Neighbors and Other Stories
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Neighbors and Other Stories
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Narrated by:
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Emana Rachelle
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By:
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Diane Oliver
About this listen
A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver’s insightful stories reverberate into the present day.
There’s the nightmarish “The Closet on the Top Floor,” in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; “Mint Juleps not Served Here,” where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; “Spiders Cry without Tears,” in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love; and the high-tension titular story that follows a nervous older sister the night before her little brother is set to desegregate his school.
These are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, Neighbors is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters.
©2024 Diane Oliver (P)2024 Dreamscape MediaListeners also enjoyed...
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- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
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Sweetness in the Skin
- A Novel
- By: Ishi Robinson
- Narrated by: Deja Bowens
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story5 out of 5 stars 91
Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother (who wants to improve the family’s social standing), her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her mother Paulette (who’s rarely home). When Sophie is offered the chance to move to France for work, she seizes the opportunity, and promises to send for her niece in one year’s time....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved this book!
- By Merve on 05-09-25
By: Ishi Robinson
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Weird Black Girls
- Stories
- By: Elwin Cotman
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Jade Wheeler, James Fouhey, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 5
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Story4 out of 5 stars 5
A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Weird Black Girls
- By Jeleeto on 05-20-24
By: Elwin Cotman
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Sky Full of Elephants
- By: Cebo Campbell
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon, Erin Ruth Walker, Janina Edwards
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 582
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 559
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 559
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ever wish that some folks would just disappear?
- By Alioop on 12-11-24
By: Cebo Campbell
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Firstborn Girls
- A Memoir
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles, Bernice L. McFadden
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story5 out of 5 stars 25
On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar. Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Read
- By Mia CB on 05-15-25
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What You Leave Behind
- A Novel
- By: Wanda M. Morris
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 327
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 306
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 306
Award-winning author Wanda Morris returns with a powerful, haunting thriller following a lawyer who after the mysterious disappearance of a local landowner and the death of his sister just months before, uncovers a conspiracy that dates back to Reconstruction and persists in half the United States today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The suspense!
- By Tenishia Unique on 09-07-24
By: Wanda M. Morris
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Uncle Tom's Children
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story5 out of 5 stars 61
Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of novellas, was the first book from Richard Wright, who would go on to win international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the Black experience. Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful and devastating stories in Uncle Tom's Children concerns an aspect of the lives of Black people in the post-slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. The collection also includes a personal essay by Wright titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow."
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5 out of 5 stars
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I am Speechless, Absolutely Breath Taking!,
- By Lisalisa on 09-26-20
By: Richard Wright
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The Familiar
- A Novel
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,861
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,744
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,744
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The performance was superior!
- By anonymous2812 on 04-14-24
By: Leigh Bardugo
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The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Colson Whitehead
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,398
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,286
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7,256
When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Who spoke for the black boys?
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Colson Whitehead
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Harlem Rhapsody
- By: Victoria Christopher Murray
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 295
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 290
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 290
In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all. W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Horrible Representation
- By Kwana Nicholas on 04-05-25
Special stories
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A good mix of stories
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mesmerizing
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Definitely a mixed bag
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Incomplete stories
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were real. The narration was good. I liked this book of shorts very much.
Engaging
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