This Will Be My Undoing
Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America
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Narrated by:
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Morgan Jerkins
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By:
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Morgan Jerkins
About this listen
From one of the fiercest critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins' highly anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, Black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a Black woman today - perfect for fans of Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists.
Morgan Jerkins is only in her 20s, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn't afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to "be" - to live as, to exist as - a Black woman today? This is a book about Black women, but it's necessary listening for all Americans.
Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly White mainstream feminist movement, Black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized, with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle that are rarely acknowledged in our country's larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of Black female oppression that influences the Black community as well as the White, male-dominated world at large.
Whether she's writing about Sailor Moon; Rachel Dolezal; the stigma of therapy; her complex relationship with her own physical body; the pain of dating when men say they don't "see color"; being a Black visitor in Russia; the specter of "the fast-tailed girl" and the paradox of Black female sexuality; or disabled Black women in the context of the "Black Girl Magic" movement, Jerkins is compelling and revelatory.
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I expected a different ending I suppose
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By: Linda Kay Klein
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Love, InshAllah
- The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women
- By: Ayesha Mattu, Nura Maznavi
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Piper Goodeve, Lauren Fortgang, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Romance, dating, sex and - Muslim women? In this groundbreaking collection, 25 American Muslim writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their search for love openly for the first time, showing just how varied the search for love can be - from singles' events and online dating, to college flirtations and arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist. These compelling stories of love and romance create an irresistible balance of heart-warming and tantalizing, always revealing and deeply relatable.
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Sex, Love, & Feminism, in the Muslim Women's World
- By Susie on 03-06-13
By: Ayesha Mattu, and others
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Sex with Shakespeare
- Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love
- By: Jillian Keenan
- Narrated by: Jillian Keenan
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, Keenan's smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With 14 of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexuality - from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist - like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of "privacy".
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Innovative
- By Just Joe on 01-21-17
By: Jillian Keenan
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Trans Figured
- My Journey from Boy to Girl to Woman to Man
- By: Brian Belovitch
- Narrated by: Joel Froomkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Brian Belovitch has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City, Brian escaped many near-death experiences. Trans Figured chronicles a life lived on the edge with an unforgettable cast of characters.
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How utterly exhausting
- By Leah on 11-19-18
By: Brian Belovitch
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The Scent of Water
- Discovering What Remains
- By: Naomi Zacharias
- Narrated by: Naomi Zacharias
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Follow Naomi as she talks to women working in brothels in Mumbai; survivors of an Indonesian tsunami in which more than 160,000 lives were lost; a young girl waiting on an operation to save her life; and victims of domestic violence horrifically burned by fire. Be still with her when she realizes the pain she feels in the face of these extreme injustices reveals a common struggle that exists within all of humanity. And rise with her as she wrestles with confusion over her identity, comes face to face with redemption, and then begins to understand her own story.
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- By Justicepirate on 05-21-18
By: Naomi Zacharias
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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Cunt (20th Anniversary Edition)
- By: Inga Muscio
- Narrated by: Inga Muscio
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fully revised anniversary edition of the classic testament to women's empowerment, Muscio explores with candidness and humor such traditional feminist issues as birth control, sexuality, jealousy between women, and prostitution with a fresh attitude for a new generation of women. Sending out a call for every woman to be the "Cuntlovin' Ruler of Her Sexual Universe", Muscio stands convention on its head by embracing the provocative and celebrating womanhood.
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Best book ever
- By Paula Daniels on 07-28-19
By: Inga Muscio
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Between Two Worlds
- Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam
- By: Zainab Salbi, Laurie Becklund
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Zainab Salbi was 11-years-old when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, her family often forced to spend weekends with Saddam where he watched their every move. As a palace insider, Zainab offers a singular glimpse of what it is like to come of age under a dictator and provides an intimate portrait of the man she was taught to call "uncle". She watched as Saddam pitted friends, spouses, and even children against each other to compete for his approval.
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An excellent history lesson
- By Ella on 12-01-09
By: Zainab Salbi, and others
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An Intimate Life
- Sex, Love, and My Journey as a Surrogate Partner
- By: Cheryl Cohen-Greene
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For the past 40 years, Cheryl Cohen Greene has worked as a surrogate partner, helping clients to confront, consider, and ultimately accept their sexuality. In this riveting memoir, Cohen Greene shares some of her most moving cases, and also reveals her own sexual coming-of-age. Beginning with a rigid Catholic upbringing in the 1950s, where she was taught to think sex and sexual desires were unnatural and wrong, Cohen Greene struggled to reconcile her sexual identity.
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The Tender Memoir of a Sex Surrogate
- By Susie on 12-06-12
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Girls Like Us
- Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself
- By: Rachel Lloyd
- Narrated by: Rachel Lloyd
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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During her teens, Rachel Lloyd ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. With time, through incredible resilience, and with the help of a local church community, she finally broke free of her pimp and her past and devoted herself to helping other young girls escape "the life". In Girls Like Us, Lloyd reveals the dark world of commercial sex trafficking in cinematic detail and tells the story of her groundbreaking nonprofit organization: GEMS.
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Rachel Lloyd is an Amazing Woman
- By joan m. on 01-14-22
By: Rachel Lloyd
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Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
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Peace from Broken Pieces
- How to Get Through What You're Going Through
- By: Iyanla Vanzant
- Narrated by: Iyanla Vanzant
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant recounts the last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons learned—from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.
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Iyanla is Inspirational! A GREAT LISTEN!!!
- By Theresa on 12-04-11
By: Iyanla Vanzant
What listeners say about This Will Be My Undoing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Colleen
- 02-10-18
LOVE!!!!! She could not be more different from me
But I have never felt so represented by a book!!
I am not young, black, smart enough to go to an Ivy, an "up and comer" or the daughter of divorced parents but I have never felt my feelings so voiced. The fact she actually reads her own work makes it even more powerful.
I remember the relentless pushing through high school with a Trident missile's targeting on getting out of my hometown! The anxiety of college where the heady knowledge, desire to study, learning, meeting inspirational leaders all could all be instantly drowned in a "does he like me/why doesn't he like me" panic attack. Parents and environment who instilled an incredibly toxic and out of synch view of sexuality.
Speaking of sex- some essays in this book are incredibly raw and honest. If you can not deal with a woman having a powerful sex drive or explicitly discussed medical issues this is NOT the book for you. However, listening to one chapter in this book is the first time I ever got a physical reaction where I wanted to cross my legs- like guys do when they see a baseball player catch a ball in the berries.
I loved it so much I also bought the paperback!
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18 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 02-24-18
Deep, insightful, explanatory, expressive
Thank you Morgan Jenkins for writing this book. I loved every single minute of it.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sasha Jiles
- 01-10-20
Awesome
Great read. it'll make you cry and think about your own experiences in this life.
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- HM
- 03-04-18
Beautiful. Brutal. Compelling. Awakening, even if you think you're woke.
Brilliant. Strong. Concentrated. Powerful. Not light reading. And might change your life. Rethinking my own life and experiences with a different outlook. Better for it. Thank you.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Ishii Tavarez
- 11-27-19
Wonderfully Written!!
I can’t say enough about this book!! Empowering, sad, real and raw! I found myself snapping my fingers, shaking my head, holding my chest and agreeing with every single line! Thank you for this!!
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2 people found this helpful
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- M. Gurley
- 09-17-21
Amazing. Poignant. Provocative.
This is my first read from Morgan Jerkins. It will not be my last. Her story was written from a vulnerable place and took incredible bravery to share.
From her words I found validation of my experiences and beauty in ALL of me!! Simply amazing.
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- Talya Straughter
- 01-09-22
Brilliant
A journey of growth and discovery. A must read for girls that feel awkward in their world.
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- vickie gray
- 09-17-24
Life skills
I really enjoyed the book. Her experiences and the unflinching way she spoke about so many life stories was beautiful. It's a skill that, if everyone possessed, would make the world a bit more compassionate and kind.
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- Angela Spencer
- 07-16-18
Raw, honest, real
Morgan gives an unapologetic, cutting, and cathartic experience of being a black woman in a white patriarchal society. It hurts, it stings, but it is the most real thing I have listened to in many a year.
The book is not laced with much hope, but I don’t believe that was the point; just taking a raw gaze at black feminism for what it is. What we do with it, is up to us.
I thank Morgan for her encouragement to survive as we always have, and to thrive with the gifts we have always had, too, as well as thrive by not picking up society’s burdens.
Very, very well done. M
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5 people found this helpful
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- Dr. Chanequa
- 08-24-18
Powerful, insightful, and deeply engaging exploration of race and gender
In this remarkable memoir, Morgan Jerkins narrates her journey from being a young Black girl who desperately desires to be white and to merit male attention to being a badass Black feminist who is at home in her own skin. In a manner that epitomizes intersectionality at its best, Jerkins utilizes her positionality as a Black woman to illuminate the ways in which sexism and racism intersect to impact the lives of Black women on a quotidian basis, not just in the US but across the globe. Her middle-class upbringing, Ivy League education, and global experiences provide a unique lens through which to view how privilege and oppression coexist in complex ways for Black women and girls. Jerkins manages to combine astute analysis of critical race and gender studies with highly transparent reflections upon her own experiences. She bravely delves into details about female body image, health, and sexuality that few writers would. At times, I must admit it was too much for some of my southern Protestant impulses. But Jerkins’ sharing is neither narcissistic nor a tool meant only to shock readers. Her descriptions of her embodied experience are always connected to larger social issues, demonstrating how the personal and the political collide in deeply intimate ways.
Jerkins’ narrative deserves every bit of the accolades (and more) that have been given to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.” Indeed, the two are excellent companions to read together.
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2 people found this helpful