The Fire This Time
A New Generation Speaks About Race
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Narrated by:
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Cherise Boothe
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Michael Early
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Kevin R. Free
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Korey Jackson
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Susan Spain
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By:
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Jesmyn Ward
About this listen
National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping-off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin's 1962 "Letter to My Nephew", which was later published in his landmark book, The Fire Next Time. Addressing his 15-year-old namesake on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin wrote, "You know and I know that the country is celebrating 100 years of freedom 100 years too soon."
Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward knows that Baldwin's words ring as true as ever today. In response she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation's most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns.
©2016 Jesmyn Ward (P)2016 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Beyond preserving the firsthand testimonies of participants and witnesses, individuals and societies must continually take responsibility for learning the painful lessons of the past in order to offer hope for the future. Survivor Café offers a clear-eyed sense of the enormity of our 21st-century human inheritance - not only among direct descendants of the Holocaust, but also in the shape of our collective responsibility to learn from tragedy.
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A book every generation should read
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By: Elizabeth Rosner
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Assassination Vacation
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- Narrated by: Conan O'Brien, Stephen King, Dave Eggers, and others
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Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other, a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.
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extremely entertaining and informative
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Thanks to her spiteful, jealous Jamaican mother, Nell Vera Lowe was cut off from her Chinese father, Samuel, when she was just a baby, after he announced that he was taking a Chinese bride. By the time Nell was old enough to travel to her father's shop in St. Anne's Bay, he'd taken his family back to China, never learning what became of his eldest daughter. Bereft, Nell left Jamaica for New York to start a new life.
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Fascinating
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While the World Watched
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Performance
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Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.
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Look Back and Live With Greater Understanding
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When They Call You a Terrorist
- A Black Lives Matter Memoir
- By: Patrisse Cullors, asha bandele, Angela Davis - foreword
- Narrated by: Angela Davis - foreword, Angela Davis, Patrisse Cullors
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When They Call You a Terrorist is the essential audiobook for every conscientious American. From one of the cofounders of the Black Lives Matter movement comes a poetic audiobook memoir and reflection on humanity. Necessary and timely, Patrisse Cullors' story asks us to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love.
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Everyone should listen!
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By: Patrisse Cullors, and others
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Patriarchy Blues
- Reflections on Manhood
- By: Frederick Joseph
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- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
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In this thought-provoking collection of essays, poems, and short reflections, Frederick Joseph contemplates these questions and more as he explores issues of masculinity and patriarchy from both a personal and cultural standpoint. From fatherhood, and “manning up” to abuse and therapy, he fearlessly and thoughtfully tackles the complex realities of men’s lives today and their significance for society, lending his insights as a Black man.
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Great read!
- By BlissfullyT on 11-15-23
By: Frederick Joseph
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Life Beyond Measure
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- By: Sidney Poitier
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Sidney Poitier is one of the most revered actors in the history of Hollywood. He has overcome enormous obstacles in extraordinary times and is a role model for many Americans because of his convictions, bravery, and grace. Poitier reflects on his amazing life in Life Beyond Measure, offering inspirational advice and personal stories in the form of extended letters to his great-granddaughter.
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Mix of family history and life advice.
- By Adam Shields on 10-31-19
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In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.
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I learned so much. Great pacing, felt like I time-traveled
- By Jess Fuchs on 02-07-22
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Known and Strange Things
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With this collection of more than 50 pieces on politics, photography, travel, history, and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of today's most powerful and original voices. Minute after minute, deploying prose dense with beauty and ideas, he finds fresh and potent ways to interpret art, people, and historical moments, taking in subjects from Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and W. G. Sebald to Instagram, Barack Obama, and Boko Haram.
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A Book that Teaches and Shares
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By: Teju Cole
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Paper Love
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Performance
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Story
Years after her grandfather's death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled "Correspondence: Patients A-G". What she found inside weren't dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family's prewar Vienna. One woman's letters stood out: those from Valy-Valerie Scheftel, her grandfather's lover who remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria.
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Compelling and Personal Exploration
- By Murphee on 08-09-23
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Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
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Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
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Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
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Dreams in a Time of War
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- By: Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
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Of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiongo was born in 1938 in the backlands of his country (Kiambu district) to a father whose four wives bore him two dozen or so children. Ngugi was the fifth child of the third wife. His father was a peasant farmer forced to become a squatter after the British Imperial Act of 1915. Before going off to school, he had what was then considered a bizarre and inexplicable thirst for learning....
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An escape through education
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The Republic of Imagination
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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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What listeners say about The Fire This Time
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tajaun
- 07-02-20
Must Read!
Must read if you want to understand the victories and struggles of blackness. It is a journey that is transformative.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-20-21
Awesome and wrenching and hope-filled
These stories are deeply searing and unforgettable. Gained a human picture behind the news stories.
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- S. Clemons
- 03-03-21
Truly tragic
When will these horrible occurrences end? Will there ever be true equity in the USA for all citizens?
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- Karen Johnston
- 12-28-16
strong voices, witness to our times
the last essay is head & shoulders best above the rest. I'll be listening to it again
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1 person found this helpful
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- Cricket Hall
- 06-06-20
must listen
this is an important book to read. it details struggles of race. it needs to be read.
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- Matthew A. Burnett
- 06-12-20
Delusion shattering
The Fire This Time is a beautiful and heart-wrenching introduction for the uncomfortable conversations that need to occur in our nation.
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3 people found this helpful
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- JAZZ
- 06-07-20
Please Please READ!!!
This book changed my perspective, My world, My life. Appreciative and so grateful! I've been recommending to all of my friends
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- Evan
- 02-12-21
Driving while Pondering
Everyone should read this book and in particular anyone who is in denial of systemic racism. The morning I finished I was driving my son to work and we saw police lights. Someone was pulled over in front of us. A second police car also there and officer returned to his vehicle. Thank goodness it appeared to be a mask he was grabbing. The driver was a black male. My son couldn’t figure out why there would be two cars. I immediately returned after the ten minutes it took to drop my son and felt such relief no one was still there. I willed myself to believe it was “okay.”
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- Kindle Customer
- 02-09-21
The most useful book I have ever read about race
This book brought me to tears, raised my awareness, and change my understanding about what it means to be black in America.
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1 person found this helpful
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- A. SAID
- 11-11-18
Excellent.
I’ve never been a big fan of remaking classics, but this book/writers did justice to the original, I hope this becomes a series. Ms. Ward is a blessing.
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