
Whiskey Tender
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Charley Flyte
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By:
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Deborah Taffa
About this listen
Finalist for the National Book Award
Longlisted for a Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Winner of the Southwest Book Award
A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post, Esquire, Time, The Atlantic, NPR, and Publishers Weekly
An Oprah Daily ""Best New Book"" and ""Riveting Nonfiction and Memoir You Need to Read"" * A New York Times ""New Book to Read"" * A Zibby Mag ""Most Anticipated Book"" * A San Francisco Chronicle ""New Book to Cozy Up With"" * The Millions ""Most Anticipated"" *An Amazon Editors ""Best Book of the Month"" * A Parade ""Best New Work By Indigenous Writers"" * An NPR ""Book We Love""
“We have more Native stories now, but we have not heard one like this. Whiskey Tender is unexpected and propulsive, indeed tender, but also bold, and beautifully told, like a drink you didn’t know you were thirsty for. This book, never anything less than mesmerizing, is full of family stories and vital Native history. It pulses and it aches, and it lifts, consistently. It threads together so much truth by the time we are done, what has been woven together equals a kind of completeness from brokenness, and a hope from knowing love and loss and love again by naming it so.” — Tommy Orange, National Bestselling Author of There There
Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.
Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.”
Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.
Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.
©2024 Deborah Taffa (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Eye opening great read!!
- By RG from KC on 03-21-19
By: Jason De León
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Women's Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Daniel M. Lavery
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
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a great story!
- By cathryn vitek on 11-10-24
By: Daniel M. Lavery
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Fi
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Fuller
- Narrated by: Alexandra Fuller
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s the middle of the summer before her fiftieth birthday and Alexandra is just barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, chafing and straining against the stresses and strictures of midlife as a mother and ex-wife, and piecing her way through a disastrous relationship with a younger woman that lurches and buckles, but never quite breaks. And then—suddenly and incomprehensibly—her son Fi, at 21 years old, dies in his sleep. What happens next is what Alexandra details in this book.
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Lifting the fog
- By Nina J. on 04-20-24
By: Alexandra Fuller
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By the Fire We Carry
- The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
- By: Rebecca Nagle
- Narrated by: Rebecca Nagle
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.
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So great to see the full story after This Land pod
- By S. Armor on 04-12-25
By: Rebecca Nagle
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Yellow Face
- A Semi-autobiographical Comedy
- By: David Henry Hwang
- Narrated by: Daniel Dae Kim (CK), Ashley Park, Wendell Pierce, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
- Original Recording
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Winner of an Obie and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman, Yellow Face is as timely as ever, wrestling with issues of cultural appropriation, complicity, and artistic freedom. It’s brought to life in this audio-only revival by a stunning all-star cast (many playing themselves) led by Daniel Dae Kim.
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Funny, great audible performance, and good dialogue.
- By Ed the Canadian on 05-04-24
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Dear Jacob
- By: Patty Wetterling, Joy Baker - contributor
- Narrated by: Rebecca Stern
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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On October 22, 1989, in the small town of St. Joseph, Minnesota, eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped at gunpoint. Twenty-seven years later, Danny Heinrich led authorities to the boy’s remains. What lies between is the riveting story of the search for Jacob, told by his mother, Patty. With down-to-earth candor, she details the investigation as it unfolds, discusses her family’s struggles, and shows how she maintained her energy and optimism.
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Beautifully written.
- By Christine on 11-04-23
By: Patty Wetterling, and others
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Somebody's Daughter
- A Memoir
- By: Ashley C. Ford
- Narrated by: Ashley C. Ford
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates.
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It gives words to the journey of so many brown girls.
- By Insatiable Intuitive on 06-06-21
By: Ashley C. Ford
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The Manicurist's Daughter
- A Memoir
- By: Susan Lieu
- Narrated by: Susan Lieu
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers. About her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success—until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened.
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Fantastic book and performance
- By Anonymous User on 03-14-25
By: Susan Lieu
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The Paranormal Ranger
- A Navajo Investigator’s Search for the Unexplained
- By: Stanley Milford Jr.
- Narrated by: Stanley Milford Jr., Duane Minard
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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As a Native American with parents of both Navajo and Cherokee descent, Stanley Milford Jr. grew up in a world where the supernatural was both expected and taboo, where shapeshifters roamed, witchcraft was a thing to be feared, and children were taught not to whistle at night. In his youth, Milford never went looking for the paranormal, but it always seemed to find him. When he joined the fabled Navajo Rangers—a law enforcement branch of the Navajo Nation who are equal parts police officers, archeological conservationists, and historians—the paranormal became part of his job.
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Needs a better narrator
- By Kindle Customer on 11-08-24
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Knife
- Meditations After an Attempted Murder
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond.
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Triumph of Life
- By Donna Ponte on 04-17-24
By: Salman Rushdie
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Splinters
- Another Kind of Love Story
- By: Leslie Jamison
- Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books—Splinters enters a new realm. In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond.
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Felt too self indulgent - even for a memoir
- By Kristin H on 09-27-24
By: Leslie Jamison
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Never Leave the Dogs Behind
- A Memoir
- By: Brianna Madia
- Narrated by: Brianna Madia
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In her debut memoir, Nowhere for Very Long, Brianna Madia reflected on her life as a nomad, free to roam some of the most beautiful land in America. Now, in Never Leave the Dogs Behind, the van life adherent faces the unfathomable darkness that comes from a life blown apart, her only solace the support of her dogs.
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Meh
- By Suzanne Aiello on 04-11-24
By: Brianna Madia
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Wandering Stars
- A Novel
- By: Tommy Orange
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett, MacLeod Andrews, Alma Cuervo, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola.
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Beautiful writing and performance of realistic native family saga
- By ReallyNelie on 07-12-24
By: Tommy Orange
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I Heard Her Call My Name
- A Memoir of Transition
- By: Lucy Sante
- Narrated by: Lucy Sante
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, from drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life was a performance. She was presenting a facade, even to herself.
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I'm so glad I read this book
- By Judy in Salt Lake on 03-09-25
By: Lucy Sante
What listeners say about Whiskey Tender
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- Brenda C.
- 06-03-24
Powerful & Informative
This book is a must read to understand the toll of assimilation and dubious government legislation on Native Americans. I was astounded by the treatment within the Native boarding school as well as the inter-tribunal conflict. I learned so much about the culture of many tribes as told through this poignant memoir. I'm so glad Debbie told her story. I have a quest now to learn more about America's Native citizens.
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- Larry C
- 04-07-24
A lovingly crafted story of family and history
Being the same age as Deborah Jackson and of the product of Native and White parents, this book allowed me to see myself and my life in a new, more forgiving light. I will listen/read again when I need a little extra courage to move forward.
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- Bentley S. Davis
- 11-25-24
beautiful memoir
This memoir of family, history, belonging, and resilience was so moving. The narration was well done, but the story was wonderful.
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- Joseph Mega
- 01-29-25
Beautiful memoir
Highly recommended. I tend not to read much nonfiction but this was a beautiful personal story that I would read again.
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- C.F.
- 12-29-24
Excellent Storytelling
The author does a great job telling her story, which gave me a new perspective on her culture and what it means to be Native.
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- A. M. Polich
- 01-29-25
Appreciation for culture, elders
What a wonderful book! I couldn’t put it down! Even though I am not indigenous, I could relate to so many things she talked about. Wanting to feel close to her ancestors and her culture and her language of origin. Deborah wrote this book with such tenderness and love and honesty. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
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- Donald Greengrass
- 05-04-25
my past
I need to tell my story to my children from my beginning to now.So they remember their history through me.
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- Teresa S. Gulyas
- 12-22-24
Superb!
Evocative memoir that portrayed the challenges faced by the author in her seeking to understand her heritage and family values in a land that left much to be desired in terms of acceptance. So much to learn from the tragedies in our past but will we listen and learn? Hope is not enough, we need to act to educate ourselves and each other and move from acceptance to celebration of our diversity as a nation.
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- jd
- 06-05-24
the conversational tone
I was moved by the depth of this life story. There are so many layers to the trauma of oppression.
There is a gentleness to her. Even in her angriest moments. Just an incredible driving need to understand.
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- Bruce A. Biagi
- 01-06-25
Vivid imagery and historical context
The author's vivid imagery left me feeling covered in the dust of the desert Southwest, and I loved the way she wove familial experiences with historical context to provide a full picture of her life. Well done!
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