Plantains and Our Becoming
Poems
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Narrated by:
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Melania Luisa Marte
About this listen
A rousing, beautifully observed, and tender-hearted debut poetry collection about identity, culture, home, and belonging—for fans of Jasmine Mans and Fatimah Asghar
“We, children of plátanos, always gotta learn to play in everyone else’s backyard and somehow feel at home.”
Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens Plaintains and Our Becoming by pointing out that Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record—to build upon the legacies of your ancestors?
In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood.
Moving from New York to Texas to the Dominican Republic and to Haiti, this collection looks at the legacies of colonialism and racism but never shies away from highlighting the beauty—and joy—that comes from celebrating who you are and where you come from. Plaintains and Our Becoming is “a full-throated war cry; both a request for anointment and the responding bendición” (Elizabeth Acevedo).
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Critic reviews
One of Bookish’s "Must Read Poetry Collections of 2023"
Included in Ms. Magazine's "Best Poetry of the Last Year"
Included in Ebony's "August Required Reading"
One of We All Grow Latina’s "20 Books From Latine Authors to Keep an Eye Out for in 2023"
Included in Zibby Mag’s "Poetry Collections for National Poetry Month"
“This collection is a full-throated war cry; both a request for anointment and the responding bendición. Marte writes like she’s got daggers between her teeth: yes, there is sharpness in every line, but her words remind us blades also cauterize, heal. Even these ancestral wounds.”—Elizabeth Acevedo, the National Book Award winning author of The Poet X
“Melania Luisa Marte’s Plantains and Our Becoming is a shape shifting work of magic. It is a siren song, a battle cry, an anthem for Afro-Latine centered acts of self-love and revolution. Each line offers us the sharpened blade of a machete to cut away what is rotten. To plant ourselves again. To cultivate our truest, most beautiful selves.”—Cleyvis Natera, author of Neruda on the Park
“There is no voice like Melania Luisa Marte’s right now. I hesitate to say words like ‘necessary’ and ‘groundbreaking’ because it should simply be a given that Marte’s work is in people’s hands, headphones, bookshelves, and syllabi. Her thrilling collection Plantains and Our Becoming is a portrait of Black girlhood, an ode to daughters of the diaspora, and a lesson on an erased Dominican history. Marte’s prose is all at once prayer and captivating lecture; a song that will stay ringing in your ears and refuse to leave. I can't shout about it enough.”—Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Dreaming of You
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- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society’s expectations with the raw experience of being a woman in the world; from detailing the experiences of growing up as a first generation black British woman, to working through situations of dependence and abuse; from finding solace in the echoing caverns of depression and loss, to exploring the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love, each of the raw and immediate poems in Daley-Ward’s bone resonates to the core of what it means to be human.
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Visceral,blood hot, thrilling poetry-prose
- By Pam on 12-28-22
By: Yrsa Daley-Ward, and others
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Mother Tongue
- By: Demetria Martinez
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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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.
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Amazing Story
- By Alexa :3 on 09-26-24
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Bad Indians
- A Tribal Memoir
- By: Deborah A. Miranda
- Narrated by: Deborah Miranda
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This beautiful and devastating book - part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir - should be required for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.
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Bad recording
- By Aspyn Maes on 09-18-21
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You Better Be Lightning
- By: Andrea Gibson
- Narrated by: Andrea Gibson
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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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.
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Disappointed
- By Rikki B. on 01-31-23
By: Andrea Gibson
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A Phoenix First Must Burn
- Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope
- By: Patrice Caldwell - editor
- Narrated by: York Whitaker
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Evoking Beyoncé’s Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler’s heirs have woven worlds to create a stunning narrative that puts Black women and gender-nonconforming individuals at its center. A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters through which you cannot help but see yourself reflected.
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Absolutely brilliant
- By Ruthi on 03-11-20
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She Walks in Beauty
- A Woman's Journey Through Poems
- By: Adrienne Rich, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, and others
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd, Campbell Scott, Jane Alexander, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
She Walks in Beauty draws on poetry’s eloquent wisdom to ponder the many joys and challenges of being a woman. Caroline Kennedy has divided the collection into sections that signify to her the most notable milestones, passages, and universal experiences in a woman’s life, and she begins each of these sections with an introduction in which she explores and celebrates the most important elements of life’s journey.
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Still struggling with poetry
- By Beatrice on 01-30-12
By: Adrienne Rich, and others
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Untie the Strong Woman
- Blessed Mother's Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul
- By: Clarissa Pinkola Estés
- Narrated by: Clarissa Pinkola Estes
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"There is a promise Holy Mother makes to us," explains Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "that any soul needing comfort, vision, guidance or strength, can cry out to her, flee to her protection, and Blessed Mother will immediately arrive with veils flying. She will place us under her mantle for refuge, and give us the warmth of her most compassionate touch, and strong guidance about how to go by the soul's lights." Untie the Strong Woman is Dr. Estes' invitation to come together under the shelter of The Mother - whether she appears to us as the Madonna, Our Lady of Guadalupe....
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Powerfully Moving
- By Aimée LaVallée on 04-24-17
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A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing
- The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland
- By: DaMaris B. Hill
- Narrated by: Mia Ellis
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, Ida B. Wells to Sandra Bland and Black Lives Matter, black women freedom fighters have braved violence, scorn, despair and isolation in order to lodge their protests. In A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing, DaMaris Hill honours their experiences with at times harrowing, at times hopeful responses to her heroes.
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Brilliant
- By Andrea Reynolds on 09-19-19
By: DaMaris B. Hill
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The Past Is Red
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The future is blue - endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown. Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she’s the only one who knows it. She’s the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.
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The most perfectly perfect book a F**kwit could ever want.
- By Steve Groves on 02-10-22
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The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 27 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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Finding Mother God
- By: Carol Lynn Pearson
- Narrated by: Carol Lynn Pearson
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Call Her Goddess - call her God the Mother - call her the Feminine Principle - her children need her, and our world deeply suffers the pains of her absence. Through the warmth and the wit of poetry, this book is an invitation for all - women, men, of any religion or of no religion - to welcome her home and set a permanent place for her at the family table. Carol Lynn Pearson’s poetry is accessible, thoughtful, and thought-provoking - the perfect balance of wisdom, humility, and humor.
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Beautifully Read
- By Lisa Robinson on 04-04-24
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The Smell of Rain on Dust
- Grief and Praise
- By: Martín Prechtel
- Narrated by: Martín Prechtel
- Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture - how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community.
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Grief is Praise and Love
- By Jericho V. Thorp on 10-02-21
By: Martín Prechtel
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The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
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Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
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Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.
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