainger
What listeners say about New York, My Village
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- RSG
- 12-14-21
So much promise but ultimately, bugged me
There is so much comedy, tragedy and history to savor here, a la carte. Taken as whole this turns into less than a feast and more an experiment of mismatched plot devices that wind up giving the reader indigestion. The author’s infestation obsession serves not as a metaphorical theme but more as a derailment. I kept reading because, in passages, Akpan delivers beautiful graphic depictions and stories of racism and brutality that must be heard. He deftly balances these parts with experiences, joy, and wonderment in and about his “NYC”. If only the editor in the story had worked with Akpan the author through an aggressive rewrite. That would have scratched my itch. As for the performance, John’s reading is largely resonant but terribly weak in portraying every American woman character’s speech pattern as if she was auditioning to play Blanche DuBois. What started as a thrilling story ended, sadly, as tedious.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 03-24-23
Motif gone wrong?
I was initially excited about this text. Initially, I came across it while perusing my local bookstore. I took note of it and decided it was better to purchase it on Kindle, so I did. I began reading with excitement and enjoyed the initial pacing intertwined with so much history that I often supplemented my reading with a history dive. The more I read, however, the less enjoyable this text became. After putting it down for a couple of months, I decided to purchase it on Audible. Even that was a struggle. My weeks-long desire to see this come to an end was stronger than my desire to see what would ever become of Ekong, Caro, Molly, Usen or the crew at Andrew & Thompson. Perhaps the author intended the overdone fixation with bedbugs to serve as a motif or metaphor for the way America's racism sucked the life out of him, left him battered, bruised, and damaged in ways unimaginable. However, the idea that 90% of this text is about bedbugs in Hell's Kitchen and less about one man's journey to diversify the publishing industry and to tell the stories from events on the continent that are only whispered about behind closed doors, left so much to be desired
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Truth Speaker
- 01-12-22
Tedious, repetitive narrative mars violent storyline
The main character of this book vacillates between naïve to the point of stupid and insightful in wild unpredictable swings.
There are small incidents throughout the story — spoiler alert for bedbugs – which gets treated as more important and life shaking than the violence of traumatic horrific war stories.
There is a structural sophistication to the way in which the story is told, but the torturous duration of the present time story components coupled with the always unpredictable “will he be stupid or will he be smart” questions makes this almost unbearable.
The narrator’s voice is lovely to listen to, but put me to sleep while I was driving.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!