#OnceYouGoBlackOut

Between the World and Me

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Length: 3 hours 35 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT
 
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal... Read more

Invisible Man

By: Ralph Ellison
Narrated by: Joe Morton
Length: 18 hours 36 minutes

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching--yet always with... Read more

Ghost

Track: Book #1

By: Jason Reynolds
Narrated by: Guy Lockard
Length: 3 hours 29 minutes

A National Book Award Finalist for Young People’s Literature
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

Ghost wants to be the fastest sprinter on his elite middle school track team, but his past is slowing him down in this first electrifying novel of the acclaimed Track series from Coretta Scott King - John... Read more

If Beale Street Could Talk

A Novel

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

From one of the most important writers of the twentieth century comes a stunning love story about a young Black woman whose life is torn apart when her lover is wrongly accused of a crime—"a moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless” (The New York Times Book Review)."One of the best... Read more

The New Jim Crow

Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition

By: Michelle Alexander
Narrated by: Karen Chilton
Length: 16 hours 56 minutes

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.
Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been
adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of
the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the
winner of... Read more

Freshwater

By: Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by: Akwaeke Emezi
Length: 6 hours 42 minutes

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of... Read more

Here Comes the Sun

A Novel

By: Nicole Dennis-Benn
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 42 minutes

Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis-Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is... Read more

Black No More

By: George S. Schuyler
Narrated by: Sean Crisden
Length: 5 hours 23 minutes

According to Max Disher, an ambitious young black man in 1930s New York, someone of his race has only three alternatives: "Get out, get white, or get along." Incapable of getting out and unhappy with getting along, Max leaps at the remaining possibility. Thanks to a certain Dr. Junius Crookman and his mysterious process, Max and other eager... Read more

Another Country

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 16 hours 13 minutes

Published in 1962, this is an emotionally intense novel of love, hatred, race, and America in the 1950s. Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable... Read more

Giovanni’s Room

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Dan Butler
Length: 6 hours 49 minutes

Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality.With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the... Read more

If You Come Softly

Twentieth Anniversary Edition

By: Jacqueline Woodson
Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Guy Lockard & Jacqueline Woodson
Length: 3 hours 42 minutes

“Told in two voices, this is a teen love story filled with quiet innocence, careful wording, and strong questions. When a young Black boy and Jewish girl meet at school, emotions blossom and these star-crossed lovers will show the world that more comes from love than hate. This beautiful cover matches the narration in tone, timeless. Read more

Krik? Krak!

By: Edwidge Danticat
Narrated by: Robin Miles & Dion Graham
Length: 4 hours 52 minutes

American Book Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat earned a National Book Award nomination for this brilliant collection of stories, which includes Pushcart Prize winner "Between the Pool and the Gardenias." A "remarkably gifted writer" (Publishers Weekly), Danticat examines the brutality of her native Haiti, particularly as it affects women,... Read more

Becoming

By: Michelle Obama
Narrated by: Michelle Obama
Length: 19 hours 1 minute

“I adore our former president and I miss him. Yet I cannot help but be ecstatic that Michelle is coming out with a book about her own life so that I can learn more about this powerful, intelligent, and singularly awesome woman. Barack would be the first to say that his wife is a superstar, and I can’t wait to get my hands on Becoming to read... Read more

The People Could Fly

American Black Folktales

By: Virginia Hamilton
Narrated by: Andrew L. Barnes
Length: 3 hours 45 minutes

Virginia Hamilton (1936-2002), a giant in the world of children's literature, was the first African-American woman to win a Newbery Medal and the first children's book author to be awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. In her prize-winning anthology of American Black folktales, The People Could Fly, Hamilton has gathered and retold a collection of... Read more

Ain't I a Woman

Black Women and Feminism 2nd Edition

By: Bell Hooks
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 8 hours 55 minutes

A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must–read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's involvement with feminism, Hooks attempts to... Read more

A Kind of Freedom

By: Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin & Adenrele Ojo
Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of black society, and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves.In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter Jackie is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent... Read more

Tears We Cannot Stop

A Sermon to White America

By: Michael Eric Dyson
Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson
Length: 5 hours 31 minutes

This program is read by the author

"Elegantly written, Tears We Cannot Stop is powerful in several areas: moving personal recollections; profound cultural analysis; and guidance for moral redemption. A work to relish." —Toni Morrison

"Here’s a sermon that’s as fierce as it is lucid. It shook me up, but in a good way. This is how it works if... Read more

When They Call You a Terrorist

A Black Lives Matter Memoir

By: Patrisse Cullors & asha bandele
Narrated by: Angela Davis & Patrisse Cullors
Length: 6 hours 12 minutes

"Narrating her own work, Patrisse Khan-Cullors shares the salient moments of her life that led her to become a founder of Black Lives Matter...pain, frustration, and joy [emblazon] each word she utters." — AudioFile Magazine

This program is read by Patrisse Cullors and includes a bonus conversation.

The emotional and powerful story of one of the... Read more

Ghost Boys

By: Jewell Parker Rhodes
Narrated by: Miles Harvey
Length: 2 hours 51 minutes

A heartbreaking and powerful story about a black boy killed by a police officer, drawing connections through history, from award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes.

Only the living can make the world better. Live and make it better.

Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he... Read more

Just Mercy (Movie Tie-In Edition)

A Story of Justice and Redemption

By: Bryan Stevenson
Narrated by: Bryan Stevenson
Length: 11 hours 10 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.

“[Bryan Stevenson’s] dedication to fighting for justice... Read more