Imagination
A Manifesto
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Narrated by:
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Janina Edwards
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By:
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Ruha Benjamin
About this listen
A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. Work that doesn't strangle the life out of people? Naive. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. Exactly.
We have the power to use our imaginations to create a world in which everyone can thrive. But obstacles abound. We have inherited destructive ideas that trap us inside a dominant imagination. Consider how racism, sexism, and classism make hierarchies, exploitation, and violence seem natural and inevitable—but all emerged from the human imagination.
The most effective way to disrupt these deadly systems is to do so collectively. Ruha Benjamin highlights the educators, artists, activists, and many others who are refuting powerful narratives that justify the status quo, crafting new stories that reflect our interconnection, and offering creative approaches to seemingly intractable problems.
Imagination: A Manifesto offers visionary examples and tactics to push beyond the constraints of what we think, and are told, is possible. This book is for anyone who is ready to take to heart Toni Morrison's instruction: "Dream a little before you think."
©2024 Ruha Benjamin (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story5 out of 5 stars 41
Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolence and Malcolm X's "by any means necessary." In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.
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5 out of 5 stars
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BIPOC Must Read!!!
- By Anonymous User on 03-20-25
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Mutual Aid
- Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
- By: Dean Spade
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
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4 out of 5 stars
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abridge this for audio format
- By Jeff M. on 02-17-22
By: Dean Spade
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Literary Theory for Robots
- How Computers Learned to Write
- By: Dennis Yi Tenen
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lam
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4 out of 5 stars 6
Literary Theory for Robots reveals the hidden history of modern machine intelligence, taking listeners on a spellbinding journey from medieval Arabic philosophy to visions of a universal language, past Hollywood fiction factories, and missile defense systems trained on Russian folktales. In this provocative reflection on the shared pasts of literature and computer science, former Microsoft engineer and professor of comparative literature Dennis Yi Tenen provides crucial context for recent developments in AI, which holds important lessons for the future of humans living with smart technology.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Maybe better in print
- By Amazon Customer on 03-02-24
By: Dennis Yi Tenen
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Unmasking AI
- My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines
- By: Joy Buolamwini
- Narrated by: Joy Buolamwini
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
To most of us, it seems like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Dr. Joy Buolamwini, who has been at the forefront of AI research, this moment has been a long time in the making.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Who knew
- By AD Dub on 11-14-24
By: Joy Buolamwini
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The Moral Circle
- Who Matters, What Matters, and Why
- By: Jeff Sebo
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology?
By: Jeff Sebo
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Decolonial Marxism
- Essays from the Pan-African Revolution
- By: Walter Rodney
- Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story5 out of 5 stars 21
Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora. He was not only a witness of a Pan-African and socialist internationalism, but a prime actor in mass organization, catalyzing rebellious ferment, and theorizing an anti-colonial path to self-emancipation. This volume demonstrates the unbending consistency that unites his life and work: the ongoing reinvention of living conception of Marxism, and a respect for the still untapped potential of mass self-rule.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Another Rodney Classic
- By Amazon Customer on 03-26-24
By: Walter Rodney
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Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
- Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
- By: Angela Y. Davis
- Narrated by: Angela Davis, Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,569
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,373
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,363
In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of Black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles - from the Black freedom movement to the South African antiapartheid movement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Injustice anywhere is Injustice everywhere
- By Jarucia Jaycox on 05-05-17
By: Angela Y. Davis
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Algorithms of Oppression
- How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
- By: Safiya Umoja Noble
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 387
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 329
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 327
Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Read this book. Tell everyone you know about it.
- By Joshua Daniel-Wariya on 06-06-19
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Freedom Dreams
- The Black Radical Imagination
- By: Robin D.G. Kelley, Aja Monet - foreword
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story5 out of 5 stars 5
First published in 2002, Freedom Dreams is a staple in the study of the Black radical tradition. Unearthing the thrilling history of grassroots movements and renegade intellectuals and artists, Kelley recovers the dreams of the future worlds Black radicals struggled to achieve.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Full of past and future freedom dreams
- By Ambre Nulph on 02-12-23
By: Robin D.G. Kelley, and others
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The Great Displacement
- Climate Change and the Next American Migration
- By: Jake Bittle
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense—we imagine that as global warming worsens over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world, fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don’t realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Where we're headed
- By Dr. Stuart A. Blair on 03-09-23
By: Jake Bittle
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More Than a Glitch
- Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech
- By: Meredith Broussard
- Narrated by: L. Malaika Cooper
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
The word "glitch" implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it is to identify. But what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in mostly functional machinery—what if they're coded into the system itself? Meredith Broussard demonstrates in More Than a Glitch how neutrality in tech is a myth and why algorithms need to be held accountable. Broussard, a data scientist and one of the few Black female researchers in artificial intelligence, masterfully synthesizes concepts from computer science and sociology.
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The Power of Imagination
- Unlocking Your Ability to Receive from God
- By: Andrew Wommack
- Narrated by: Jon Miosky
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 622
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 536
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Story5 out of 5 stars 532
Never underestimate your imagination! It’s not just a product of childhood fantasies. Imagination is a God-given dynamo that opens the doorway to your potential! In The Power of Imagination, Andrew Wommack will unlock the power of your imagination and explain how you can put it to work giving you hope for the future. Without it, you’ll never fulfill God’s plan for your life. Circumstances will divert you and hardship will steal from you. But with it, you won’t be able to lose for winning!
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful
- By Aprille on 10-16-19
By: Andrew Wommack
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Hope in the Dark
- Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
- By: Rebecca Solnit
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 226
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 202
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 200
With Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide knowledge of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hope indeed!
- By Carolinebp on 04-21-17
By: Rebecca Solnit
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Disaster Nationalism
- The Downfall of Liberal Civilization
- By: Richard Seymour
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 10
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 9
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 9
The rise of the new far right has left the world grappling with a profound misunderstanding. While the spotlight often shines on the actions of charismatic leaders, the true peril lies elsewhere. Defeating these people will not stem the tide driving them forward. They are merely the embodiment of profound forces that are rarely understood. Propelled through the vast networks of social media and fueled by far-right influencers, enthralled by images of disaster and fantasies of doom, they have emerged from a reservoir of societal despair, fear, and isolation.
By: Richard Seymour
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Emergent Strategy
- By: adrienne maree brown
- Narrated by: adrienne maree brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 281
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 235
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 232
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great book. Too many footnotes.
- By Moon 🌙 on 09-09-23
What listeners say about Imagination
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lance
- 03-18-25
Namaste 🙏🏾
Don’t just love, be love itself.
Know thy self and carve your own path.
Namaste 🙏🏾
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Heather Mack
- 08-04-24
If you loved Freedom Dreams
Ruha Benjamin doesn’t pull punches! This work about recovering our imaginations brings together brilliant insights and living examples and a path forward.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- S.T.
- 08-04-24
Excellent read for any audience!
Whether you work for a nonprofit or you're new to the fight for equality, this book is for you. It's presented with the assumption that you care about humanity, and asked how we are all capable of changing our communities, and changing our own minds.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Wendy Faye
- 07-14-24
Excellent Imagination
Ms. Benjamin is an outstanding writer, thinker and citizen. She is also an outstanding narrator. Although she didn't use her vocal talent for this book, she chose one of our best narrators, Janina Edwards who has a beautiful, easy to listen to voice. This is one of the books I would like to be mandatory reading for high school students. Two thumbs up 👍🏾 👍🏾
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jessica Maduka
- 03-05-25
We need to use this knowledge
Most refreshing book I've read (or heard read) in ages. We need these levels of possibility illustrated. worldly and open hearted.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Ori L.
- 02-02-25
Not enough proof for the portrayed perspective
A lot of the “insights” seemed circumstantial and not enough detail provided on how they reached conclusions… complained about unfairness without suggesting solutions
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