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The N Word by Jabari Asim
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The N Word

Who Can Say It, Who Shouldnโ€™t, and Why

$17.96

Retail price: $19.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Mirron Willis

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

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Length 9 hours 25 minutes
Language English
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In The N Word, a renowned cultural critic untangles the twisted history and future of racism through its most volatile word.

In 2003, the book Nigger started an intense conversation about the use and implications of that epithet. The N Word moves beyond that short, provocative book by revealing how the word has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America.

Asim claims that, even when uttered by hipsters and hip-hop icons, the slur helps keep blacks at the bottom of Americaโ€™s socioeconomic ladder. But he also proves there is a place for this word in the mouths and on the pens of those who truly understand its twisted historyโ€”from Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle to Mos Def. Only when we know its legacy can we loosen this slurโ€™s grip on our national psyche.

Jabari Asim is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. He directs the MFA program in creative writing at Emerson College, where he is also the Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice. He has written for the Washington Post and is the former editor-in-chief of the NCAAP magazine The Crisis.

Mirron Willis has narrated over 200 audiobooks across various literary genres and has won several Earphone Awards for Excellence and is an Audie Award finalist and winner. Notable works include Ginny Gall by Charlie Smith, The Smokey Dalton Series by Kris Nelscott; My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte; The Long Fall (Booklist, Best of 2009) and others by Walter Mosley; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elijah of Buxton, The Translator; and Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B Dubois. In three seasons at the Ensemble Theatre (Houston, Texas), Mirron appeared as JP in What I Learned in Paris, Malcolm X in The Meeting, Henry in Race, and as Countee Cullen in Knock Me a Kiss (2013 Giorgee Award for Best Leading Actor). Other roles include Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VI Parts 2 & 3, and A Raisin in the Sun with the world-renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed as guest narrator with the Houston Symphony. Film and TV guest appearances include Criminal Minds, Private Practice, The Exes, Monk, 24, Seinfeld, Cheers, The Parkers, Living Single, E.R., Star Trek, and Independence Day, among others. Mirron resides and records audiobooks on his family's historic ranch in East Texas.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

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Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

โ€œImportant, timely, and much-needed...a brilliant and bracing history lesson.โ€

โ€œProvocative and compelling...Asimโ€™s book is not just the etymology of the word but also a capsule history of racism in America.โ€

โ€œA sharp-eyed musing on the history of the word and how it bears, or should bear, on a media-driven culture that is dangerously ahistorical, especially in matters of race.โ€

“[Asim] sweeps over this sensitive and contradictory terrain—including black Americans’ use of the word—with practicality, while dispensing gentle provocations…Clear, engaging writing increases the pleasure.”

โ€œ[Asim] is most eloquent when relating how African Americans have been characterized in our culture; how the word nigger has been employed to oppress, belittle, dismiss, humiliate, and ridicule black people; and how they themselves have increasingly used it to satirize and oppose that oppression.โ€

 “Informed, sensible and impassioned.”

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