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Publisher's summary
From a 2021 Whiting Award and Guggenheim Fellow recipient, a “rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.” (The New Yorker)
Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting debut" that was "abounding in tenderness and rich with character", with a "virtuosic kind of code switching". Bennett's new collection, Owed, is a book with celebration at its center. Its primary concern is how we might mend the relationship between ourselves and the people, spaces, and objects we have been taught to think of as insignificant, as fundamentally unworthy of study, reflection, attention, or care. Spanning the spectrum of genre and form - from elegy and ode to origin myth - these poems elaborate an aesthetics of repair. What's more, they ask that we turn to the songs and sites of the historically denigrated so that we might uncover a new way of being in the world together, one wherein we can truthfully reckon with the brutality of the past and thus imagine the possibilities of our shared, unpredictable present, anew.
Critic reviews
“Themes of praise and debt pervade this rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.... Bennett conjures a spirit of kinship that, illuminated by redolent imagery, borders on mythic, and boldly stakes claim to ‘some living, future / English, & everyone in it / is immortal." (The New Yorker)
“Not only are these poems eloquent but also lyrical, intelligent, and, occasionally, funny. Most reflect upon and communicate the pain, joy, and intensity of the current Black experience ... In a time when many confront and protest the racism prevalent in our society, Bennett’s new book is vital.” (Library Journal starred review)
"[A]stonishing poems that explore the past, childhood, family relationships, identity, and memory among many other themes, all expertly rendered through a mixture of forms ... [Bennett] has a gift for building and setting vivid scenes and complex stories within the small frames of his stanzas.” (Booklist)
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-
Story5 out of 5 stars 17
Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
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Between the World and Me
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 30,940
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27,315
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Story5 out of 5 stars 27,129
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Heartfelt Self-aware Literary Masterpiece
- By T Spencer on 07-30-15
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story5 out of 5 stars 13
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
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Tomboyland
- Essays
- By: Melissa Faliveno, Joey Soloway - introduction
- Narrated by: Melissa Faliveno
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
Flyover country, the middle of nowhere, the space between the coasts. The American Midwest is a place beyond definition, whose very boundaries are a question. It's a place of rolling prairies and towering pines, where guns in bars and trucks on blocks are as much a part of the landscape as rivers and lakes and farms. Where girls are girls and boys are boys, where women are mothers and wives, where one is taught to work hard and live between the lines.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Embrace the Quirk
- By Lorraine S. on 07-26-22
By: Melissa Faliveno, and others
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Who Killed My Father
- By: Édouard Louis
- Narrated by: Edouard Louis
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story5 out of 5 stars 31
Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful. Poetic. Sparse. Piercing.
- By Theophile Jones on 06-01-23
By: Édouard Louis
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Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 238
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 147
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Story4 out of 5 stars 147
As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
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Mother Tongue
- By: Demetria Martinez
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States - his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams.
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Magical Negro
- Poems
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Magical Negro is an archive of black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. Focused primarily on depictions of black womanhood alongside personal narratives, the collection tackles interior and exterior politics - of both the body and society, of both the individual and the collective experience.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Waste of time
- By Lida on 07-19-20
By: Morgan Parker
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Priestdaddy
- A Memoir
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Patricia Lockwood
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 942
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 849
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Story4 out of 5 stars 847
Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Terrible narration--read, don't listen
- By Penelope on 08-06-17
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 195
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 174
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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Ricochet Joe
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 1 hr and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,139
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,579
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,564
Joe Mandel is a perfectly ordinary guy from a perfectly ordinary town - a college student and community volunteer who dreams of one day publishing a novel. When a series of strange intuitions leads him to a crime in progress, Joe jumps headlong into danger without hesitation. In the aftermath, he wonders about the uncanny impulse that suddenly swept over him. Until new friend Portia Montclair, the strangely wise daughter of the local police chief, explains to him what sent him ricocheting around town like a crazy pinball.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow, seriously crackers...
- By Lonnie-The GreatNorthernTroll-Moore on 01-10-18
By: Dean Koontz
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Waiting for Snow in Havana
- Confessions of a Cuban Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 277
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 240
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Story4 out of 5 stars 244
A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other - but with certain differences. The neighbor's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. Then, in January 1959, the world changed....
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3 out of 5 stars
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Poorly chosen narrator
- By LS on 02-10-16
By: Carlos Eire
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A Little Devil in America
- Notes in Praise of Black Performance
- By: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 229
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 197
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Story5 out of 5 stars 196
“I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and best-selling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space
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5 out of 5 stars
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Magical
- By Mary A. Ardoin on 05-11-21
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
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You Better Be Lightning
- By: Andrea Gibson
- Narrated by: Andrea Gibson
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 121
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 110
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Story5 out of 5 stars 111
You Better Be Lightning ranges from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible
- By Becky on 03-10-24
By: Andrea Gibson
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Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 143
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4 out of 5 stars 85
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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5 out of 5 stars
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surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
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Learning to Die in Miami
- Confessions of a Refugee Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
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Abandon Me
- Memoirs
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 98
In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection - with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This journey is captivating to say the least!
- By Ilanna on 08-11-17
By: Melissa Febos
What listeners say about Owed
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
- Maya
- 05-23-23
another beauty
it’s always a joy to consume a work by joshua bennett, and this one was no exception. stunning from beginning to end
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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
- Kasey M Cooper
- 09-23-21
Poetry that makes you feel...
I loved this collection of poetry. I felt like I was with Me. Bennett in every scene and every moment.
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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
- Chris Caldwell
- 04-03-22
Phenomenal poet
Joshua has been a very powerful prolific poet for many years I am happy to call him a friend. His words always motivate me and remind me it is a gift to be black.
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