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Without You, There Is No Us
- My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
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Publisher's summary
A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign
Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under the watchful eye of the regime.
Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues - evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves - their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own - at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.
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In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him–a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances.
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My Favorite of Kidder's Books
- By Roy on 08-31-09
By: Tracy Kidder
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The Fox Hunt
- A Refugee's Memoir of Coming to America
- By: Mohammed Al Samawi
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in the Old City of Sana’a, Yemen, to a pair of middle-class doctors, Mohammed Al Samawi was a devout Muslim raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But when Mohammed was 23, he secretly received a copy of the Bible, and what he read cast doubt on everything he’d previously believed. After connecting with Jews and Christians on social media, and at various international interfaith conferences, Mohammed became an activist, making it his mission to promote dialogue and cooperation in Yemen. Then came the death threats....
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Engaging and informative memoir
- By Mark on 08-02-18
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In the Light of What We Know
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- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London townhouse. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.
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dreadful
- By sam on 06-05-15
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Oracle Bones
- A Journey Through Time in China
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today, the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people.
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Great Book, except for the narration.
- By DMH on 11-09-10
By: Peter Hessler
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God's Double Agent
- The True Story of a Chinese Christian's Fight for Freedom
- By: Bob Fu, Nancy French
- Narrated by: Hayden Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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God’s people are hiding in plain sightTens of millions of Christians live in China today, leading double lives to hide from a government that relentlessly persecutes them. By day, Bob Fu was a teacher in a communist school; by night, he was a preacher in an underground house church network. This edge-of-your-seat book tells the true story of Fu’s conversion to Christianity, his arrest and imprisonment for starting an illegal house church, his harrowing escape, and his subsequent rise to prominence in the United States as an advocate for his oppressed brethren.
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a great book, very informative.
- By Charles on 09-21-15
By: Bob Fu, and others
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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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Nine Continents
- A Memoir In and Out of China
- By: Xiaolu Guo
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home.
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must read
- By Jeff Darlington on 10-22-17
By: Xiaolu Guo
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And After the Fire
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Belfer
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In the ruins of Germany in 1945, at the end of World War II, American soldier Henry Sachs takes a souvenir, an old music manuscript, from a seemingly deserted mansion and mistakenly kills the girl who tries to stop him. In America in 2010, Henry's niece, Susanna Kessler, struggles to rebuild her life after she experiences a devastating act of violence on the streets of New York City. When Henry dies soon after, she uncovers the long-hidden music manuscript.
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Very disappointing
- By Margalarg on 06-28-19
By: Lauren Belfer
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Bend, Not Break
- A Life in Two Worlds
- By: Ping Fu, MeiMei Fox
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student. Ping Fu also knows what it’s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
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A true account as good as any Horatio Alger story!
- By Roy B. Paschal on 01-14-13
By: Ping Fu, and others
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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates.
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Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
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Dancing with the Enemy
- My Family's Holocaust Secret
- By: Paul Glaser
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster, Christa Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The gripping story of the author's aunt, a Jewish dance instructor who was betrayed to the Nazis by the two men she loved, yet managed to survive WWII by teaching dance lessons to the SS at Auschwitz. Her epic life becomes a window into the author's own past and the key to discovering his Jewish roots.
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Amazing Unique
- By Nordic Artisan on 05-11-19
By: Paul Glaser
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Between Two Worlds
- Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam
- By: Zainab Salbi, Laurie Becklund
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Zainab Salbi was 11-years-old when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, her family often forced to spend weekends with Saddam where he watched their every move. As a palace insider, Zainab offers a singular glimpse of what it is like to come of age under a dictator and provides an intimate portrait of the man she was taught to call "uncle". She watched as Saddam pitted friends, spouses, and even children against each other to compete for his approval.
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An excellent history lesson
- By Ella on 12-01-09
By: Zainab Salbi, and others
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Outstanding! A life-changing listen.
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What listeners say about Without You, There Is No Us
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mztarangel
- 01-14-15
Wonderful read!
Through the whole book I felt like I was a tiny listening device secretly smuggled in and hidden somewhere on Ms. Kim's person. Right next to her tightly kept, secret flash drives. Each day listening to and absorbing every word. Leaving my imagination hungry for more examples of life on what seemed to be a distant planet people actually lived on. Her bravery alone is something to be commended. Loved this book! Eye opening for sure.
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- Ian
- 09-12-16
Interesting, to say the least.
This is an interesting view into a side of North Korea I knew nothing about. I've read The Aquariums of Pyonyang, and other such books of tragedy, but had never heard of a story about the people at the top of the food chain in North Korea.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-29-22
Unbelievable
I thank the author for telling her story.
I pray for the natives and the soldiers
that remain living and keeping the peace.
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- Valeriek
- 06-01-21
Bad narration
I could not stand the narrator. Terrible voice and inflection. I think I would have liked the story more and have a better connection to the story if it had been read by someone else.
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- OwlLover
- 03-11-22
Personal and political
This is an intimate experience and it is told as such. The author gives a view into the lives of college students and the people working at the institution within a complex environment. It is done in a way that foster both empathy and interest, abd delivers even frustrating details with care so that it does not disparage the people referenced. This is an interesting story of the writer's experience, kept personal while exposing truths one may never otherwise be able to imagine.
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- Datadana7
- 08-10-23
A rare insight into North Korea?
This rare insight into North Korea is an eye-opener. The writer style makes you feel that you are there enduring every moment.
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- Susan
- 01-15-15
Fascinating
The book started a little slow for me but before long I found myself pulled in. I can't imagine how frightening it would have been to teach in that school, especially knowing she would be writing about it. I'm very curious about what consequences there were for the school, teachers and students. Provides unique insight into a slice of North Korean life.
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3 people found this helpful
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- SAL
- 11-09-16
A Must Read
Where does Without You, There Is No Us rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This book is so educational about the life and culture of a group of "elite" young males in North Korea (DPRK) and their South Korean/American English teacher. Elite in North Korea is an oxymoron. I respect and value the mental and emotional struggles she experienced in always trying to be honest at all times with her students and her missionary coworkers who assumed she was Christian; description of their daily life - monotonous, and pervasive indoctrination and total distrust; and constantly having to be mentally careful of her words and actions. She so well explained the psyche of these students who since birth have been isolated from the rest of the world; indoctrinated to believe that North Korea is all powerful; and without "their dictator" who was all knowing and powerful that they would not be or survive. I had a read a couple of books about struggles of poor North Koreans and this book is important because it shows the reader why the next generation of influential male adults will act as they do.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The author Suki Kim who risked returning to the country where her grandparents had fled to learn about life in DPRK today and tell this story in a book.
What does Janet Song bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I appreciate that both the author and narrator were women since this is a critical part of the memoirs.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
There is so much not to be forgotten in this book, but I shall always remember that one student was not upset about being caught cheating at Trivia, but he "should have cheated better.
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- Mama
- 04-17-18
eye opening
I thought I knew "enough " about NoKo. But this was fascinating! Really well performed, too. Such an interesting author with such an interesting story to tell!
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- mrsgrz
- 10-05-15
Very interesting read
This story of a teacher in North Korea is very informative. Stories of her experiences there are quite eye opening. I learned a lot about this country and the deprecation and isolation of its people. Narrator was good and easy to follow.
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