
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
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Narrated by:
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Adenrele Ojo
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Bahni Turpin
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Adam Lazarre-White
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By:
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Ayana Mathis
About this listen
A debut of extraordinary distinction: through the trials of one unforgettable family, Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration, a story of love and bitterness and the promise of a new America.
In 1923, 15-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them.
Captured here in 12 luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation. Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life.
©2013 Ayana Mathis (P)2013 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
When Ruby King’s mother is found murdered in their home in Chicago’s South Side, the police dismiss it as another act of violence in a Black neighborhood. But for Ruby, it means she’ll be living alone with her violent father. The only person who understands the gravity of her situation is Ruby’s best friend, Layla. Their closeness is tested when Layla’s father, the pastor of their church, demands that Layla stay away. But what are his true motives? And what is the price for turning a blind eye?
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Excellent Read
- By Denise Hayes on 06-20-20
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The Invention of Wings
- A Novel
- By: Sue Monk Kidd
- Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Adepero Oduye, Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world - and it is now the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
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If it Weren't True, I Wouldn't Have Believed it
- By FanB14 on 03-04-14
By: Sue Monk Kidd
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Silver Sparrow
- A Novel
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Coleman Williams, Heather Alicia Simms
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, Silver Sparrow revolves around James Witherspoon's two families - the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters - the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle - she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another's lives.
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underwhelming ending
- By Keisha on 01-17-13
By: Tayari Jones
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Ruby
- A Novel
- By: Cynthia Bond
- Narrated by: Cynthia Bond
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, “the kind of pretty it hurt to look at,” has suffered beyond imagining, so as soon as she can, she flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York. Ruby quickly winds her way into the ripe center of the city - the darkened piano bars and hidden alleyways of the Village - all the while hoping for a glimpse of the red hair and green eyes of her mother.
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disturbing yet beautiful
- By Beth Anne on 07-06-14
By: Cynthia Bond
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The Book of Night Women
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the 18th century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they - and she - will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans.
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"A lyrical, heart thumping, engaging masterpiece"
- By ann on 01-07-11
By: Marlon James
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Nightcrawling
- A Novel
- By: Leila Mottley
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.
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Metaphors - getcher Metaphors
- By Nicole Del Sesto on 08-09-22
By: Leila Mottley
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My Soul to Keep
- By: Tananarive Due
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost.
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A Book I Can't Keep
- By Mistsofjade on 07-19-20
By: Tananarive Due
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Behold the Dreamers
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself; his wife, Neni; and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons.
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Overhyped
- By Rochelle on 08-27-16
By: Imbolo Mbue
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The House of Eve
- By: Sadeqa Johnson
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake, Nicole Lewis, Sadeqa Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold.
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This could've been good...
- By Speedreader on 10-13-23
By: Sadeqa Johnson
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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.
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The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
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All the Sinners Bleed
- A Novel
- By: S. A. Cosby
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface. Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes.
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Visceral, gripping, thrilling and entertaining
- By Victor @ theAudiobookBlog dot com on 06-26-23
By: S. A. Cosby
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The Yellow Wife
- A Novel
- By: Sadeqa Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre.
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A Real page turner
- By Elizabeth Early on 01-19-21
By: Sadeqa Johnson
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The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
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We Must Always Remember
- By Cammie on 09-28-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
The writing was superb; the twining of the twelve tales worked. I felt the ending abrupt and a bit disappointing.And I am so glad to have experienced this book.
Hattie and her Family Tragically Flawed
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If you could sum up The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) in three words, what would they be?
Engaging Beautiful SadWhat does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I loved hearing the narrator read the accents that sound like home (I live far away now). Her voice is beautiful and easy to listen to.Any additional comments?
RecommendBeautiful Reading
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Truly a Joy
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What made the experience of listening to The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) the most enjoyable?
The narration was on point. I could really get into the story and loved the way the narrator was able to move in and out of the period dialect and tone.Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No. I actually liked the way it was broken up into short stories that were eventually strung togetherAny additional comments?
The book did not leave me completely satisfied in the end. I felt the last quarter of the book were a bit rush and maybe not as well laid out as others.Great Narration, Good Story
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amazing tale of transformation
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What did you love best about The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0)?
This book gets at the core of what it is to be human. Yes, it is about the Great Migration, but it is about love, loss, regret, hope and so many other more subtle emotional aspects of the human psyche and heart. I was amazed by this author's ability to evoke so many different emotions in me. It was a wonderful intertwined tale that I will recommend to others. Thank you, Oprah, for recommending this one. Absolutely fabulous.What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The narrators were all wonderful.Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Too many to detail.Any additional comments?
Read this book!The core of what it is to be human
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Painfully riveting
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What made the experience of listening to The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) the most enjoyable?
I enjoyed the brief yet extensive visit with each character. Although set in a particular time period, the characterizations, situations, and reactions were timeless. I cared about each one of character because I understood them.What did you like best about this story?
I loved that I had an opportunity to get to know Hattie and her husband first. Also the all the complexities of the "why's" that created the "who" that drove the "what" were not made evident all at once. I understood her and them little by little through relationship (which shape us all).Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Adenrele and Bahni are my favorites and this performance was stellar (as expected!)Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I listen as I drive.Any additional comments?
I wanted the ending to wrap up differently although I was not disappointed.Felt each character!
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Where does The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0) rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
As far as the content of the book, I loved it. I found the reader quite distracting to the story, however.Who was your favorite character and why?
Hattie was the centerpiece, but I found her husband to be the most interesting. It was fascinating to see his perspective on their life and marriage in contrast to her's.How could the performance have been better?
The reader had very awkward timing and phrasing. It wasn't smooth and consistent. She did well on dialogue, but the narrative was disjointed at times. The male reader was excellent. He had a magnificent voice and was absolutely believable.Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No. It was easy to listen in chapters.Any additional comments?
Very seldom does a book make me cry, but this one really touched my heart. The author caught the emotion and drama of a struggling family with too many mouths to feed and too few resources. It's also a solidifies the fact that even imperfect parents can be loved by their children. A wonderful book.Loved the story
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Another disappointing Oprah recommendation -
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