Private Revolutions
Four Women Face China's New Social Order
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Narrated by:
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Crystal Yu
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Gabby Wong
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Kae Alexander
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Naomi Yang
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Yuan Yang
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By:
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Yuan Yang
About this listen
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE PICK
“Riveting . . . a powerful snapshot of four young Chinese women attempting to assert control over the direction of their lives.”—The New York Times Book Review
“As powerfully intimate as it is politically incendiary.”—British Vogue
A sweeping yet intimate portrait of modern China told through the lives of four ordinary women striving for a better future in a highly unequal society
While serving as the deputy Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times, Chinese-British journalist Yuan Yang began to notice common threads in the lives of her Chinese peers—women born during China’s turn toward capitalism in the 1980s and 1990s, who, despite the country's enormous economic gains during their lifetimes, were coming up against deeply entrenched barriers as they sought to achieve financial stability.
The product of seven years of intimate, in-depth reporting, this transporting and indelible book traces the journey of four such women as they try to make better lives for themselves and their families in the new Chinese economy. June and Siyue are among the few in their villages to graduate high school. Each makes her way to Beijing, June as a young professional and Siyue an entrepreneur. Like Siyue, Leiya lives with her grandparents in their village while her parents send money home; yearning for a different life than those of the women she sees around her, Leiya soon joins her parents in Shenzhen as an underage factory worker. Born to an urban middle-class family, Sam is outraged when her eyes are opened the poor treatment of workers, and becomes a labor activist, increasingly under threat by the authorities.
As the women grapple with government policies that threaten their businesses, their children's access to education, their choice of where to make a home, and, in Sam’s case, their lives, a vivid, damning, and urgent picture emerges of the previously unseen human cost of China’s rising economic tide—and the courage and perseverance of those caught in the swell.
©2024 Yuan Yang (P)2024 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
“A portrait both sweeping and intimate—as much a study of a radically changing society as of four very different people.”—The New York Times
“The riveting book that results from Yang’s persistence is a powerful snapshot of four young Chinese women attempting to assert control over the direction of their lives, escape the narrow confines of their patriarchal rural roots and make it in the big city . . . Yang’s reportage offers up raw human stories . . . because she documents each woman’s journey from childhood, including encounters with casual sexism, intermittent personal violence and the impossible weight of parental expectations, we can appreciate just how far they have come as adults —and just how far they have to fall.”—New York Times Book Review
“The prose is as powerfully intimate as it is politically incendiary, tackling the censorship and economic voraciousness plaguing China today head on.”—British Vogue
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Story
Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost. Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many.
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Bibliophiles rejoice!!!
- By Leila Jaafari on 10-11-24
By: Evan Friss
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The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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This One Should Win
- By K. Bella Bestia on 10-13-24
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There Are Rivers in the Sky
- A Novel
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Olivia Vinall, Elif Shafak
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives. In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory.
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Fascinating Middle Eastern History
- By J. Bishop on 09-11-24
By: Elif Shafak
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Things Don't Break on Their Own
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Easter Collins
- Narrated by: Christina Cole, Emily Lucienne, Nathalie Buscombe
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t. Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other—and some bonds only sisters can break. When Willa is invited to a party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening But nothing about Willa’s life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared.
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So Very Good
- By debhud on 07-17-24
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Keeping the Faith
- God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
- By: Brenda Wineapple
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy.
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A retelling but with more detail
- By WH Griesar on 09-14-24
By: Brenda Wineapple
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Guilty Creatures
- Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida
- By: Mikita Brottman
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole. After no body was found, everyone assumed that Mike had drowned in a tragic accident, his body eaten by alligators. But things took an unexpected turn when Brian Winchester divorced his wife and married Denise.
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Mostly Filler
- By Bootless on 08-15-24
By: Mikita Brottman
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When the Night Comes Falling
- A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: Zac Aleman
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Timed for a trial that will capture national attention, When the Night Comes Falling examines the mysterious murders of the four University of Idaho students. Having covered this case from its start, Edgar award winning investigative reporter Howard Blum takes listeners behind the scenes of the police manhunt that eventually led to suspected killer, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, and uncovered larger, lurid questions within this unthinkable tragedy.
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Waste of Money
- By Jessica on 07-05-24
By: Howard Blum