Between the World and Me
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by Ta-Nehisi Coates / 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
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a... Read More »
Invisible Man
By Ralph Ellison
Narrated by Joe Morton / 18 hours 38 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 / 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 a brand-new series from Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe... Read More »
If Beale Street Could Talk
A Novel
By James Baldwin
Narrated by Bahni Turpin / 7 hours 7 minutes
In this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad.Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is... Read More »
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By Michelle Alexander
Narrated by Karen Chilton / 13 hours 15 minutes
Civil rights advocate and accomplished lawyer Michelle Alexander broaches a topic worthy of national conversation. Alexander argues that criminals convicted by our justice system face the same obstacles- legal discrimination and disenfranchisement- African Americans faced during the Jim Crow era. ''Carefully researched, deeply engaging, and... Read More »
Freshwater
By Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by Akwaeke Emezi / 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 / 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 / 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 / 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 / 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 Guy Lockard, Jorjeana Marie & Jacqueline Woodson / 3 hours 42 minutes
A lyrical story of star-crossed love perfect for readers of The Hate U Give, by National Ambassador for Children’s Literature Jacqueline Woodson--now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and including a new preface by the author
Jeremiah feels good inside his own skin. That is, when he's in his own Brooklyn neighborhood. But now he's going to... Read More »
Krik? Krak!
By Edwidge Danticat
Narrated by Robin Miles & Dion Graham / 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 / 19 hours 1 minute
Becoming
“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 about her in her own words.”
Jax, Bookshop Santa Cruz
The People Could Fly
American Black Folktales
By Virginia Hamilton
Narrated by Andrew L. Barnes / 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 / 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
A Novel
By Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Narrated by Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin & Adenrele Ojo / 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 / 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 Khan-Cullors & asha bandele
Narrated by Patrisse Khan-Cullors / 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 Khan-Cullors and includes a bonus conversation
The emotional and powerful story of one of... Read More »
Ghost Boys
By Jewell Parker Rhodes
Narrated by Miles Harvey / 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.
An instant New York Times bestseller An instant IndieBound bestseller The #1 Kids' Indie Next Pick A Walter Award winner
Only the living can make the world better. Live and... Read More »
Just Mercy (Movie Tie-In Edition)
A Story of Justice and Redemption
By Bryan Stevenson
Narrated by Bryan Stevenson / 11 hours 3 minutes
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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, as seen in the HBO documentary True Justice
“[Bryan Stevenson’s] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired... Read More »