Tomboyland
Essays
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $20.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Melissa Faliveno
About this listen
A fiercely personal and startlingly universal essay collection about the mysteries of gender and desire, of identity and class, of the stories we tell and the places we call home.
Flyover country, the middle of nowhere, the space between the coasts. The American Midwest is a place beyond definition, whose very boundaries are a question. It's a place of rolling prairies and towering pines, where guns in bars and trucks on blocks are as much a part of the landscape as rivers and lakes and farms. Where girls are girls and boys are boys, where women are mothers and wives, where one is taught to work hard and live between the lines. But what happens when those lines become increasingly unclear? When a girl, like the land that raised her, finds herself neither here nor there?
In this intrepid collection of essays, Melissa Faliveno traverses the liminal spaces of her childhood in working-class Wisconsin and the paths she’s traveled since, compelled by questions of girlhood and womanhood, queerness and class, and how the lands of our upbringing both define and complicate us even long after we've left. Part personal narrative, part cultural reportage, Tomboyland navigates midwestern traditions, mythologies, landscapes, and lives to explore the intersections of identity and place. From F5 tornadoes and fast-pitch softball to gun culture, strange glacial terrains, kink party potlucks, and the question of motherhood, Faliveno asks curious, honest, and often darkly funny questions about belonging and the body, isolation and community, and what we mean when we use words like woman, family, and home.
©2020 Melissa Faliveno. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Excerpt from The Carrying by Ada Limón used with permission from Milkweed Editions. Excerpt from Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde. © 1982 by Audre Lorde. Published by Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Nonbinary
- Memoirs of Gender and Identity
- By: Micah Rajunov - editor, Scott Duane - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Beth Pfeifer
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, 30 authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.
-
-
It changed my life!!!
- By Anonymous User on 08-19-22
By: Micah Rajunov - editor, and others
-
Pageboy
- A Memoir
- By: Elliot Page
- Narrated by: Elliot Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.
-
-
Ah, I wish this were better. I'm disappointed.
- By Jackson Theofore Keys on 06-07-23
By: Elliot Page
-
Body Work
- The Radical Power of Personal Narrative
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it.
-
-
A must!!!
- By Karen S on 02-13-23
By: Melissa Febos
-
Girlhood
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When her body began to change at 11 years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defences she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations.
-
-
Great read, audio needs editing
- By Niurka Maldonado on 04-02-21
By: Melissa Febos
-
Mothertrucker
- Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America
- By: Amy Butcher
- Narrated by: Amy Butcher
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amy Butcher was an accomplished college professor, mentor, and writer, but in her own home, she was embarrassed and emotionally burdened by an increasingly abusive relationship. Exhausted and terrified of the ways her partner’s behavior could escalate, Amy reached out to Instagram celebrity Joy “Mothertrucker” Wiebe. Joy was a 50-year-old wife and mother and the nation’s only female ice road trucker, a woman who maneuvered big rigs through the Alaskan wilderness along the deadliest road in America.
-
-
Not accurate
- By Mrs H on 11-13-21
By: Amy Butcher
-
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
- By: Malinda Lo
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other." And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: "Have you ever heard of such a thing?" Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown.
-
-
Critiquing queer books
- By angelina on 04-27-21
By: Malinda Lo
-
Nonbinary
- Memoirs of Gender and Identity
- By: Micah Rajunov - editor, Scott Duane - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Beth Pfeifer
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, 30 authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.
-
-
It changed my life!!!
- By Anonymous User on 08-19-22
By: Micah Rajunov - editor, and others
-
Pageboy
- A Memoir
- By: Elliot Page
- Narrated by: Elliot Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.
-
-
Ah, I wish this were better. I'm disappointed.
- By Jackson Theofore Keys on 06-07-23
By: Elliot Page
-
Body Work
- The Radical Power of Personal Narrative
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it.
-
-
A must!!!
- By Karen S on 02-13-23
By: Melissa Febos
-
Girlhood
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When her body began to change at 11 years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defences she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations.
-
-
Great read, audio needs editing
- By Niurka Maldonado on 04-02-21
By: Melissa Febos
-
Mothertrucker
- Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America
- By: Amy Butcher
- Narrated by: Amy Butcher
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amy Butcher was an accomplished college professor, mentor, and writer, but in her own home, she was embarrassed and emotionally burdened by an increasingly abusive relationship. Exhausted and terrified of the ways her partner’s behavior could escalate, Amy reached out to Instagram celebrity Joy “Mothertrucker” Wiebe. Joy was a 50-year-old wife and mother and the nation’s only female ice road trucker, a woman who maneuvered big rigs through the Alaskan wilderness along the deadliest road in America.
-
-
Not accurate
- By Mrs H on 11-13-21
By: Amy Butcher
-
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
- By: Malinda Lo
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other." And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: "Have you ever heard of such a thing?" Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown.
-
-
Critiquing queer books
- By angelina on 04-27-21
By: Malinda Lo
-
Ten Steps to Nanette
- A Memoir Situation
- By: Hannah Gadsby
- Narrated by: Hannah Gadsby
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gadsby grew up as the youngest of five children in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. After moving to mainland Australia and receiving a degree in art history, they found themselves adrift, working itinerant jobs and enduring years of isolation punctuated by homophobic and sexual violence. When Gadsby was twenty-seven, a friend encouraged them to enter a stand-up competition. They won, and so began their career in comedy.
-
-
An emotional connection
- By John on 04-23-22
By: Hannah Gadsby
-
No One Crosses the Wolf
- A Memoir
- By: Lisa Nikolidakis
- Narrated by: Lisa Nikolidakis
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up, Lisa Nikolidakis tried to make sense of her childhood, which was scarred by abuse, violence, and psychological terrors so extreme that her relationship with her father was cleaved beyond repair. Having finally been able to leave that relationship behind, surviving meant forgetting. For years, “I’m fine” was a lie Nikolidakis repeated. Then, on her twenty-seventh birthday, Nikolidakis’s father murdered his girlfriend and her daughter, and turned the gun on himself.
-
-
Sadly, not a unique story
- By Penny Lane on 09-25-22
By: Lisa Nikolidakis
-
Over the Top
- A Raw Journey to Self-Love
- By: Jonathan Van Ness
- Narrated by: Jonathan Van Ness
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A laugh-and-cry-out-loud memoir from the beloved star of Netflix’s Queer Eye, Jonathan Van Ness, sharing never-before-told, deeply personal stories of growing up gay, transforming pain into positivity, and embracing what makes you gorgeously different.
-
-
Everything I knew it would be and more.
- By Cookie2703 on 09-24-19
-
Entitled
- How Male Privilege Hurts Women
- By: Kate Manne
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this bold and stylish critique, Cornell philosopher Kate Manne offers a radical new framework for understanding misogyny. Ranging widely across the culture, from Harvey Weinstein and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings to “Cat Person” and the political misfortunes of Elizabeth Warren, Manne’s book shows how privileged men’s sense of entitlement - to sex, yes, but more insidiously to admiration, care, bodily autonomy, knowledge, and power - is a pervasive social problem with often devastating consequences.
-
-
New to the subject
- By Bruno on 08-20-20
By: Kate Manne
-
Carry
- A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land
- By: Toni Jensen
- Narrated by: Toni Jensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence.
-
-
A gorgeous performance of a powerful, important new text
- By Elana SJ on 09-11-20
By: Toni Jensen
-
The Electricity of Every Living Thing
- A Woman's Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home
- By: Katherine May
- Narrated by: Katherine May
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In anticipation of her 38th birthday, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path. She wanted time alone, in nature, to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating; and why the world felt full of expectations she couldn't meet. She was also reeling from a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparked her realisation that she might be autistic.
-
-
Perfect!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-20-22
By: Katherine May
-
True Places
- A Novel
- By: Sonja Yoerg
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A girl emerges from the woods, starved, ill, and alone...and collapses. Suzanne Blakemore hurtles along the Blue Ridge Parkway, away from her overscheduled and completely normal life, and encounters the girl. As Suzanne rushes her to the hospital, she never imagines how the encounter will change her - a change she both fears and desperately needs. Suzanne has the perfect house, a successful husband, and a thriving family.
-
-
All Suburban Mother's Dream
- By Kathleen on 01-09-19
By: Sonja Yoerg
-
The 2000s Made Me Gay
- Essays on Pop Culture
- By: Grace Perry
- Narrated by: Grace Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl”, country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell.
-
-
3.5
- By Cecilia Valadez on 02-16-22
By: Grace Perry
-
Quietly Hostile
- Essays
- By: Samantha Irby
- Narrated by: Samantha Irby
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Samantha Irby’s career has taken her to new heights. She dodges calls from Hollywood and flop sweats on the red carpet at premieres (well, one premiere). But nothing is ever as it seems online, where she can crop out all the ugly parts. Irby got a lot of weird emails about Carrie Bradshaw, and not only is there diarrhea to avoid, but now—anaphylactic shock. She is turned away from restaurants for being inappropriately dressed and looks for the best ways to cope, i.e., reveling in the offerings of QVC and adopting a deranged pandemic dog.
-
-
Extremely disappointed
- By Diana in Michigan on 07-20-23
By: Samantha Irby
-
Thick
- And Other Essays
- By: Tressie McMillan Cottom
- Narrated by: Tressie McMillan Cottom
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Smart, humorous, and strikingly original essays by one of “America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time.” (Rebecca Traister) In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom - award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed - embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society.
-
-
A different perspective
- By ANNE on 08-13-19
-
The Last Lie Told
- Finley O’Sullivan, Book 1
- By: Debra Webb
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Legal investigator Finley O’Sullivan searches for evidence the police overlooked, wading through secrets, lies, and betrayal to find answers. With the unsolved murder of her husband still very much on her mind, Finley must confront her own personal trauma on a daily basis. Lies are part of her livelihood, but they’re also the reason she can’t get justice for the man she loved. When a man imprisoned for murder recants his confession, claiming he cleaned up the mess for his girlfriend—the victim’s own daughter—Finley takes on the case.
-
-
Okay but...
- By Nancy Jang on 11-25-22
By: Debra Webb
-
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
- Wayfarers, Book 1
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Rachel Dulude
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space - and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe - in this lighthearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star.
-
-
Unbearable narrator.
- By Christian Woolley on 06-18-19
By: Becky Chambers
Critic reviews
"Author Melissa Faliveno narrates incisive, relatable essays centered on her identities as a queer-identified, androgynous-appearing woman raised in the Midwest. Faliveno’s tone as she delves into her past reveals the kind of complicated relationship many of us have with our hometowns and former lives.…The author’s conversational tone and pacing engage listeners throughout as she examines how regional menus, family traditions, sports, and gender expectations influenced her development - and continue to do so." —AudioFile Magazine
"Melissa Faliveno’s deep, steady voice is as mesmerizing and vulnerable as her prose in these essays about the intersections of gender, queerness, home, class, and desire.… There’s a friendly, easy cadence to her narration that matches her flowing prose, but there are also moments when her voice goes fraught, reflecting the struggles she writes about so openly. Filled with wonder, pain, self-discovery, and messy questions, this audiobook is a celebration and a reckoning, made all the more memorable thanks to Faliveno’s emotional performance." —Booklist
"[A] winning debut collection…Readers who prefer to answer their questions about gender and sexuality with more questions will appreciate this perceptive meditation." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Related to this topic
-
Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
-
-
Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
-
Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
-
-
Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
-
Dalva
- A Novel
- By: Jim Harrison
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey, Stacey Glemboski
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born, and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at 45 she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians.
-
-
As a woman, I can finally appreciate Jim Harrison with this book.
- By kathryn gray on 09-11-24
By: Jim Harrison
-
The Yellow House
- By: Sarah M. Broom
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
-
-
Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
-
The World's Largest Man
- A Memoir
- By: Harrison Scott Key
- Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father - a hunter, a fighter, and a football coach. Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not.
-
-
I laughed every day to and from work. Loved it!
- By KufRN on 06-06-18
-
The Past Is Never
- A Novel
- By: Tiffany Quay Tyson
- Narrated by: Devon Sorvari
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.
-
-
Intriguing Southern gothic tale
- By Robert Jason on 03-11-20
-
Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
-
-
Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
-
Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
-
-
Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
-
Dalva
- A Novel
- By: Jim Harrison
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey, Stacey Glemboski
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born, and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at 45 she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians.
-
-
As a woman, I can finally appreciate Jim Harrison with this book.
- By kathryn gray on 09-11-24
By: Jim Harrison
-
The Yellow House
- By: Sarah M. Broom
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
-
-
Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
-
The World's Largest Man
- A Memoir
- By: Harrison Scott Key
- Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father - a hunter, a fighter, and a football coach. Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not.
-
-
I laughed every day to and from work. Loved it!
- By KufRN on 06-06-18
-
The Past Is Never
- A Novel
- By: Tiffany Quay Tyson
- Narrated by: Devon Sorvari
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.
-
-
Intriguing Southern gothic tale
- By Robert Jason on 03-11-20
-
Bad Indians
- A Tribal Memoir
- By: Deborah A. Miranda
- Narrated by: Deborah Miranda
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This beautiful and devastating book - part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir - should be required for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.
-
-
Bad recording
- By Aspyn Maes on 09-18-21
-
In the Shadow of the Valley
- A Memoir
- By: Bobi Conn
- Narrated by: Bobi Conn
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny’s; and her abusive father. An elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered, Bobi’s testament is one of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse.
-
-
Hard Pass
- By Kathryn Liggett on 06-13-20
By: Bobi Conn
-
Miracle Country
- A Memoir
- By: Kendra Atleework
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.
-
-
The best memoir I've read
- By Patricia on 08-15-20
By: Kendra Atleework
-
The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
-
-
Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
-
What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
-
-
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
-
Home Baked
- My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco
- By: Alia Volz
- Narrated by: Alia Volz
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the '70s in San Francisco, Alia's mother ran the underground Sticky Fingers Brownies, delivering upwards of 10,000 illegal marijuana edibles per month throughout the circus-like atmosphere of a city in the throes of major change. She exchanged psychic readings with Alia's future father, and thereafter had a partner in business and life. Exhilarating, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartbreaking, Home Baked celebrates an eccentric and remarkable extended family, taking us through love, loss, and finding home.
-
-
Everything and more
- By Becky Love on 10-20-24
By: Alia Volz
What listeners say about Tomboyland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lorraine S.
- 07-26-22
Embrace the Quirk
For anyone who loves a Wisconsinite and seeks the origin of their quirk, this collection of essays will give you insight. The writing is an honest telling of Midwest culture, queerness, and a personal acceptance of both.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- rally_squirrel_west
- 08-10-21
Don't miss this
if you are a human being open to the full range of your experience, and all the questions resultantthereof, this book is for you. yes, you. what a wonderful surprise, someone, and. of just anyone, wrote a book, just for you.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 07-04-21
I "used" to be a tomboy
Definitely hit home with me... a 46 year old, married, mother of two in the Midwest. I didn't challenge society's expectations... but I raised a daughter who is at age 15!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jennifer F.
- 07-22-21
Great book of essays
There are many topics covered in this book of essays. I really enjoyed getting to know the author through the stories. I identify with a lot she had to say, and I found myself listening every chance I got.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Malisa
- 09-07-20
That feeling when you don’t want it to end!
Amazing words with all the emotions running rampant! Thank you for writing this book, for telling us your stories and for giving us your all!
Melissa, you are wonderful, raw and real!
I enjoyed every second of this book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!