
The Black Guy Dies First
Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar
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Narrated by:
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Jaime Lincoln Smith
About this listen
A definitive and surprising exploration of the history of Black horror films, after the rising success of Get Out, Candyman, and Lovecraft Country from creators behind the acclaimed documentary Horror Noire.
The Black Guy Dies First explores the Black journey in modern horror cinema, from the fodder epitomized by Spider Baby to the Oscar-winning cinematic heights of Get Out and beyond. This eye-opening book delves into the themes, tropes, and traits that have come to characterize Black roles in horror since 1968, a year in which race made national headlines in iconic moments from the enactment of the 1968 Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April. This timely book is a must-listen for cinema and horror fans alike.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris. All rights reserved. (P)2023 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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The Rope
- A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP
- By: Alex Tresniowski
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, 10-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small-town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time.
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INCREDIBLE
- By valerie on 04-04-22
By: Alex Tresniowski
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Anthems We Love
- 29 Iconic Artists on the Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives
- By: Steve Baltin, Cameron Crowe - foreword
- Narrated by: Steve Baltin, Cameron Crowe
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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What Beach Boys' song brings Paul McCartney to tears? What makes "Light My Fire" a rite-of-passage song for teens in every generation, according to Doors guitarist Robby Krieger? What is it about music that brings back so vividly the passion of our early loves, our adult losses, our richest memories? In Anthems We Love, acclaimed music journalist Steve Baltin explores twenty-nine iconic songs through interviews with artists about their creative process and what songs form the soundtracks to their own lives.
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Every Chapter was Great
- By Blake on 12-30-22
By: Steve Baltin, and others
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Fire in the Sky
- Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth
- By: Gordon L. Dillow
- Narrated by: Edward Bauer
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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This “accessible and always entertaining” (Booklist) combination of history, pop science, and in-depth reporting offers a fascinating account of the asteroids that hit Earth long ago and those streaming toward us now, as well as how prepared we are against asteroid-caused catastrophe.
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sensationalistic general info by a non scientist
- By The ghost of Mark Twain Jr. Jr. Jr. on 01-08-20
By: Gordon L. Dillow
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Stolen
- The Astonishing Odyssey of Five Boys Along the Reverse Underground Railroad
- By: Richard Bell
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Philadelphia, 1825: Five young, free Black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the US. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.
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Should have been a fact based novel
- By Cate F. on 01-11-21
By: Richard Bell
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Control
- The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Greg Patmore
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Control is a book about what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions, revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.
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Excellent 2023 update on genetics
- By Roy on 01-11-25
By: Adam Rutherford
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All Against All
- The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War
- By: Paul Jankowski
- Narrated by: Dean Gallagher
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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All Against All is the story of the season our world changed from postwar to prewar again. It is about the power of bad ideas - exploring why, during a single winter, between November 1932 and April 1933, so much went so wrong. Historian Paul Jankowski reveals that it was collective mentalities and popular beliefs that drove this crucial period that sent nations on the path to war, as much as any rational calculus called "national interest".
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Comprehensive history
- By John Cashman on 06-24-20
By: Paul Jankowski
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But You Seemed So Happy
- A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits
- By: Kimberly Harrington
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts marriage, divorce, and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life.
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Contrived
- By BekkaLu on 10-06-23
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Unsinkable
- Five Men and the Indomitable Run of the USS Plunkett
- By: James Sullivan
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In the best-selling tradition of Indianapolis and In Harm’s Way comes a “captivating...gripping” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) account of the USS Plunkett - a US Navy destroyer that sustained the most harrowing attack on any Navy ship by the Germans during World War II, later made famous by John Ford and Herman Wouk.
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Poorly researched.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-05-21
By: James Sullivan
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Dream Cities
- Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World
- By: Wade Graham
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Dream Cities explores our cities in a new way—as expressions of ideas, often conflicting, about how we should live, work, play, make, buy, and believe. It tells the stories of the real architects and thinkers whose imagined cities became the blueprints for the world we live in.
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MID
- By Amazon Customer on 09-07-24
By: Wade Graham
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Moby Dyke
- An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America
- By: Krista Burton
- Narrated by: Sarah Beth Pfeifer
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream? In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars.
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Hopeful and Eye Opening
- By melody sheldon on 08-17-24
By: Krista Burton
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Those Who Forget
- By: Geraldine Schwarz
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer - those who followed the current. Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her grandfather took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology.
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Not what it purports to be
- By DPM on 10-10-20
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Remembering Peasants
- A Personal History of a Vanished World
- By: Patrick Joyce
- Narrated by: Philip Bird
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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“What the skeleton is to anatomy, the peasant is to history, its essential hidden support.” For over the past century and a half, and still more rapidly in the last seventy years, the world has become increasingly urban, and the peasant way of life—the dominant way of life for humanity since agriculture began well over 6,000 years ago—is disappearing. In this new history of peasantry, social historian Patrick Joyce aims to tell the story of this lost world and its people, and how we can commemorate their way of life.
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Respect & remembrance, thoughtfully told
- By Phyllis Hill on 06-03-24
By: Patrick Joyce
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The Counterfeit Countess
- The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust
- By: Elizabeth B. White, Joanna Sliwa
- Narrated by: Gilli Messer
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story of this remarkable woman. They interweave Mehlberg’s sometimes harrowing personal testimony with broader historical narrative.
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Ok
- By Jewels on 03-29-25
By: Elizabeth B. White, and others
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The World Behind the World
- Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science
- By: Erik Hoel
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, two perspectives on the world have dueled in our minds: the extrinsic—that of mechanism and physics—and the intrinsic—that of feelings, thoughts, and ideas. The intrinsic perspective allows us to tell stories about our lives, to chart our anger and our lust, to understand our psychologies. The extrinsic allows us to chart the physical world, to build upon it, and to travel across it. These perspectives have never been reconciled; they almost seem to exist on different planes of thought.
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An insightful overview of consciousness research
- By Vanilor on 07-27-24
By: Erik Hoel
What listeners say about The Black Guy Dies First
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- tonimonty
- 02-27-23
Interesting!
Very insightful. The introduction of fodder to Oscar had me hooked at the onset. Jamie Smith narrative voice was clear and witty at times. So spot on for the content.
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- Wyetha Lipford
- 03-31-24
So Much To Absorb!
This book gave me everything when it comes to African Americans in the horror genre. Lists upon lists with parts broken down by section about the roles and tropes of Black people in horror movies.
It was refreshing since most of these movies I’ve seen and had some of the same opinions when it comes to how we are perceived within the horror genre.
I am so getting the hard copy of this.
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- Ashly Trask
- 03-03-23
Excellent reference book for black horror/horror
I loved this book. The lists are great to go back to and for the serious horror lover to use as a jumping off point. I look forward to an updated version 5 years from now when a whole chapter can be devoted to the masterpiece that Attack the Block 2 will surely be. Seriously though, the authors do a great job of talking about serious subjects, historical context, and race relations both in and out of horror cinema.
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- Sylvester Barzey
- 02-22-23
An Informative Look In Our Culture
This book broke down everything you want to know about Black Horror or Horror as a whole. It answered what the term Spook means as well as takes you on a ride into movies that are changing the genre. The list of iconic Black Horror movies is worth the price alone. I loved this book and I can’t wait to see what Black Horror’s Future has in store for us
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- The Fourth Summers Brother
- 02-18-23
Loved every minute of this!
This is a great deep dive into the contributions of black actors, screenwriter, and directors in horror. The narration is engaging, and I found myself jotting down the movies that I haven't seen before.
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- Bradley
- 02-14-23
Wish it Had Been More Interesting
I found this to be a good source to find out about black horror films that I’ve never heard of and can now add to my watchlist. The thing that brought my rating down to a three star is that there are so many lists and the lists felt unnecessary long and repetitive. Honestly a lot of the book felt repetitive and padded. Maybe that’s a side effect of there not being many black horror films to reference and do deep dives on.
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