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In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support LOAKL!
Shop nowThe Revisioners
A Novel
Length
8 hours 23 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Adenrele Ojo & Myra Lucretia Taylor
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreFollowing her National Book Award–nominated debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton returns with this equally elegant and historically inspired story of survivors and healers, of black women and their black sons, set in the American South.
In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine’s family.
Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine’s descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays her grandchild to be her companion. But Martha’s behavior soon becomes erratic, then even threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine’s converge.
The Revisioners explores the depths of women’s relationships―powerful women and marginalized women, healers and survivors. It is a novel about the bonds between a mother and a child, and the dangers that upend those bonds. At its core, The Revisioners ponders generational legacies, the endurance of hope, and the undying promise of freedom.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook’s Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her family. Find out more at MargaretWilkersonSexton.com.
Adenrele Ojo is an actress, dancer, and audiobook narrator, winner of over a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. She made her on-screen debut in My Little Girl, starring Jennifer Lopez, and has since starred in several other films. She has also performed extensively with the Philadelphia Dance Company. As the daughter of John E. Allen, Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, the oldest African American theater in Pennsylvania, is no stranger to the stage. In 2010 she performed in the Fountain Theatre’s production of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2010 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. Other plays include August Wilson’s Jitney and Freedom Theatre’s own Black Nativity, where she played Mary.
Myra Lucretia Taylor is an award-winning actress who has appeared on Broadway, off Broadway, in many theaters across the country, and internationally. Her television and film credits include Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Atlanta, The Big Sick, Bushwick, and Catfight.
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Reviews
“A powerful tale of racial tensions across generations.”
“A bracing window into Southern life and tensions, alternating between two women’s stories—set nearly 100 years apart.”
“Sexton writes with such a clear sense of place and time that each of these intermingled stories feels essential and dramatic in its own way.”
“The fragility fashioned by the sacrifices of Black bodies is confronted in this smart and spooky novel.”
“At the intriguing crossroads of the seen and the unseen lies a weave among five generations of women.”
"[In] this excellent story…a chilling plot twist reveals the insidious racial divide that stretches through the generations, but it’s the larger message that’s so timely.”
“[In] this rich audiobook…narrator Myra Lucretia Taylor…delivers a sumptuous portrait of Josephine as intelligent and capable yet suspicious of outsiders, especially white ones. Adenrele Ojo narrates the chapters about Ava…In a clear, contemporary-sounding voice, Ojo portrays Ava’s reluctance to rely on others and her fierce protection of her son. Both narrators capture these intense characters as they blossom.”
“Tackles generational legacies, the echoes of history, and strength of bonds between women.”
"The Revisioners is a passionate exploration of liberty, heritage, sisterhood, and motherhood in New Orleans.”
“Readers will engage fully in this compelling story of African American women who have power in a culture that attempts to dismantle it.”
“The Revisioners is a sweeping, deeply felt meditation on sacrifice and survival. Nuanced and elegantly told, The Revisioners reminds us that history is alive and that we should never lose hope.”
“I was mesmerized by The Revisioners, a time-bending epic about family, desire, strength, and terror, as well as the possibly supernatural power of the stories we tell ourselves. Sexton’s novel is extraordinary, and its effects will go on and on.”
“An impeccable novel of magic, loss, and family, all anchored by generations of powerful women.”
“A novel as beautiful as it is hauntingly dazzling, it’s filmic in scope and sensory detail.”
“Written in a haunted present and a past that’s not past, The Revisioners honors the living and the lost in a painful, tender testament to the power of fiction.”
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