
The Street
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Narrated by:
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Danielle Deadwyler
About this listen
The classic urban tale of a young Black woman's struggle to raise her son alone amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of 1940s Harlem.
©2020 Ann Petry, Tayari Jones (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin HarcourtListeners also enjoyed...
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Featured Article: Classic Literature from Black Writers, Performed by Black Narrators
Despite the many great works of literature by great Black writers, Black voices have had a hard time entering "the canon." Worse, there have been times when Black words were miscast and read by narrators who didn't connect with the spirit of the authors. To help rectify this, we offer our careful selection of classics by Black authors performed by gifted Black actors that truly deserve to be recognized, celebrated, and savored.
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Overall
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In 2013 Assata Shakur, founding member of the Black Liberation Army, former Black Panther and godmother of Tupac Shakur, became the first ever woman to make the FBI's most wanted list. Assata Shakur's trial and conviction for the murder of a white State Trooper in the spring of 1973 divided America. Her case quickly became emblematic of race relations and police brutality in the USA. While Assata's detractors continue to label her a ruthless killer, her defenders cite her as the victim of a systematic, racist campaign.
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Knowledge is power
- By Ashleigh Terry on 08-20-17
By: Assata Shakur, and others
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Half Light
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 1 hr and 20 mins
- Original Recording
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Identical twins Amelia and Camelia Hall were born with the same face, and that’s about it: By the time the girls were through school, the matching set of names could no longer contain them. But the bond between the sisters is deep and unshakable - Cam serves as the maid of honor on Lia’s wedding day and as her attorney 15 years later, when Lia’s life and the lives of her two teenage daughters are rocked by divorce.
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Half Light
- By barbara on 09-02-20
By: Tayari Jones
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An American Marriage (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden, Eisa Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.
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So many “WTF” moments
- By Kristen R King on 05-04-18
By: Tayari Jones
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Model Home
- A Novel
- By: Rivers Solomon
- Narrated by: Gabby Beans
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.
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This Book is Not a Fun Book
- By Julia Patrin on 05-08-25
By: Rivers Solomon
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All the King's Men
- By: Robert Penn Warren
- Narrated by: Michael Emerson
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The fictionalized account of Louisiana's colorful and notorious governor, Huey Pierce Long, All the King's Men follows the startling rise and fall of Willie Stark, a country lawyer in the Deep South of the 1930s. Beset by political enemies, Stark seeks aid from his right-hand man Jack Burden, who will bear witness to the cataclysmic unfolding of this very American tragedy.
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Beautifully presented
- By Cheimon on 10-12-08
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We Should All Be Feminists
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Length: 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.
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compelling
- By Gregg Coffin on 06-01-17
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Take My Hand
- By: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
- Narrated by: Lauren J. Daggett
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
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Page Turner Based off True Events
- By LATOYA LEWIS on 06-10-22
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Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
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Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
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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
Still relevant
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The story is excellent the characters are memorable
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This is Amerikka
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A riveting story about a black single mom
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fantastically written tragic history
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Life as a poor person
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Character building excellent
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Engaging and well performed.
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Beautiful
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Phenomenal
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