Recommendations from the Green Hand for those interested in hearing more Voices of Color

An Abolitionist's Handbook

12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World

By: Patrisse Cullors
Narrated by: Ariel Blake
Length: 6 hours 47 minutes

The audiobook features an introduction written and read by Prentis Hemphill as well as an exclusive bonus conversation with the author and adrienne maree brown.

In AN ABOLITIONIST’S HANDBOOK, Cullors charts a framework for how everyday activists can effectively fight for an abolitionist present and future. Filled with relatable pedagogy on the... Read more

Recitatif

A Story

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Zadie Smith & Bahni Turpin
Length: 1 hour 54 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winner—for the first time in a beautifully produced stand-alone edition, with an introduction by Zadie Smith
 
“A puzzle of a story, then—a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an ‘experiment’ she... Read more

Across That Bridge

A Vision for Change and the Future of America

By: John Lewis
Narrated by: Keith David
Length: 5 hours 27 minutes

“John Lewis narrating his insightful words pulls the reader into his experiences as a civil rights icon. Across that Bridge was an incredibly compelling and encouraging narrative of why the civil rights protests worked and how we can apply the same principles to today's continuing fight for equal rights and justice. I highly, highly recommend... Read more

Homegoing

A novel

By: Yaa Gyasi
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 13 hours 10 minutes

“AN EXCELLENT LISTEN. Read more

Moon Witch, Spider King

The Dark Star Trilogy: Book #2

By: Marlon James
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 30 hours 46 minutes

“Masterfully flips the first installment on its head... James makes the mythic tantalizingly real.’” —Esquire
 
"Even more brilliant than the first.” —Buzzfeed

An Instant New York Times Bestseller and NPR Best Book of 2022 pick
 
From Marlon James, author of the bestselling National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the second book in... Read more

You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays

By: Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates & Genevieve West
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 15 hours 19 minutes

Introduction by New York Times bestselling author Henry Louis Gates Jr. Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.“One of the greatest... Read more

Harlem Shuffle

A Novel

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 10 hours 35 minutes

“A tribute to Harlem...a mystery...so well written, and great characters too! Read more

Brown Girl Dreaming

By: Jacqueline Woodson
Narrated by: Jacqueline Woodson
Length: 3 hours 54 minutes

A New York Times bestseller and National Book Award winner

Jacqueline Woodson, the acclaimed author of Another Brooklyn, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. 
 
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African... Read more

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

“A lot can be said about this autobiography - it is one of the best I have ever read. The stories are personal and well accounted for, and the reader has no choice but to regard her life and strength through hardship so inspiring. Before reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I had a good idea of Angelou through her poetry and lectures. Her... Read more

Ikenga

By: Nnedi Okorafor
Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Nnedi Okorafor's acclaimed first novel for middle grade children introduces a boy who can access super powers with the help of the magical Ikenga.



Nnamdi's father was a good chief of police, perhaps the best Kalaria had ever had. He was determined to root out the criminals that had invaded the town. But then he was murdered, and most people... Read more

Firekeeper's Daughter

By: Angeline Boulley
Narrated by: Isabella Star LaBlanc
Length: 14 hours 13 minutes

“Firekeeper's Daughter is a wonder! We so rarely hear YA through an Indigenous people's voice and this book does it so very well. Main character Daunis Lorenzo Fontaine lives a fine line between her white French Canadian mother and her Ojibwe father in a complicated family dynamic. She is smart, hockey talented, driven, and tenacious as she... Read more

Caul Baby

A Novel

By: Morgan Jerkins
Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

“Mothers and daughters and their fraught relationships are the heart of this novel. Secrets, loss, tragedy, and tradition inextricably bind and trap seven women in ways completely unknown to some and only partially known by others. In modern-day Harlem, as gentrification threatens and changes the landscape, life inside one brownstone continues... Read more

Four Hundred Souls

A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

By: Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain
Narrated by: Various
Length: 14 hours 1 minute

“An absolutely stunning history of African America for people who do not normally read history. Compiled of short stories, essays, and poems, it is perfect for someone who is intimidated by lists of names and dates. Each individual voice stands on its own but together they truly make a 'choir' that flows together beautifully. This is a... Read more

The Three Mothers

How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

By: Anna Malaika Tubbs
Narrated by: Anna Malaika Tubbs
Length: 6 hours 51 minutes

This program is read by the author.

Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them.

In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates... Read more

Friday Black

Stories

By: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Narrated by: Corey Allen & Carra Patterson
Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

“If you like Childish Gambino's This is America, you'll love Friday Black. Using fantastical elements and fierce humor, these stories confront the painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day. You'll see that the truth is what's most disturbing. Read more

The Will to Change

Men, Masculinity, and Love

By: bell hooks
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
Length: 6 hours 5 minutes

“bell hooks explains too well the issues of patriarchy and gender norms. How men are not inherently toxic and that our culture has dictated this behavior of hyper-masculinity and adversity to love and sensitivity. You can’t blame people entirely for these issues, but accountability does need to be held. People all around need the proper tools to... Read more

Teaching To Transgress

Education as the Practice of Freedom

By: Bell Hooks
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 7 hours 28 minutes

In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks–writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual–writes about a new kind of education, educations as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to “transgress” against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher’s most important goal. Bell hooks... Read more

The Source of Self-Regard

Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 16 hours 1 minute

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR).

These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of... Read more

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

By: Helen Oyeyemi
Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Piter Marek & Bahni Turpin
Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

From the award-winning author of Boy, Snow, Bird and Mr. Fox comes an enchanting collection of intertwined stories. Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret-Oyeyemi's keys not only... Read more

Gingerbread

A Novel

By: Helen Oyeyemi
Narrated by: Helen Oyeyemi
Length: 7 hours 28 minutes

“This book is pure magic, just like the delicious gingerbread at the heart of the story, baked by Perdita Lee and her mother Harriet Lee. It’s an old family recipe, one Harriet learned from her mother, in Druhastrana, the magical (possibly made up) land where she grew up. It’s difficult to summarize this book - it’s one that has to be... Read more