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Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded
- Narrated by: Jon Brandi
- Length: 3 hrs and 4 mins
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Publisher's summary
In this major tour de force, John Guzlowski traces the arc of one of the millions of immigrant families of America, in this case survivors of the maelstrom of World War II. Watch the book trailer at www.polww2.com/EchoesTrailer.
Raw, eloquent, nuanced, intimate - Guzlowski illuminates the many faces of war, the toll it takes on innocent civilians, and the ways in which the trauma echoes down through generations.
His narrative structure mirrors the fractured dislocation experienced by war refugees. Through a haunting collage of jagged fragments - poems, prose and prose poems, frozen moments of time, sometimes dreamlike and surreal, other times realistic and graphic - Guzlowski weaves a powerful story with impacts at levels both obvious and subtle. The result is a deeper, more visceral understanding than could have been achieved through descriptive narrative alone.
This is the story of Guzlowski's family: his mother and father, survivors of the war, taken as slave laborers by the Germans; his sister and himself, born soon after the war in displaced persons camps in Germany; the family's first days in America and later their neighbors in America, some dysfunctional and lost, some mean, some caring and kind; and the relationships between and among them all.
As Guzlowski unfolds the story backward through time, he seduces us into taking the journey with him. Along the way the transformative power of the creative process becomes apparent. Guzlowski's writing helps him uncouple from the trauma of the past and at the same time provides a pathway for acceptance and reconciliation with his parents.
Ultimately, then, this is a story of healing.
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Beautiful, full of sadness, power, and heart.
- By Melissa L. Magana on 04-27-17
By: Kao Kalia Yang
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Without a Map
- A Memoir
- By: Meredith Hall
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.
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Not Your Average "16 and Pregnant"
- By Susie on 12-11-12
By: Meredith Hall
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Song of the Exile
- By: Kiana Davenport
- Narrated by: Cristine McMurdo-Wallis
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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This beautiful and haunting novel bares the soul of a Hawaiian-American family during World War II. As you share in the Meahuna family's misfortunes and triumphs, a sense of intense intimacy evolves. Cristine McMurdo-Wallis lets you savor the family members' remarkable, heartwrenching stories as they are revealed piece by piece in language rich with sensuous detail.
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Stunning Historical Novel
- By Mimi Routh on 05-27-19
By: Kiana Davenport
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New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
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Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
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The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
- A Novel of War and Survival
- By: Louise Murphy
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel". They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called "witch" by the nearby villagers.
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Rated R for violence & rape
- By Cayla on 12-05-16
By: Louise Murphy
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Annie Dunne
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah’s small farm running. Suddenly, Annie’s young niece and nephew are left in their care. Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
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Splendid
- By Shady on 06-21-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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Two Rings
- A Story of Love and War
- By: Millie Werber, Eve Keller
- Narrated by: Yelena Shmulenson, Eve Keller
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Trapped in Poland in 1941, like many Jews, Millie Werber went from the Radom Ghetto to slave labor in an armaments factory, survived Auschwitz, and toiled in a second factory until liberation came on April 1, 1945. She faced death many times but lived to marry a good man and fellow survivor. Meanwhile, she concealed a photograph in her closet and carried a secret in her heart.
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What a love story
- By Sbear on 11-19-18
By: Millie Werber, and others
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The Passion
- By: Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues, Daniel Pirrie
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meets their singular destiny.
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Excellence.
- By Scottie V. on 10-07-19
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The Women in the Castle
- By: Jessica Shattuck
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times notable book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
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Skating On The Thin Ice Of Life
- By Sara on 04-29-17
By: Jessica Shattuck
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The Enchanted
- A Novel
- By: Rene Denfeld
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. Fearful and reclusive, he senses what others cannot. Though bars confine him every minute of every day, he marries visions of golden horses running beneath the prison, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs with the devastating violence of prison life.
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Ink Blot Test
- By Mel on 03-05-14
By: Rene Denfeld
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Mother Tongue
- By: Demetria Martinez
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States - his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams.
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Amazing Story
- By Alexa :3 on 09-26-24
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Under the Same Sky
- From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America
- By: Joseph Kim, Stephan Talty
- Narrated by: Raymond Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage.
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Tugs at the heart strings
- By R3v13w3r on 07-15-15
By: Joseph Kim, and others
What listeners say about Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Midwestbonsai
- 01-05-17
This told a story, then invited the reader in
John Z Guzlowski provides a strong and visual audio script with Echoes of Tattered Tongues. As someone who studied poetry in depth as an undergraduate, I really never expected to hear an audiobook that could pull off poetry in the way this one has. My initial thought, before I even started listening to the book, would be that it would be sad, it would make me sad, and I would want to turn it off. However, there’s a warmth to the words and the poetry in some ways closure, in other ways a visual tour of an era we’ve mostly forgotten. The Publisher’s Weekly review did not do the story justice, rather, it made it seem as though the book lacked humanity, that it was mean to shock by picking those particularly vivid and painful poems.
However, I found that story about the trunk especially moving, and one that I think does a better job as a conduit for the rest of the book. There was a steamer trunk that his father built with his own hands then loaded with those things they would need in the new world. Along with the contents, it began to carry memories of the father who built it and the mother who knitted some of the clothes that went in it. The trunk went to Chicago and served as a table, bench and even a bed. The trunk went from Chicago to Arizona and again it was one of those lasting memories that continued on with them. For $150, the author could have kept the trunk and the memories that came with it, instead it went on with the estate sale and an irreplaceable part of the family’s history was lost. The story doesn’t end there as he muses about the reasons for turning down the opportunity to keep something that had lasted so long. His not taking on the trunk felt callous and as good poetry and prose does, evoked an emotion, he was honest about it, talking about the doubt later and that I felt was the best summary of the book.
So many books abruptly tell a story, then make a point. This book told a story, then invited the reader to come into the story and go along the decision making process with him. The descriptions of the events were vivid, the story honestly told, and the reflection clearly and sometimes coldly or warmly related. Nonetheless, it is one of the rare instances where I feel the poetry was the right medium. Few people properly use flashes in history to tell a story, most of the times the reader will become lost. In this story, the reader finds his own humanity and his own unanswered questions a parallel to John Z. Guzlowski’s recounting.
About the narrator
John Bandi provides a thoughtful, reflective baritone that accompanies well the gray cloud cover on the cover image. He clearly delineates those areas that deserve remembrance and those that moments that uplift. Ultimately, his introspective tone, thoughtful and fluid, provide the right accompaniment to an audio delivery of visually startling events.
Audiobook was provided for review by the publisher.
Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog
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- Paul Atwater
- 04-11-17
Details of the Long Reach of the Nazi Concentration Camps
This book is a well-told story of the darkness and long-term impact of the Nazi movement and thei concentration camps. The author reveals how the damage impacts a family for generations. Jon Brandi's strong but calming voice pulled me through the darkness. I hope he does more narration work.
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