The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
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Narrated by:
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Adenrele Ojo
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Karen Chilton
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Prentice Onayemi
About this listen
A TOP TEN NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK
A WASHINGTON POST BEST AUDIOBOOK OF 2021
A GLAMOUR BEST AUDIOBOOK OF 2021
AN AUDIOFILE BEST AUDIOBOOK OF 2021
Immerse yourself in a celebration of Black womanhood and an epic tale of the stories that span generations.
Ailey Pearl Garfield grows up between the City in the north and summers spent in her mother’s small hometown of Chicasetta, Georgia. From an early age, she finds herself in a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hurt in her past, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.
To come to terms with her identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.
‘Mesmerising… magnificent’ Independent
‘Astonishing… A great work infused with love and honesty’ Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple
‘Gripping, gorgeous. A sweeping family saga that is also history at its most intimate and vital’ Stef Penney, author of The Tenderness of Wolves
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN LITERARY PRIZE
New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • Time 10 Best Books of the Year • Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year • People 10 Best Books of the Year • Booklist 10 Best First Novels of the Year
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Critic reviews
‘Prepare to be wholly engrossed… Phenomenal’ Observer
‘Utterly essential’ iNews
‘Intimate, considered, beautifully written and perceived, ambitious and ultimately satisfying. Outstanding’ Daily Mail
‘Astonishing… I lived in this novel for three weeks. It is long. It is a journey. It is something so remarkable I’m not sure we collectively ever even dreamed it.’ Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple
‘Beautifully, and traumatically, weaves a spell of a story about more than ten generations of an American family―indigenous, African and European… Remarkable’ Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)
‘Breath-taking … A book I urge everyone to read. It is deeply moving and deeply informative. It is magnificent’ Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
‘Exceptional in the way it engages so deeply and emphatically with history’ Guardian
‘Epic and intimate… an extraordinary achievement’ The Spectator
‘A work of profound beauty’ Irish Times
‘Extraordinary … moving and evocative’ TLS
‘The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is the kind of book that comes around only once a decade … Simply magnificent’ Washington Post
‘Quite simply the best book that I have read in a very, very long time’ New York Times
‘Just as brilliant as it is necessary, just as intimate as it is expansive. An outstanding portrait of an American family and in turn, an outstanding portrait of America’ Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give
‘Masterful and stunning … These Love Songs make for a frank, feminist, and unforgettable read’ Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
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Story
International award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and - most importantly - how they find their way back to each other. In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta - her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts - but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow.
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African narrators for African novels!
- By Lynn on 04-24-21
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Lighthouse
- By: Eugenia Price
- Narrated by: Tessa Richards
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Raised in post-Revolution Granville, Massachusetts, James Gould could only imagine the beauty and warmth of the lands to the south. It was there that he longed to build bridges and lighthouses from his very own designs and plans. His gripping story unfolds as Gould follows his dream to the raw settlement of Bangor on the Penobscot River, St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia, lawless Spanish East Florida, and back - at last and finally - to St. Simons.
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Re: Wonderful Story
- By Cmorgan on 01-27-23
By: Eugenia Price
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Coming of Age in Mississippi
- By: Anne Moody
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.
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A Gripping, Visceral Account of 1960's Reality
- By Philomena on 01-03-13
By: Anne Moody
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The Godmothers
- A Novel
- By: Camille Aubray
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet the Godmothers: Filomena is a clever and resourceful war refugee with a childhood secret, who comes to America to wed Mario, the family's favored son. Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls' home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family's only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.
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Easy Enjoyable Read
- By Bunny on 06-23-21
By: Camille Aubray
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Tomorrow Will Be Better
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Tomorrow Will Be Better tells the story of Margy Shannon, a shy but joyfully optimistic young woman just out of school who lives with her parents and witnesses how a lifetime of hard work, poverty, and pain has worn them down. Her mother's resentment toward being a housewife and her father's inability to express his emotions result in a tense home life where Margy has no voice. Unable to speak up against her overbearing mother, Margy takes refuge in her dreams of a better life.
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Heartfelt and Heart-wrenchingly Real!
- By M. Ryder on 02-16-22
By: Betty Smith
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Bring on the Blessings
- A Novel
- By: Beverly Jenkins
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Bernadine Brown is a woman with money to spend. Henry Adams is a town in desperate need of cash. But after Bernadine puts up the money, she has some ideas about how the town should be run. Will the townspeople be willing to shake up their comfortable lives to share the gift they’ve been given with others who really need it?
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Not my idea of a Christian story
- By DJ Stevenson on 04-12-21
By: Beverly Jenkins
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The Third Wish
- By: Carolyn Brown
- Narrated by: Andrea Emmes
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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When she was eight years old, Jessica Graham made three wishes: that she wouldn't always be the tallest kid in the class, that she would find a big conch shell on the beach, and that she would finally meet her father someday. Jessica's wishes never came true, but twenty years later, when she finds her mother's old love letters, she has a chance to make the third wish a reality. Jessica travels to Florida to find her father, but their reunion is interrupted by his arrogant junior business partner, Rocky Rycroft.
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Not My Favorite
- By RosieDisla on 02-14-23
By: Carolyn Brown
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
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Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
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A Different Drummer
- By: William Melvin Kelley
- Narrated by: Jay Smooth
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.
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A wonderful and moving story
- By E. on 10-25-19
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Belle Cora
- A Novel
- By: Phillip Margulies
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat, Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In the home where Arabella Godwin was raised it is forbidden to speak her name, and her picture is turned to the wall. But in the turbulent America of the 1850s, everyone knows her as "Belle Cora", madam of San Francisco's finest bordello. Judges and senators do her bidding; a vicious newspaper editor plots her downfall; a preacher looks at her from across his pulpit and tries to forget that once she was his wife. Merchant's daughter, farm girl, prostitute, mother - the only thing that never changes is her tireless pursuit of the one man who can see her for who she really is.
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excellent
- By Patricia on 05-15-20
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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The Jew Store
- A Family Memoir
- By: Stella Suberman
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1920, in small-town America, the ubiquitous dry goods store was usually owned by Jews and often referred to as "the Jew store". That's how Stella Suberman's father's store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store, in Concordia, Tennessee, was known locally. The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in that tiny town of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware, one barber shop, one beauty parlor, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches.
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Wonderful
- By Susan simpson on 09-04-21
By: Stella Suberman
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Two Crosses
- Secrets of the Cross, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth Musser
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The glimmering Huguenot cross she so innocently wears leads her deep into the shadows. When Gabriella Madison arrives in the French village of Castelnau in 1961 to continue her university studies, she doesn’t anticipate being drawn into the secretive world behind the Algerian war for independence from France. And the further she delves into the war efforts, the more her faith is challenged. The people who surround her bring a whirlwind of transforming forces.
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Faith, Romance, Spies, and Fascinating History
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-19
By: Elizabeth Musser
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In the Time of Our History
- By: Susanne Pari
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita's death, Mitra Jahani reluctantly returns to her parents' home in suburban New Jersey to observe the Iranian custom of "The One Year." Ana is always in Mitra's heart, though they chose very different paths. While Ana, sweet and dutiful, bowed to their domineering father's demands and married, Mitra rebelled, and was banished.
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Enjoyable
- By J. E. Jordan on 05-23-23
By: Susanne Pari