Skip content
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
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.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

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

Sign up today

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts

$26.24

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Jaimi Gray

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 9 hours 11 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Sisters Zora and Sasha Porter are drifting apart. Bearing witness to their father’s violence and their mother’s worsening illness, an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, while Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home. But the sisters, like their parents, must come together to answer to something more ancient and powerful than they know—and reckon with a family secret buried in the past. A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is set in a world as alive and unpredictable as Helen Oyeyemi’s. Telling of the love between sisters who don’t always see eye to eye, this extraordinary debut novel is a celebration of the power of stories, asking What happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

Soraya Palmer is a Flatbush-born-and-raised writer and licensed social worker who advocates for survivors of gender-based violence who are facing criminal charges related to their abuse. She has been awarded a residency at Blue Mountain Center and interviewed for her work against police brutality, gentrification, and violence in The New York Times and BuzzFeed News. She lives in New York.

Jaimi Gray is an experienced actress, voiceover artist, and on-air host based in Los Angeles, California. The voice of Phaedra Westward in the animated series Rainbow High, the English dub voice of Jess and of Eagle in the hit animated movie Miraculous World: New York - United Heroez, and the voice of Felicia for Bratz, she is also known for voicing in anime, video games, and audiobooks and for hosting some of Hollywood's biggest red-carpet events.

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.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

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

Sign up today

Reviews

Like the West African folktales upon which the family relies, the novel highlights the power of story and myth to engage, teach, and soothe—and the enduring power of West African folklore in the diaspora. Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting