Night in the American Village
Women in the Shadow of the US Military Bases in Okinawa
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Narrated by:
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Nancy Wu
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By:
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Akemi Johnson
About this listen
A beautifully written examination of the complex relationship between the women living near the US bases in Okinawa and the servicemen who are stationed there
At the southern end of the Japanese archipelago lies Okinawa, host to a vast complex of US military bases. A legacy of World War II, these bases have been a fraught issue in Japan for decades - with tensions exacerbated by the often volatile relationship between islanders and the military, especially after the brutal rape of a 12-year-old girl by three servicemen in the 1990s.
But the situation is more complex than it seems. In Night in the American Village, journalist Akemi Johnson takes listeners deep into the “border towns” surrounding the bases - a world where cultural and political fault lines compel individuals, both Japanese and American, to continually renegotiate their own identities. Focusing on the women there, she follows the complex fallout of the murder of an Okinawan woman by an ex-US serviceman in 2016 and speaks to protesters, to women who date and marry American men, and groups that help them when problems arise, and to Okinawans whose family members survived World War II.
Thought-provoking and timely, Night in the American Village is a vivid look at the enduring wounds of US-Japanese history and the cultural and sexual politics of the American military empire.
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Blew my mind!
- By Leila Jaafari on 10-20-20
By: Laila Lalami
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The Buried
- An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Hessler
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos.
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A Fascinating, Funny, and Moving Account of Egypt
- By Jefferson on 07-23-19
By: Peter Hessler
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This Land Is Our Land
- An Immigrant's Manifesto
- By: Suketu Mehta
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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A timely argument for why the US and the West would benefit from accepting more immigrants. Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, This Land Is Our Land is a timely and necessary intervention and a literary polemic of the highest order.
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Greatly informative. wonderful narrated
- By ADEDZWA Dooyum Sartor on 06-29-19
By: Suketu Mehta
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A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves
- One Family and Migration in the 21st Century
- By: Jason DeParle
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When Jason DeParle moved into the Manila slums with Tita Comodas and her family three decades ago, he never imagined his reporting on them would span three generations and turn into the defining chronicle of a new age - the age of global migration. In a monumental book that gives new meaning to "immersion journalism", DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family as they endure years of sacrifice and separation, willing themselves out of shantytown poverty into a new global middle class.
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Excellent and Important
- By Booklover on 03-22-20
By: Jason DeParle
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The Dead Are Arising
- The Life of Malcolm X
- By: Les Payne, Tamara Payne
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author's interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative.
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Much more depth than the Haley book.
- By CapitalHeel on 11-03-20
By: Les Payne, and others
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Enemies in Love
- A German POW, a Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance
- By: Alexis Clark
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African-American nurse in the US military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler’s army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Eleanor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked - and segregated - Western town. Brought together by unlikely circumstances and racist assumptions, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love.
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A Unique Previously Untold Story
- By Avid listener LK on 09-17-18
By: Alexis Clark
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Excellent Daughters
- The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World
- By: Katherine Zoepf
- Narrated by: Katherine Zoepf
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals.
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Best book on Middle East written this decade
- By Zuzana B on 07-02-17
By: Katherine Zoepf
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The Stonewall Reader
- By: New York Public Library, Edmund White
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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June 28, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots.
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A good snapshot of LGBT history
- By Randy A. Wood on 09-28-19
By: New York Public Library, and others
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Arab and Jew
- Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
- By: David K. Shipler
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 27 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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David Shipler delves into the origins of the prejudices of Jews and Arabs that have been intensified by war, terrorism, and nationalism. Focusing on the diverse cultures that exist side by side in Israel and Israeli-controlled territories, Shipler examines the process of indoctrination that begins in schools; he discusses the far ranging effects of socioeconomic differences, historical conflicts between Islam and Judaism, attitudes about the Holocaust, and much more.
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'Arab and Jew' Needs a Good Editor
- By Robert W. Gillespie on 10-23-03
By: David K. Shipler
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Erdogan Rising
- The Battle for the Soul of Turkey
- By: Hannah Lucinda Smith
- Narrated by: Hannah Lucinda Smith
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone has heard of Erdogan: Turkey’s bullish, mercurial president is the original postmodern populist. Around the world, other strongmen are now following the path that he has blazed. For the first time, Erdogan Rising tells the inside story of how a democracy on the fringe of Europe has succumbed to dictatorship. Hannah Lucinda Smith, Turkey correspondent with The Times of London, has witnessed all that has befallen Turkey and the wider region since the onset of the Arab Spring.
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Overall fascinating profile of Erdogan’s Turkey
- By Saul M on 09-18-20
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The Shining Path
- Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes
- By: Orin Starn, Miguel La Serna
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 17, 1980, on the eve of Peru's presidential election, five masked men stormed a small town. They set election ballots ablaze and vanished, but not before planting a red hammer-and-sickle banner in the town square. The lone man arrested the next morning later swore allegiance to a group called Shining Path. Described by a US State Department cable as "cold-blooded and bestial", Shining Path orchestrated bombings, assassinations, and massacres across the cities, countryside, and jungles of Peru in a murderous campaign to seize power and impose a Communist government.
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Understanding my wife
- By Eugene on 06-10-22
By: Orin Starn, and others
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The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
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The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
What listeners say about Night in the American Village
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 06-11-22
An interesting read if you ever go to Okinawa
The beginning is hard and first half of the book looks like tear-jerker. BUT the author manages to present rather unbiased view of all three sides (JAP, USA and RYU).
All important info is mentioned. The author lays out history and tells the stories of eye witnesses.
It would have been interesting to see what happened with Urasoe Bay and whether Okinawans won against US and JP in Henoko base matters after 2018. Given they have a new PM and CoViD-19 must have had a detrimental influence on protests.
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- Amanda
- 06-29-21
Interesting read for those interested in Okinawa history
I love that it’s through the eyes of women, giving a new perspective on Okinawa / US base history rather than the usual military history.
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- Gerard J LaVan
- 11-30-20
Well Worth A Listen!
A fascinating book focused on Okinawa but really describing the impact of U.S. military bases on any country where they are located. Keep in mind there are hundreds of U.S. bases located throughout the world. The book is well written with wonderful narration
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- MDJ
- 06-16-23
Important read for all
Whether you come from Okinawa, have lived there for a short time, or never heard of it at all, this story is so vital to hear so that we may deeply understand the aftermath of war and become a better society.
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