Black Women Writers at Work
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Narrated by:
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Allyson Johnson
About this listen
Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the twentieth century.
Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.
Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art.
Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for audiences and writers today.
©2023 Claudia Tate (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
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Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Bet on Black
- The Good News About Being Black in America Today
- By: Eboni K. Williams
- Narrated by: Eboni K. Williams
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When The Real Housewives of New York City hired its first black cast member after more than 13 years on the air, attorney, speaker, and journalist Eboni K. Williams knew that the public would consider her a diversity hire. But instead of accepting the label, Williams re-envisioned her role as a “Diversity Higher,” an opportunity to prove the significance of Black excellence in the workspace and in society at-large. In this book, she shares all the benefits and advantages that have helped her and many others historically reach great heights in their careers and beyond.
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Bet On Black…thank you, thank you, thank you!
- By amina mack on 07-15-24
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On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
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Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
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Letters to a Young Artist
- By: Anna Deavere Smith
- Narrated by: Anna Deavere Smith
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From "the most exciting individual in American theater" ( Newsweek), here is Anna Deavere Smith's brass-tacks advice to aspiring artists of all stripes. In the manner of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Deavere Smith mentors her young artist over a period of five years, sharing her hard-won wisdom about the challenges and rewards of the artistic life.
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Great advice for artists of any age.
- By S. Barker on 10-30-17
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Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody
- The Making of a Black Theologian
- By: James H. Cone
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In this powerful and passionate memoir - his final work - Cone describes the obstacles he overcame to find his voice, to respond to the signs of the times, and to offer a voice for those - like the parents who raised him in Bearden, Arkansas, in the era of lynching and Jim Crow - who had no voice. Recounting lessons learned both from critics and students, and the ongoing challenge of his models King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, he describes his efforts to use theology as a tool in the struggle against oppression and for a better world.
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You need to understand Cone to get his Theology
- By Adam Shields on 02-11-20
By: James H. Cone
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To Show and to Tell
- The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
- By: Phillip Lopate
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” ( Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than 40 years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone, and immense gift for storytelling.
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Not a guide on writing personal essays
- By A. Yoshida on 08-07-13
By: Phillip Lopate
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The Second Mountain
- How People Move from the Prison of Self to the Joy of Commitment
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Author David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.
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Pursue meaning, reject hyper-individualism
- By Adam Shields on 05-07-19
By: David Brooks
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The Black Friend
- On Being a Better White Person
- By: Frederick Joseph
- Narrated by: Miebaka Yohannes
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing from the perspective of a friend, Frederick Joseph offers candid reflections on his own experiences with racism and conversations with prominent artists and activists about theirs - creating an essential listen for white people who are committed anti-racists and those newly come to the cause of racial justice.
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Not really a friend and not friendly
- By emax on 06-01-21
By: Frederick Joseph
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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Cunt (20th Anniversary Edition)
- By: Inga Muscio
- Narrated by: Inga Muscio
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fully revised anniversary edition of the classic testament to women's empowerment, Muscio explores with candidness and humor such traditional feminist issues as birth control, sexuality, jealousy between women, and prostitution with a fresh attitude for a new generation of women. Sending out a call for every woman to be the "Cuntlovin' Ruler of Her Sexual Universe", Muscio stands convention on its head by embracing the provocative and celebrating womanhood.
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Best book ever
- By Paula Daniels on 07-28-19
By: Inga Muscio
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The New Negro
- The Life of Alain Locke
- By: Jeffrey C. Stewart
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.
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Let me guess? Locke was a gay black man?
- By Porter on 01-21-20
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Native Son
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
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Simply a classic
- By Noah Smith on 11-11-10
By: Richard Wright
What listeners say about Black Women Writers at Work
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Natalie P.
- 02-20-23
It is incredible!
It is incredible to connect with some of the greats. These interviews are treasures. So grateful this book was republished.
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- Sandee
- 06-09-23
Great Narration, Great motivation for writing
I will read this over and over, purchased th kindle version
but fist I borrowed from the library, I will purchase my own hard copy
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