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Fire Shut Up in My Bones
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Charles M. Blow
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
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Publisher's summary
A gorgeous, moving memoir of how one of America's most innovative and respected journalists found his voice by coming to terms with a painful past.
New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew up - a place where slavery's legacy was felt astonishingly close, reverberating in the elders' stories and in the near-constant wash of violence.
Charles's attachment to his mother - a fiercely driven women with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, a job plucking poultry at a nearby factory, a soon-to-be-ex husband, and a love of newspapers and learning - cannot protect him from secret abuse at the hands of an older cousin. It's damage that triggers years of anger and searing self-questioning.
Finally, Charles escapes to a nearby state university, where he joins a black fraternity after a passage of brutal hazing, and then enters a world of racial and sexual privilege that feels like everything he's ever needed and wanted, until he's called upon, himself, to become the one perpetuating the shocking abuse.
A powerfully redemptive memoir that both fits the tradition of African-American storytelling from the South, and gives it an indelible new slant.
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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Too Close to the Falls
- A Memoir
- By: Catherine Gildiner
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the middle of the 1950s in Lewiston, New York, a small and sleepy American town very near Niagara Falls. No one is divorced. Mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and children pop Pez candy and swing from vines over a local gorge. But at the tender age of four, it becomes clear to her Cathy's parents that their rambunctious daughter is no ordinary child and they soon put her "to work" at her father's pharmacy.
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Brilliant and funny and touching.
- By Kindle Customer on 11-07-19
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The World's Largest Man
- A Memoir
- By: Harrison Scott Key
- Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father - a hunter, a fighter, and a football coach. Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not.
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I laughed every day to and from work. Loved it!
- By KufRN on 06-06-18
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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That’s That
- By: Colin Broderick
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Colin Broderick was born in 1968 and spent his childhood in Tyrone County in Northern Ireland. It was the beginning of the period of heightened tension and violence known as the Troubles, and Colin’s Catholic family lived in the heart of rebel country. The community was filled with Provisional IRA members, whose lives depended on the silence and complicity of their neighbors. But even when Colin does ask his parents about these events, he never receives a clear explanation. Desperate to protect her children, Colin’s mother tries to prevent exposure to or knowledge of the harm that surrounds them.
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Well Written and Very Personal Memoir
- By Lulu on 01-08-16
By: Colin Broderick
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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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The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
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Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
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The Darling
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
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Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
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Ava's Man
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrated by: Rick Bragg
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a beloved bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an unlettered roofer who kept food on his family’s table through the worst of the Great Depression
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Deeply moving
- By Kate on 08-12-03
By: Rick Bragg
What listeners say about Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joanne Cooper Layne
- 10-11-14
Best books of 2014 -this is on the short list
Would you listen to Fire Shut Up in My Bones again? Why?
Yes, reads like a good nivel, keen isights beautiful wring , funny and prodound
What was one of the most memorable moments of Fire Shut Up in My Bones?
The portrayal of Charles Blows community growing up where everyone called him Charl s baby and then moving to a new neighborhood where he not only was no ones baby but not even noticed
Which scene was your favorite?
Pistol packing women of his youth , the job fair ith the New york times
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Hilarious at times stunning in its ability to make you think about big life issues
Any additional comments?
This hould bevome one of those books that everyone should read in high school. Like rubyfruit Jungle it tells awarm story of sexual identity Wakening
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2 people found this helpful
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- astasha
- 03-26-17
Charles Blow Revealed!!!!!!
I loved the whole audio presentation! I attended Grambling State University as well. I was an acquaintance of his. I felt as if we were sitting in front of the library and he decided to share his life with me. All I have to say is BRAVO!!! I have already recommended his book to a few of my friends. It was raw and revealing. A true act of bravery and self awareness of who he was and who he is today.
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- kidmaxima
- 07-25-22
Awesome!
I'm so glad I purchased this audible book, and he's one of my favorite Journalist. I never had any idea of what he experienced a very power and entertaining story.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-24-22
neutral
The story itself is good
but the author should not have narrated. Mr Blow has a monotone voice.
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- Anonymous User
- 03-04-23
Awesome Read!
This was very well written. It was hard to stop listening. I wanted to hear more.
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- RJA
- 12-27-18
Enjoyable
My book club chose this book and I was reluctant to try it. However I was surprisingly entertained by Charles Blow’s life story. He write with beautifully descriptive words that paint a unique story line. However his voice does not carry the words through as well as they could be read, there is little life in the sentences. The story was well worth the time and I would recommend it.
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- Ladonna Williams
- 03-31-19
I highly recommend this book!
Throughly enjoyed this book. I thank the author for sharing his story in such a lovely thoughtful way. Being a incest survivor, I can truly relate to the loss of innocence and being overwhelmingly confused about what to do or who can I tell and will they believe me or blame me. Wonderfully written and performed....thank you for sharing your truth.
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- kim
- 10-30-14
Well written and engaging… audio could be better
What was one of the most memorable moments of Fire Shut Up in My Bones?
I thought this book was very well written. I nice use of descriptive words without being too wordsmith intensive.
How could the performance have been better?
Charles who is the writer and narrator has a really nice deep voice but he was unemotional and drone like in his reading. There were some parts however which were very well done and these happened to be when he was voicing someone other than narration. I can see the narrator had real potential that sadly wasn't realized.
I have said this over and over here…the narration makes or breaks the audiobook. This one needed better direction maybe.
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- J Brown
- 02-06-21
Charles M. Blow's Life and its Complexities.
Mr. Blow is an amazing writer who is very transparent about sharing his life story.
However, he reads in a steady monotone.
All of the sadness, happiness or other
emotions he experiences are said as though he's sharing facts and facts only.
I gave the book one star for performance and five stars for story and overall.
JB in San Diego, CA
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- Audrey F. Martin
- 11-07-22
Complicated.
I loved it. Interesting study in self discovery. 🤔 Author move toward becoming an honorable man. He learns to conquer his demons through hard work.
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