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Mumbo Jumbo
- A Novel
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
Ishmael Reed's inspired fable of the ragtime era, in which a social movement threatens to suppress the spread of black culture - hailed by Harold Bloom as one of the 500 greatest books of the Western canon
In 1920s America, a plague is spreading fast. From New Orleans to Chicago to New York, the "Jes Grew" epidemic makes people desperate to dance, overturning social norms in the process. Anyone is vulnerable and when they catch it, they'll bump and grind into a frenzy. Working to combat the Jes Grew infection are the puritanical Atonists, a group bent on cultivating a "Talking Android", an African American who will infiltrate the unruly black communities and help crush the outbreak. But PaPa LaBas, a houngan voodoo priest, is determined to keep his ancient culture - including a key spiritual text - alive.
Spanning a dizzying host of genres, from cinema to academia to mythology, Mumbo Jumbo is a lively ride through a key decade of American history. In addition to ragtime, blues, and jazz, Reed's allegory draws on the Harlem Renaissance, the Back to Africa movement, and America's occupation of Haiti. His style throughout is as avant-garde and vibrant as the music at its center.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book - brilliant narrator!
- By Z. Halley on 04-17-10
By: Karen Abbott
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Foucault's Pendulum
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Tim Curry
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 702
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 535
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 527
One Colonel Ardenti, who has unnaturally black, brilliantined hair, a carefully groomed mustache, wears maroon socks, and who once served in the Foreign Legion, starts it all. He tells three Milan book editors that he has discovered a coded message about a Templar Plan, centuries old and involving Stonehenge, a plan to tap a mystic source of power far greater than atomic energy.
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2 out of 5 stars
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too much missing
- By Kenneth on 01-29-07
By: Umberto Eco
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Miss Lonelyhearts
- By: Nathanael West
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser, Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 81
Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. The novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Charged with Meaning, and Far Leftist Leaning
- By W Perry Hall on 01-27-16
By: Nathanael West
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The Possessed
- Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
- By: Elif Batuman
- Narrated by: Elif Batuman
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
In The Possessed we watch Elif Batuman investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has 100 different words for crying; and see an 18th-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their places in The Possessed.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dear Russian Literary Diary...
- By Darwin8u on 08-29-17
By: Elif Batuman
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American Rose
- A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee
- By: Karen Abbott
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 101
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 98
With the critically acclaimed Sin in the Second City, best-selling author Karen Abbott “pioneered sizzle history” (USA Today). Now she returns with the gripping and expansive story of America’s coming-of-age - told through the extraordinary life of Gypsy Rose Lee and the world she survived and conquered. America in the Roaring Twenties. Vaudeville was king. Talking pictures were only a distant flicker. Speakeasies beckoned beyond dimly lit doorways; money flowed fast and free.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Well done biography of a complicated Icon
- By Moire on 01-27-11
By: Karen Abbott
-
Humboldt's Gift
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 229
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 156
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 155
For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Great Reader
- By Scott on 05-10-08
By: Saul Bellow
-
The Short Reign of Pippin IV
- A Fabrication
- By: John Steinbeck, Robert E. Morsberger - introduction, Katherine Morsberger - introduction
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In his only work of political satire, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, John Steinbeck turns the French Revolution upside down as amateur astronomer Pippin Héristal is drafted to rule the unruly French. Steinbeck creates around the infamous Pippin the most hilarious royal court ever: Pippin's wife, Queen Marie, who "might have taken her place at the bar of a very good restaurant"; his uncle, a man of dubious virtue; and his glamour-struck daughter and her beau, the son of the so-called "egg king" of Petaluma, California.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Political Satire at its Best!
- By Matthew G. Lara on 03-01-20
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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The Satanic Verses
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,844
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,600
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,590
Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
- By David Edelberg on 11-24-12
By: Salman Rushdie
-
The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 77
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 27 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 123
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 88
Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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Mata Hari's Last Dance
- A Novel
- By: Michelle Moran
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 152
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 137
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
Paris, 1917. The notorious dancer Mata Hari sits in a cold cell awaiting freedom...or death. Alone and despondent, she is as confused as the rest of the world about the charges she's been arrested on: treason leading to the deaths of thousands of French soldiers. As she waits for her fate to be decided, she relays the story of her life to a reporter who is allowed to visit her in prison.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Throughly enjoyable
- By scalante on 09-07-16
By: Michelle Moran
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Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,010
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 705
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 704
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Sunny's Nights
- Lost and Found at the Bar at the End of the World
- By: Tim Sultan
- Narrated by: Robert Malloch
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Imagine that Alice had walked into a bar instead of falling down the rabbit hole. In the tradition of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar and the classic reportage of Joseph Mitchell, here is an indelible portrait of what is quite possibly the greatest bar in the world—and the mercurial, magnificent man behind it. The first time he saw Sunny’s Bar, in 1995, Tim Sultan was lost, thirsty for a drink, and intrigued by the single bar sign among the forlorn warehouses lining the Brooklyn waterfront.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Visiting an Era
- By Carolyn on 03-01-16
By: Tim Sultan
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The Day Lincoln Was Shot
- By: Jim Bishop
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
In a historical classic as enthralling as a novel, author Jim Bishop colorfully depicts the city of Washington as it is celebrating the end of the Civil War. With research carefully gathered over 25 years, he weaves details together so skillfully, that even though you know the outcome, the suspense heightens with each unfolding event. It’s Good Friday, April 14, 1865. While all around him, people demand vengeance on the subdued southern states, the President plans to rebuild demolished cities and send captured Secessionist soldiers home to plant their crops.
By: Jim Bishop
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The Spy Wore Red
- By: Aline, Countess of Romanones
- Narrated by: Grace Conlin
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 622
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 507
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 510
When Aline Griffith was born in Pearl River, New York, in 1923, one might have guessed from her exceptional beauty that a career as an actress or model might be in her future. Few would have imagined that twenty-one years later, she would find herself in Spain as a deep-cover OSS agent, infiltrating the highest levels of Spanish society, or that five years later still, she would marry a Spanish grandee and become one of the most watched, most admired, most fascinating women of international society. This is the story of Aline, Countess of Romanones, a story of courage, beauty and success that is far more exciting than any fictionalized thriller.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
A must read!!
- By KaY.2012 on 12-29-14
By: Aline, and others
-
Daring
- My Passages - A Memoir
- By: Gail Sheehy
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Candid, insightful, and powerful, Daring: My Passages is the story of the unconventional life of a writer who dared - to walk New York City streets with hookers and pimps to expose violent prostitution; to march with civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland as British paratroopers opened fire; to seek out Egypt's president Anwar Sadat when he was targeted for death after making peace with Israel.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Enjoyed unexpectedly
- By Corinne O'Rourke on 09-06-23
By: Gail Sheehy
-
The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 126
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 117
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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2 out of 5 stars
-
Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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4 out of 5 stars
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Now in audio for the first time! Award-winning actor and two-time Tony Award nominee David Pittu narrates one of the most influential books in gay literature. Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance defined gay life in late 1970s New York. Published in 1978, the novel captures the time post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS where sexual freedom was celebrated and the future appeared limitless.
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In Tome, a small, seemingly sleepy New Mexico hamlet, Sofia and her four fated daughters reveal a world of marvels where the comic and horrific, past and present, real and fantastic coexist and collide. Over two crowded decades, Sofia tries to hold things together following the disappearance of her husband, Domingo, he of the Clark Gable mustache and the uncontrollable gambling habit. Adventurous Esperanza, Chicana campus radical turned television news reporter, travels farthest from home only to be reeled back in spirit.
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Amiable with Big Teeth
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The unexpected discovery in 2009 of a completed manuscript of Claude McKay's final novel was celebrated as one of the most significant literary events in recent years. Building on the already extraordinary legacy of McKay's life and work, this colorful, dramatic novel centers on the efforts by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of fascist-controlled Ethiopia, a crucial but largely forgotten event in American history.
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America Is in the Heart: A Personal History (AmazonClassics Edition)
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Performance3 out of 5 stars 2
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Story3 out of 5 stars 2
Carlos Bulosan’s idealism and ambition would seem to position him for certain success in America, even given how young he is when he first makes the journey from the Philippines. However, after arriving in Seattle, employers are far more concerned with his Filipino background than they are with his character. Low-paying jobs - and an uncertain future - remain his daily reality.
By: Carlos Bulosan
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Flight to Canada
- By: Ishmael Reed
- Narrated by: Vince Bailey
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
Brilliantly portrayed by a novelist with "a talent for hyperbole and downright yarning unequaled since Mark Twain", (Saturday Review), this slave's-eye view of the Civil War exposes America's racial foibles of the past and present with uninhibited humor and panache. Mixing history, fantasy, political reality, and comedy, Ishmael Reed spins the tale of three runaway slaves and the master determined to catch them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Next Level.
- By A. SAID on 10-25-19
By: Ishmael Reed
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Divorcing
- By: Susan Taubes, David Rieff - Introduction by
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
Dream and reality overlap in Divorcing, a book in which divorce is not just a question of a broken marriage but names a rift that runs right through the inner and outer worlds of Sophie Blind, its brilliant but desperate protagonist. It's a rift that encompasses not just forced exile and estrangement from her adopted country, but a profound rupture and alienation from her husband, her family, her Jewish identity, and her own fractured self. Can the rift be mended?
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5 out of 5 stars
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The writing style was brilliant
- By Christy The Great on 11-26-23
By: Susan Taubes, and others
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The Man Who Haunted Himself
- By: Ishmael Reed
- Narrated by: Adam Lazzare White
- Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 305
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 283
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Story3 out of 5 stars 283
He’s one of America’s most brilliant neuroscientists. He’s also Black and dying of cancer. But he has a plan—a brain transfer. He’ll put his gifted mind into the body of Sammy Sturgeon, a White high school football star who was on the rise until a touchdown collision left him brain-dead. He convinces his co-conspirator, Dr. Dino Battaglia, to help him with the forbidden procedure. Douglass wakes up in Sammy’s White, athletic body, with his new family and legions of fans weeping at his miraculous recovery.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not good at all
- By SusannaBarnes on 11-21-22
By: Ishmael Reed
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East Goes West
- By: Younghill Kang, Alexander Chee - foreword, Sunyoung Lee - editor and afterword
- Narrated by: Song Yee
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
Having fled Japanese-occupied Korea for the gleaming promise of the United States with nothing but four dollars and a suitcase full of Shakespeare to his name, the young, idealistic Chungpa Han arrives in a New York teeming with expatriates, businessmen, students, scholars, and indigents. Struggling to support his studies, he becomes a traveling salesman, a domestic worker, and a farmer, and observing along the way the idealism, greed, and shifting values of the industrializing 20th century. East Goes West casts a sharply satirical eye on the demands and perils of assimilation.
By: Younghill Kang, and others
What listeners say about Mumbo Jumbo
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 12-15-22
Unique and enjoyable 👍🏽
Excellent book excellent narrator would have given fives all the way around except for the very long prologue did not enjoy the first 26 or 30 minutes of the book
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Tom
- 03-01-20
Interesting for Political & Cultural Influence
Interesting Period Piece, told in the “Negro” Slang of the 1920’s, notable in the fact that it was written by a MacArthur Genius Grant Recipient, Pulitzer and National Book Award Nominee and Black Activist Poet and Essayist.
Mumbo Jumbo is a wild fever dream that spans countries, movements and centuries declaiming the attempts by the Powers That Be to suppress the Real Black Culture of music and dance and transform Blacks to docile slaves of the dominant White Culture.
It drops the names and events of the time combining them all with Ancient African myths and traditions to warn African-Americans of the threat to their essence. For those readers unfamiliar with all the references the book is better skimmed for its tone and rhythm since it is difficult to follow. Best appreciated when accompanied by recreational herbs and/or chemicals.
While Harold Bloom included Mumbo Jumbo in his Western Canon of 500 Books, I’m pretty sure that was a gesture of respect for the Author’s Cause rather than for its literary merit. Three Stars.
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13 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Margaret
- 12-01-22
Important but difficult
I’m sure that this is a very important book. And at times it’s very entertaining. I would have needed a reading guide though to get the full value.
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1 person found this helpful
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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
- Amazon Customer
- 12-20-23
The mingling of historical facts in mumbo-jumbo.
This book is absolutely enjoyable, entertaining and a must read for those who are students of history.
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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
- cyberdaniel4
- 06-26-23
The Spirit of the blues!
Awesome sauce! Seriously, you don’t have to take this seriously to get a whole lot out of it. It with a creative fabric through the history of musical dance in his country. Somuch parody and so much of Reed telling his truth.
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1 person found this helpful
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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
- Jimmyjoejangles
- 03-16-23
Phenomenal!
Really interesting story interwoven in with historical fact! All the things I looked up , (picasso and penal colony among them) ended up being true! I did not know that America was used as a penal colony, but a quarter of the population at Revolution was convicts!
Eye opening stuff!! Can't wait for a second listen of it!
Will definitely read more from this author!
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Nicola Cataldo
- 06-06-22
Reed is a genius
Ismael Reed is one of our most important voiced but this story is just a little esoteric for relaxed listening. That's my limitation not his. Performance was perfect.
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8 people found this helpful
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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
- Mitzi Jackson
- 06-02-21
Great Selection!!!!
The language and the style of this book was really amazing and I think it was narrated very well truly truly enjoyable thank you.
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6 people found this helpful
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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
- Papa O
- 02-24-20
my favorite book
this is one of my all-time favorite allegory, straightforwardness comprised in this novel is one of a kind
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- BBWrighter
- 01-18-24
I just didn’t get it
Maybe I’m too old, too white, too unimaginative but I didn’t get it. I was more interested in the narrators “Christopher Walkers pause during a sentence” way of talking to pay close enough attention. But I just didn’t get it.
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