
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
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Narrated by:
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Dani Martineck
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By:
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Andrea Lawlor
About this listen
"In these irreverent pages, a shapeshifter gets a crash course in gender and sexuality by inhabiting both sides of the binary and arriving precisely somewhere in the middle." —O, The Oprah Magazine
“HOT” (Maggie Nelson) • “TIGHT” (Eileen Myles) • “DEEP” (Michelle Tea)
It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flaneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: he's a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Paul transforms his body and his gender at will as he crossed the country–a journey and adventure through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his/her way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections.
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Critic reviews
"Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is playful, sexy, smart, and like nothing else I—or you—have ever read before."—Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
“Restless, muscular, and playful…. A tight satisfying masterpiece.”—Eileen Myles, author of Evolution
“Fast-paced and cheeky…a touchingly sweet-hearted and deeply cool book.”—Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave
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Emotional Torture
- By Teh Micha on 04-27-21
By: Torrey Peters
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If Beale Street Could Talk
- A Novel
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Told through the eyes of Tish, a 19-year-old girl in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and is imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions - affection, despair, and hope.
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The narrator did her thing, I love it!!!
- By Vicky on 03-22-16
By: James Baldwin
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Let the Record Show
- A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
- By: Sarah Schulman
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Coleman Williams, Sarah Schulman
- Length: 27 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration - and long-overdue reassessment - of the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture.
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Narration makes it difficult to enjoy
- By Katrine on 06-28-21
By: Sarah Schulman
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Felix Ever After
- By: Kacen Callender
- Narrated by: Logan Rozos
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Felix Love has never been in love — and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many — Black, queer, and transgender — to ever get his own happily-ever-after.
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Easily my favourite book of the year so far
- By Anonymous User on 05-25-20
By: Kacen Callender
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Brotherless Night
- A Novel
- By: V. V. Ganeshananthan
- Narrated by: Nirmala Rajasingam
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority.
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Heartbreaking
- By Aruna V. Sarma on 02-11-23
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Black Leopard, Red Wolf
- The Dark Star Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 24 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In the stunning first novel in Marlon James' Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy.
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Opaque. And hard to care about.
- By Lisa Gray on 02-07-19
By: Marlon James
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Stag Dance
- A Novel & Stories
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio, Briggon Snow, Eileen Noonan, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.
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Cringy and Beautiful
- By Stella G. Schwartz on 04-23-25
By: Torrey Peters
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Black on Both Sides
- A Racial History of Trans Identity
- By: C. Riley Snorton
- Narrated by: C. Riley Snorton
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives. Their erasure from trans history masks the ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-19th century to present-day anti-Black and anti-trans legislation and violence.
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Marginalized academic philosophy: pros and cons
- By Paul on 05-02-23
By: C. Riley Snorton
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Harvest
- By: Jim Crace
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A remote English village wakes on the morning after harvest, looking forward to enjoying a hard-earned day of rest and feasting. But two mysterious columns of smoke mar the sky, raising alarm and suspicion. The first column of smoke comes from the edge of the village land, sent as a signal by newcomers to announce their presence as per regional custom. The second smoke column is even more troubling: it comes from a blaze set in Master Kent's stables.
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Reader ruins it.
- By Jean L on 03-26-15
By: Jim Crace
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Perfume and Pain
- A Novel
- By: Anna Dorn
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student researching 1950s lesbian pulp who smells like metallic orchids, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli.
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Hilarious!!
- By Marilyn on 05-22-24
By: Anna Dorn
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The Bluest Eye
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
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Amazing
- By psiegler on 07-25-18
By: Toni Morrison
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Light from Uncommon Stars
- By: Ryka Aoki
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: To escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four.
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Awesome with a few hitches.
- By Levi Fay on 10-01-21
By: Ryka Aoki
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Solenoid
- By: Mircea Cărtărescu, Sean Cotter - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 34 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on Cartarescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art.
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Our Universal Phantasmagoria
- By Isaac Linder on 03-11-24
By: Mircea Cărtărescu, and others
What listeners say about Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
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- Dawn
- 06-28-19
The Hottest Book Ever Written
I've only dinged it a little because this book just sort of ends. No spoilers, but I wasn't very satisfied. The sex and heartbreak. Oh my god! I needed this book and it had its way with me.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Natalie Gamble
- 01-25-24
Great book!!
A must read novel for trans and queer folks. Thoroughly enjoyable and just raunchy enough
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- Jade
- 07-02-21
Unexpected, hot, deep
Unexpected and real telling of both a specific kind of queer experience and the universal queer experience. Will be a book I’ll buy in print to read over and to add to the collection of hyper nonspecific depth, and will certainly be listening to again and again. There’s just something here…
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1 person found this helpful
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- Alissa | wildcaughtword
- 10-13-23
Difficult to rate
There was plenty to like about the story and performance— I’d describe it as a bisexual’s maladaptive daydream infused with some real life queer experience to ground it. But by grounding it, it brought the whole thing down to depressy town which wasn’t the vibe I was hoping for as a reader. It felt pretty sad and a lot of the allure and magic of the transitioning flatlined for me. That said I think the author accomplished the book they wanted, and it was very well done, it just wasn’t what it was marketed as vibe-wise by the end. The fun, sexy fever-dream fizzled out and the sad reality of queer life took over. The writing and character building was very strong and I cared about them. The audio reader reminded me of the tiktoker who does fashion videos and says “let’s talk about it” I loved listening to them.
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- sarah avery sullivan
- 06-05-19
LOVE THIS BOOK
Loved living in the 90s queer feminist theory and music and fashion and city spots. I So relate to Paul’s sexuality/gender/desire, AL writes hard to describe feelings and actions in a way that makes them really understood validating relatable affirmed celebrated challenged
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2 people found this helpful
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- Elliott
- 06-24-24
A chaotic queer experience in sexuality and gender identity
This novel follows a shapeshifting gay man who saunters through every type of human sexuality and expression in gender to find where he belongs. It exemplifies the queer experience in a very unique and unusual way, and weaves in maladaptive daydreams throughout real experience as a literary device. Very intriguing read, and a must read for especially queer individuals.
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- Virginia Fraser
- 11-02-19
I struggled to find the plot
While an interesting glimpse into culture, I felt it lacked a significant plot. Narrator great.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Victoria Mann
- 01-07-23
Simply amazing!
I really enjoyed listening to this book, such extensive detail and imagery, Great narration for this audiobook.
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- Eli
- 05-01-23
Refreshing with subtle heartbreak.
a book I didn't know I needed to hear. it was such a delight to hear the accuracy and intricacy of queer cruising and falling in and out of love. Paul is a fag you love but also find incredibly annoying. I appreciate the books uncomplicated, not political approach to gender variance and the lives of queer people. a pleasant listen start to finish.
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- Bessie Mae
- 11-08-22
Hnuh?
I don't think I really understood this book. The main character is detached and cynical, and nothing really happens to them. And the content was too porny for me. Just not my jam.
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