
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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- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Story
- By: Kristine S. Ervin
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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For readers of My Dark Places and I'll Be Gone in the Dark, a beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman’s search for identity alongside her family's decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted—and murdered—her mother.
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Hard to finish
- By Grace O'Malley on 07-07-24
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We Loved It All
- A Memory of Life
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed novelist Lydia Millet’s first work of nonfiction is a genre-defying tour de force that makes an impassioned argument for people to see their emotional and spiritual lives as infinitely dependent on the lives of nonhuman beings.
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Grief, hope, and love
- By M. McGregor on 11-29-24
By: Lydia Millet
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Liliana's Invincible Summer
- A Sister's Search for Justice
- By: Cristina Rivera Garza
- Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years, three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend.
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liliannas love, and the injustice/mysogeny in the Mexican culture
- By sldpac on 04-18-25
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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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Don't Say a Thing
- A Predator, a Pursuit, and the Women Who Persevered
- By: Tamara Leitner
- Narrated by: Tamara Leitner
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 1999, reporter Tamara Leitner woke to an active crime scene outside her Arizona apartment. Her neighbor had been sexually assaulted by a man who would later be identified as Claude Dean Hull II, a serial rapist who escaped justice for decades. New identities. New states. New victims—more than one hundred suspected across the country and thousands more victimized in myriad ways. Tamara’s twenty-year compulsion to follow the investigation began.
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Enunciation Errors
- By Susan on 06-14-23
By: Tamara Leitner
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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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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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While You Were Out
- An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
- By: Meg Kissinger
- Narrated by: Meg Kissinger
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard. But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding.
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Thoughtful and mindful
- By James Thomas McIntyre on 09-11-23
By: Meg Kissinger
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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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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
Powerful & Informative
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A lovingly crafted story of family and history
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beautiful memoir
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Beautiful memoir
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Excellent Storytelling
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Appreciation for culture, elders
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my past
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Superb!
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There is a gentleness to her. Even in her angriest moments. Just an incredible driving need to understand.
the conversational tone
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Vivid imagery and historical context
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