Owed
Penguin Poets
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $6.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Joshua Bennett
-
By:
-
Joshua Bennett
About this listen
From a 2021 Whiting Award and Guggenheim Fellow recipient, a “rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.” (The New Yorker)
Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting debut" that was "abounding in tenderness and rich with character", with a "virtuosic kind of code switching". Bennett's new collection, Owed, is a book with celebration at its center. Its primary concern is how we might mend the relationship between ourselves and the people, spaces, and objects we have been taught to think of as insignificant, as fundamentally unworthy of study, reflection, attention, or care. Spanning the spectrum of genre and form - from elegy and ode to origin myth - these poems elaborate an aesthetics of repair. What's more, they ask that we turn to the songs and sites of the historically denigrated so that we might uncover a new way of being in the world together, one wherein we can truthfully reckon with the brutality of the past and thus imagine the possibilities of our shared, unpredictable present, anew.
©2020 Joshua Bennett (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Study of Human Life
- Penguin Poets
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across three sequences, Joshua Bennett’s new book recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building even now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems that deal with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth.
-
-
Soul-Stirring Brillance
- By Amazon Customer on 03-29-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Spoken Word
- A Cultural History
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for Barack and Michelle Obama, at the same White House "Poetry Jam" where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater.
-
-
Loved this rich, thoughtful cultural history of spoken word
- By Jean Burke-Spraker on 12-12-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Bloodchild and Other Stories
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Malik Rashad, Allyson Johnson, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A perfect introduction for new listeners and a must-have for avid fans, this New York Times Notable Book includes "Bloodchild," winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards and "Speech Sounds," winner of the Hugo Award. Appearing in audio for the first time, "Amnesty" is a story of a woman named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent relationship between humans and a species of invaders. Also new to this collection is "The Book of Martha" which asks: What would you do if God granted you the ability—and responsibility—to save humanity from itself?
-
-
Some are good
- By Jennabug on 08-10-24
-
Black Girls Must Die Exhausted
- A Novel (Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, Book 1)
- By: Jayne Allen
- Narrated by: Marcella Cox
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tabitha Walker is a black woman with a plan to "have it all." At 33 years old, the checklist for the life of her dreams is well underway. Education? Check. Good job? Check. Down payment for a nice house? Check. Dating marriage material? Check, check, and check. With a coveted position as a local news reporter, a "paper-perfect" boyfriend, and even a standing Saturday morning appointment with a reliable hairstylist, everything seems to be falling into place. Then Tabby receives an unexpected diagnosis, jeopardizing the keystone she took for granted: having children.
-
-
Not What I Expected
- By R. Cartwright on 10-16-21
By: Jayne Allen
-
Infinite Hope
- By: Ashley Bryan
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May of 1942, at the age of 18, Ashley Bryan was drafted to fight in World War II. For the next three years, he would face the horrors of war as a black soldier in a segregated army. For the next 40 years, Ashley would keep his time in the war a secret. But now, he tells his story. The story of the kind people who supported him. The story of the bright moments that guided him through the dark. And the story of his passion for art that would save him time and time again.
-
-
Beautiful Story
- By Dino720 on 05-12-20
By: Ashley Bryan
-
New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
-
-
Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
The Study of Human Life
- Penguin Poets
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 2 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across three sequences, Joshua Bennett’s new book recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building even now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems that deal with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth.
-
-
Soul-Stirring Brillance
- By Amazon Customer on 03-29-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Spoken Word
- A Cultural History
- By: Joshua Bennett
- Narrated by: Joshua Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for Barack and Michelle Obama, at the same White House "Poetry Jam" where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater.
-
-
Loved this rich, thoughtful cultural history of spoken word
- By Jean Burke-Spraker on 12-12-23
By: Joshua Bennett
-
Bloodchild and Other Stories
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Malik Rashad, Allyson Johnson, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A perfect introduction for new listeners and a must-have for avid fans, this New York Times Notable Book includes "Bloodchild," winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards and "Speech Sounds," winner of the Hugo Award. Appearing in audio for the first time, "Amnesty" is a story of a woman named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent relationship between humans and a species of invaders. Also new to this collection is "The Book of Martha" which asks: What would you do if God granted you the ability—and responsibility—to save humanity from itself?
-
-
Some are good
- By Jennabug on 08-10-24
-
Black Girls Must Die Exhausted
- A Novel (Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, Book 1)
- By: Jayne Allen
- Narrated by: Marcella Cox
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tabitha Walker is a black woman with a plan to "have it all." At 33 years old, the checklist for the life of her dreams is well underway. Education? Check. Good job? Check. Down payment for a nice house? Check. Dating marriage material? Check, check, and check. With a coveted position as a local news reporter, a "paper-perfect" boyfriend, and even a standing Saturday morning appointment with a reliable hairstylist, everything seems to be falling into place. Then Tabby receives an unexpected diagnosis, jeopardizing the keystone she took for granted: having children.
-
-
Not What I Expected
- By R. Cartwright on 10-16-21
By: Jayne Allen
-
Infinite Hope
- By: Ashley Bryan
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May of 1942, at the age of 18, Ashley Bryan was drafted to fight in World War II. For the next three years, he would face the horrors of war as a black soldier in a segregated army. For the next 40 years, Ashley would keep his time in the war a secret. But now, he tells his story. The story of the kind people who supported him. The story of the bright moments that guided him through the dark. And the story of his passion for art that would save him time and time again.
-
-
Beautiful Story
- By Dino720 on 05-12-20
By: Ashley Bryan
-
New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
-
-
Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
The Carrying
- Poems
- By: Ada Limón
- Narrated by: Ada Limón
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”—and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.” And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives.
-
-
The Calm, Serene Tone of Her Voice
- By Tom on 05-31-24
By: Ada Limón
-
Frank
- Sonnets
- By: Diane Seuss
- Narrated by: Diane Seuss
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without," Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss's working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sheer virtuosity, Seuss moves nimbly across thought and time, poetry and punk, AIDS and addiction, Christ and motherhood, showing us what we can do, what we can do without, and what we offer to one another when we have nothing left to spare.
-
-
The real real
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-24
By: Diane Seuss
-
Between the World and Me
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
-
-
A Heartfelt Self-aware Literary Masterpiece
- By T Spencer on 07-30-15
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
How to Say Babylon
- A Memoir
- By: Safiya Sinclair
- Narrated by: Safiya Sinclair
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure. For him, a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.
-
-
Beautifully written. Powerful story.
- By Brenda Barbour on 10-22-23
By: Safiya Sinclair
-
Finna
- Poems
- By: Nate Marshall
- Narrated by: Nate Marshall
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These poems consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives and other oppressed people in our current era of emboldened white supremacy, and the use of the Black vernacular in America’s vast reserve of racial and gendered epithets. Finna explores the erasure of peoples in the American narrative; asks how gendered language can provoke violence; and finally, how the Black vernacular, expands our notions of possibility, giving us a new language of hope: nothing about our people is romantic and it shouldn’t be.
-
-
F I N N A
- By E. Samms on 07-24-23
By: Nate Marshall
-
What Is the Grass
- Walt Whitman in My Life
- By: Mark Doty
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty - a poet, a New Yorker, and an American - keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work.
By: Mark Doty
-
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
-
-
Beautifully written, but painful.
- By NB on 06-10-19
By: Ocean Vuong
-
I Had a Brother Once
- A Poem, A Memoir
- By: Adam Mansbach
- Narrated by: Adam Mansbach
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I Had A Brother Once is a brilliant, genre-defying work - both memoir and epic poem - about the struggle for wisdom, grace, and ritual in the face of unspeakable loss. Adam is forced to re-remember a brother he thought he knew and to reckon with a ghost, confronting his unsettled family history, his distant relationship with tradition and faith, and his desperate need to understand an event that always slides just out of his grasp.
-
-
The words, poetry of grief
- By Sally Morsbach on 11-23-23
By: Adam Mansbach
-
Memorial Drive
- A Daughter's Memoir
- By: Natasha Trethewey
- Narrated by: Natasha Trethewey
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age 19, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief.
-
-
poetic
- By Amazon Customer on 08-03-20
-
We Want Our Bodies Back
- Poems
- By: Jessica Care Moore
- Narrated by: Jessica Care Moore
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
-
-
Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
-
The Beautiful Struggle
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ta-Nehisi Coates' debut is an infectious, reflective memoir - a lyrical saga of surviving the crack-stricken streets of Baltimore in the '80s. Son of Vietnam vet and black awareness advocate Paul Coates - a poor man who set out to publish lost classics of black history - Ta-Nehisi drifts toward salvation at Howard University, while his ominous brother Big Bill finds his own rhythm hustling.
-
-
Interesting glimpse into a life so unlike my own
- By Stacey on 01-26-15
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
- By: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.
-
-
The brilliance of Hanif
- By Anonymous User on 09-18-24
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
Critic reviews
“Themes of praise and debt pervade this rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.... Bennett conjures a spirit of kinship that, illuminated by redolent imagery, borders on mythic, and boldly stakes claim to ‘some living, future / English, & everyone in it / is immortal." (The New Yorker)
“Not only are these poems eloquent but also lyrical, intelligent, and, occasionally, funny. Most reflect upon and communicate the pain, joy, and intensity of the current Black experience ... In a time when many confront and protest the racism prevalent in our society, Bennett’s new book is vital.” (Library Journal starred review)
"[A]stonishing poems that explore the past, childhood, family relationships, identity, and memory among many other themes, all expertly rendered through a mixture of forms ... [Bennett] has a gift for building and setting vivid scenes and complex stories within the small frames of his stanzas.” (Booklist)
Related to this topic
-
Breathe
- A Letter to My Sons
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Breathe explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world. Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African-American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love.
-
-
Delightful peek into the heart & soul of a mother
- By Treesey on 10-08-19
By: Imani Perry
-
We Want Our Bodies Back
- Poems
- By: Jessica Care Moore
- Narrated by: Jessica Care Moore
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
-
-
Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
-
Between the World and Me
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
-
-
A Heartfelt Self-aware Literary Masterpiece
- By T Spencer on 07-30-15
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
-
-
Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
Tomboyland
- Essays
- By: Melissa Faliveno, Joey Soloway - introduction
- Narrated by: Melissa Faliveno
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flyover country, the middle of nowhere, the space between the coasts. The American Midwest is a place beyond definition, whose very boundaries are a question. It's a place of rolling prairies and towering pines, where guns in bars and trucks on blocks are as much a part of the landscape as rivers and lakes and farms. Where girls are girls and boys are boys, where women are mothers and wives, where one is taught to work hard and live between the lines.
-
-
Embrace the Quirk
- By Lorraine S. on 07-26-22
By: Melissa Faliveno, and others
-
Who Killed My Father
- By: Édouard Louis
- Narrated by: Edouard Louis
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.
-
-
Powerful. Poetic. Sparse. Piercing.
- By Theophile Jones on 06-01-23
By: Édouard Louis
-
Breathe
- A Letter to My Sons
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Breathe explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world. Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African-American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love.
-
-
Delightful peek into the heart & soul of a mother
- By Treesey on 10-08-19
By: Imani Perry
-
We Want Our Bodies Back
- Poems
- By: Jessica Care Moore
- Narrated by: Jessica Care Moore
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
-
-
Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
-
Between the World and Me
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
-
-
A Heartfelt Self-aware Literary Masterpiece
- By T Spencer on 07-30-15
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
-
-
Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
-
Tomboyland
- Essays
- By: Melissa Faliveno, Joey Soloway - introduction
- Narrated by: Melissa Faliveno
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flyover country, the middle of nowhere, the space between the coasts. The American Midwest is a place beyond definition, whose very boundaries are a question. It's a place of rolling prairies and towering pines, where guns in bars and trucks on blocks are as much a part of the landscape as rivers and lakes and farms. Where girls are girls and boys are boys, where women are mothers and wives, where one is taught to work hard and live between the lines.
-
-
Embrace the Quirk
- By Lorraine S. on 07-26-22
By: Melissa Faliveno, and others
-
Who Killed My Father
- By: Édouard Louis
- Narrated by: Edouard Louis
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.
-
-
Powerful. Poetic. Sparse. Piercing.
- By Theophile Jones on 06-01-23
By: Édouard Louis
-
Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
-
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
-
Mother Tongue
- By: Demetria Martinez
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States - his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams.
-
-
Amazing Story
- By Alexa :3 on 09-26-24
-
Magical Negro
- Poems
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Magical Negro is an archive of black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. Focused primarily on depictions of black womanhood alongside personal narratives, the collection tackles interior and exterior politics - of both the body and society, of both the individual and the collective experience.
-
-
Waste of time
- By Lida on 07-19-20
By: Morgan Parker
-
Priestdaddy
- A Memoir
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Patricia Lockwood
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.
-
-
Terrible narration--read, don't listen
- By Penelope on 08-06-17
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Ricochet Joe
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 1 hr and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joe Mandel is a perfectly ordinary guy from a perfectly ordinary town - a college student and community volunteer who dreams of one day publishing a novel. When a series of strange intuitions leads him to a crime in progress, Joe jumps headlong into danger without hesitation. In the aftermath, he wonders about the uncanny impulse that suddenly swept over him. Until new friend Portia Montclair, the strangely wise daughter of the local police chief, explains to him what sent him ricocheting around town like a crazy pinball.
-
-
Wow, seriously crackers...
- By Lonnie-The GreatNorthernTroll-Moore on 01-10-18
By: Dean Koontz
-
Waiting for Snow in Havana
- Confessions of a Cuban Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other - but with certain differences. The neighbor's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. Then, in January 1959, the world changed....
-
-
Poorly chosen narrator
- By LS on 02-10-16
By: Carlos Eire
-
A Little Devil in America
- Notes in Praise of Black Performance
- By: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and best-selling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space
-
-
Magical
- By Mary A. Ardoin on 05-11-21
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
-
You Better Be Lightning
- By: Andrea Gibson
- Narrated by: Andrea Gibson
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You Better Be Lightning ranges from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Rikki B. on 01-31-23
By: Andrea Gibson
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Learning to Die in Miami
- Confessions of a Refugee Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
-
-
Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
-
Abandon Me
- Memoirs
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection - with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery.
-
-
This journey is captivating to say the least!
- By Ilanna on 08-11-17
By: Melissa Febos
What listeners say about Owed
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Maya
- 05-23-23
another beauty
it’s always a joy to consume a work by joshua bennett, and this one was no exception. stunning from beginning to end
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kasey M Cooper
- 09-23-21
Poetry that makes you feel...
I loved this collection of poetry. I felt like I was with Me. Bennett in every scene and every moment.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Chris Caldwell
- 04-03-22
Phenomenal poet
Joshua has been a very powerful prolific poet for many years I am happy to call him a friend. His words always motivate me and remind me it is a gift to be black.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!