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A Fortune for Your Disaster
- Poems
- Narrated by: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
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A Fortune for Your Disaster
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Publisher's Summary
In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew.
It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'". It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside - from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs - to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.
Featured Article: The Best Poetry Audiobooks to Listen to for National Poetry Month
It’s a common turn of phrase that poetry is meant to be heard. Tone, pauses, cadence, and vocal inflections all serve to further the emotional pull of modern and historical poetic masterpieces. In audio, poems can be heard and enjoyed just as the poet meant them to be. Taking into account not only the words themselves but the way they are spoken, our list provides a look at the power behind a poem, celebrating those works which have touched our souls.
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What listeners say about A Fortune for Your Disaster
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
- MGW SR
- 03-20-21
Very Enjoyable
Truly a wonderful piece of work.
I'll definitely have to experience this remarkable book again.
-
Overall3 out of 5 stars
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars
-
Story3 out of 5 stars
- Tom
- 11-03-20
Well Performed Passionate Verse
I stressed the performance because Hanif’s vocal quality and the feeling he communicated was very effective. For me, his mix of story and poems was hard to follow and, while there were some very good turns of phrase, I had a hard time really understanding what the poems were about. He spoke a lot about heartbreak, his Mother’s Death and his boys but I don’t think I really followed him.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 118
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1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars 10
In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love this book!
- By Courtney M. MacNeil on 01-17-23
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
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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
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 207
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 181
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Story5 out of 5 stars 179
“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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There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 118
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 103
The only thing more beautiful than Beyoncé is God, and God is a black woman sipping rosé and drawing a lavender bath, texting her mom, belly laughing in the therapist's office, feeling unloved, being on display, daring to survive. Morgan Parker stands at the intersections of vulnerability and performance, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence. Unrelentingly feminist, tender, and ruthless, these poems are an altar to the complexities of black American womanhood in an age of non-indictments and déjà vu.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Just no.
- By Janice on 07-08-20
By: Morgan Parker
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Time Is a Mother
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 73
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Worth a read but a miserable listen
- By finethankyouhowareyou? on 01-17-23
By: Ocean Vuong
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Force of Beauty
- A Newark Family Memoir
- By: Mikki Taylor, Deborah Riley Draper
- Narrated by: Mikki Taylor
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 600
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 542
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 537
In Force of Beauty, Mikki Taylor, editor-at-large of Essence magazine and longtime activist, introduces us to her gifted grandmother, Bessie, her glamorous mother, Modina, and how Modina’s friendship with the legendary Sarah Vaughan shaped Mikki’s childhood. Taylor’s mini-memoir is a tribute to Newark in the '50s and '60s, of cool jazz clubs and close-knit neighborhoods, a handsome house on Avon Avenue, and one family’s tale of perseverance and ingenuity in a city they all loved.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Cadence of narrator's voice is odd
- By Sharon S. on 02-25-21
By: Mikki Taylor, and others
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Go Ahead in the Rain
- Notes to A Tribe Called Quest
- By: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 353
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 314
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 312
The seminal rap group A Tribe Called Quest brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces. This narrative follows Tribe from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Throughout the narrative, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful
- By Joshua Lindell on 03-06-19
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
Related to this topic
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Homie
- Poems
- By: Danez Smith
- Narrated by: Danez Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 94
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 79
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 79
Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Poignant!
- By Khamiyra on 03-03-20
By: Danez Smith
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Black Girl, Call Home
- By: Jasmine Mans
- Narrated by: Jasmine Mans
- Length: 1 hr and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 229
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 196
From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America - and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant Delicious
- By erica on 04-22-21
By: Jasmine Mans
-
Don't Call Us Dead
- Poems
- By: Danez Smith
- Narrated by: Danez Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 60
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story5 out of 5 stars 48
Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Loved this with all my heart
- By Elle on 06-24-20
By: Danez Smith
-
Magical Negro
- Poems
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
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.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Waste of time
- By Schlida on 07-19-20
By: Morgan Parker
-
The Flame
- Poems and Notebooks
- By: Leonard Cohen
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood, Rodney Crowell, John Doe, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 34
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 33
Just weeks before his death in late 2016, Leonard Cohen told The New Yorker that he was ready for the end to come. He just wanted enough time to put his last book in order. Fortunately, that time was granted. The Flame is Cohen’s eloquent farewell, a valedictory collection of lyrics and poems that maps his singular creative journey. As noted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s citation, “For six decades, Leonard Cohen revealed his soul to the world through poetry and song - his deep and timeless humanity touching our very core.”
By: Leonard Cohen
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Time Is a Mother
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 73
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Worth a read but a miserable listen
- By finethankyouhowareyou? on 01-17-23
By: Ocean Vuong
-
Homie
- Poems
- By: Danez Smith
- Narrated by: Danez Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 94
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 79
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 79
Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Poignant!
- By Khamiyra on 03-03-20
By: Danez Smith
-
Black Girl, Call Home
- By: Jasmine Mans
- Narrated by: Jasmine Mans
- Length: 1 hr and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 229
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 196
From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America - and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant Delicious
- By erica on 04-22-21
By: Jasmine Mans
-
Don't Call Us Dead
- Poems
- By: Danez Smith
- Narrated by: Danez Smith
- Length: 1 hr and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 60
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 48
Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Loved this with all my heart
- By Elle on 06-24-20
By: Danez Smith
-
Magical Negro
- Poems
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
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.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Waste of time
- By Schlida on 07-19-20
By: Morgan Parker
-
The Flame
- Poems and Notebooks
- By: Leonard Cohen
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood, Rodney Crowell, John Doe, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 34
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 33
Just weeks before his death in late 2016, Leonard Cohen told The New Yorker that he was ready for the end to come. He just wanted enough time to put his last book in order. Fortunately, that time was granted. The Flame is Cohen’s eloquent farewell, a valedictory collection of lyrics and poems that maps his singular creative journey. As noted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s citation, “For six decades, Leonard Cohen revealed his soul to the world through poetry and song - his deep and timeless humanity touching our very core.”
By: Leonard Cohen
-
Time Is a Mother
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 73
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Worth a read but a miserable listen
- By finethankyouhowareyou? on 01-17-23
By: Ocean Vuong
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I Would Leave Me If I Could.
- A Collection of Poetry
- By: Halsey
- Narrated by: Halsey
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall