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A Childhood
- The Biography of a Place
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
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A Childhood
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Publisher's summary
“One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New Yorker
The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural South
A Penguin Classic
Harry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when “the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years.” Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal autobiography of his first six years of life is an elegiac sense of community and roots from a rural South that had rarely been represented in this way. Interweaving his own memories including his bout with polio and a fascination with the Sears, Roebuck catalog, with the tales of relatives and friends, he re-creates a childhood of tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy.
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What listeners say about A Childhood
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
- Greg B
- 07-26-22
Story rings true
Short of a few exaggerations this book describes farming in Bacon county in the 30’s to 60’s. I heard some great storytellers at Cartertown grocery. Although by late 50’s many farmers had a lot more machinery to help. My grandfather was Jesse Boatright but by 1962, when I started coming up each summer, he had no sharecroppers. Though an uncle sharecropper all his life I later learned.
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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
- Socialfit77
- 06-29-22
Thank god for Harry Crews
I absolutely love every book Mr. Crews has written. I never wanted this one to end. A sad, tough, humorous book that hits you in every spot human. It doesn’t get much better. RIP Mr Crews. Thank you for everything. JST-
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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
- Adam
- 05-16-22
Fantastic.
Even with only cursory knowledge of life growing up in the south, I found this fascinating and enjoyable.
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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
- Dominick Ly
- 08-10-23
The southern farm life
Read this if you’d like to hear about a childhood on a farm in the South.
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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
- Steve
- 07-11-23
Great read
If you want, an excellent walk, back in time, told in the first person, this is a great read. Well written, great story.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- William Coppage
- 06-03-23
Amazing tale but wrong narrator
No big issues but Harry Crews reader deserves a tougher voice. More gruff and grit.
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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
- Beingreal
- 05-07-22
A True Walk Through the Past
Loved it. So many fond memories of the time and places in spite of the many sad events.
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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
- Autodidact
- 04-12-22
astonishing
in the very recent past, in the America I hubristically think I know, this stunning memoir, replete with unknown phrases and desperate humanity in it's beauty and terror, is recorded here. READ this!!!
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5 out of 5 stars
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The gospel singer
- By L. Welsh on 07-13-22
By: Harry Crews, and others
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This Boy's Life
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 680
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 578
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Story4 out of 5 stars 579
This book essentially launched the memoir craze that has been going strong ever since. The story is pretty grim: teen-aged Wolff moves with his divorced mother from Florida to Utah to Washington State to escape her violent boyfriend. When she remarries, Wolff finds himself in a bitter battle of wills with his abusive stepfather, a contest in which the two prove to be more evenly matched than might have been supposed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful, unsentimental memoir of youth
- By Darwin8u on 04-27-13
By: Tobias Wolff
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The Art of Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 693
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 592
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 576
Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told - and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.)
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant!
- By A. Potter on 01-18-16
By: Mary Karr
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The Liars' Club
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 17
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story5 out of 5 stars 16
The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely memoir and the author’s voice seals the deal
- By Joni on 09-24-23
By: Mary Karr
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Stop-Time
- By: Frank Conroy
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
First published in 1967, Stop-Time was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern American autobiography, a brilliant portrayal of one boy’s passage from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Here is Frank Conroy’s wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father’s early death and a son’s exhilarating escape into manhood.
By: Frank Conroy
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Wave
- By: Sonali Deraniyagala
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 323
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Story4 out of 5 stars 269
On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tragic. Raw. Heart-Ripping!
- By CBlox on 03-19-13
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Fierce Attachments
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.
By: Vivian Gornick
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The Woman Warrior
- Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
- By: Maxine Hong Kingston
- Narrated by: Ming-Na
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 615
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 493
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Story4 out of 5 stars 495
Acclaimed author Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior broke new ground when it was first published 35 years ago, weaving autobiography, history, folklore, and fantasy in to a candid and revelatory story about the daughter of Chinese immigrants in mid-20th century California.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hilariously Vicious; Touchingly Empathetic
- By Horace on 08-28-11
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- By: Junot Diaz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,888
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,270
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,287
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku: the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wondrous Book!!!
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Junot Diaz
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Men We Reaped
- A Memoir
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Story5 out of 5 stars 148
In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life - to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly Black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write, she realized the truth - and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Tough but important
- By Jermell Powell on 09-26-21
By: Jesmyn Ward
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Writing Down the Bones
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 728
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 574
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 565
Here is a new collector's edition of this modern classic as you have never heard it before, read by Natalie Goldberg herself and then infused with her most personal reflections about this "magic manual" for all writers. Try these ingenious, Zen-based exercises to expand your writing skills - or just for fun.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Substance
- By Krissy D. on 07-09-10
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 965
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 710
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 706
Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
Related to this topic
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 638
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 436
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Story5 out of 5 stars 433
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Deeply moving
- By Kate on 08-12-03
By: Rick Bragg
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The Twelve-Mile Straight
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Henderson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.