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Grinnin' Like a Jackass Eatin' Briars
- A Memoir of Insanity, Awareness and Acceptance
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Batton
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
I was caddywonked from the get-go.
That’s how this vivid, hilarious, and ultimately poignant memoir begins, under the cover of darkness in 1962, as an embryonic Jeff Batton was whisked away by his brothel-owning grandmother and soon-to-be birth mother to a home for unwed mothers in Savannah, Georgia. After he was put up for adoption (displayed in a supermarket delicatessen case, as he recalls it), Jeff’s new parents arrived in the form of Mr. and Mrs. Batton. Jo Ann adhered to the standards of Emily Post and the Bible (in that order), and Curtis was a third-generation Georgia farmer and true Southerner who filled his tea glass with something stronger each night. Jeff’s new home: a 700-acre peanut and tobacco farm so far from town that they had to pipe in sunshine.
Coming of age during the civil rights movement, Jeff experiences both the Tom Sawyer existence of idyllic barefoot freedom—including a deep friendship with a kid from the other side of the tracks—and blatant racism at home, along with the confusion and angst of figuring out who he was and how he fit into this world.
While the memoir has the South as its launching point, the narrative travels far and wide beyond the trope of a barefoot childhood, to New York City, Hong Kong, London, and beyond. Lovingly told, with warm and stark transparency and laugh-out-loud humor, Grinnin’ Like a Jackass Eatin’ Briars is an important book about uncovering our own truth, looking at the world from a different angle, and, ultimately, finding the courage to embrace what we find.
About the Authors
Jeff Batton grew up on a 700-hundred-acre farm in South Georgia, and is both an apologist and proud ambassador for the South. He has been shot once, attempted to save the world’s poor, traveled to more than 25 countries, and now coaches people on what not to do. He has lived and worked in Atlanta, New York City, Hong Kong, and London, and finally landed in Detroit, where he makes his home just spitting distance from Canada. He has a bachelor’s degree in theater from LaGrange College. This is his first book.
Landon J. Napoleon is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of fiction and nonfiction books that have been translated into multiple foreign editions. He is a previous Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” finalist and is the author of the acclaimed Devlin legal series. His debut novel ZigZag was adapted into a film, and his nonfiction biography Burning Shield: The Jason Schechterle Story was a “The Arizona Republic Recommends” selection. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Arizona State University and a master’s degree from University of Glasgow in Scotland. He lives in Arizona.
Critic reviews
"Best Indie Biographies and Memoirs of 2021" selection by Kirkus Reviews
“A captivatingly candid and sharply written account.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
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Overall
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A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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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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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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Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
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Native Country of the Heart
- A Memoir
- By: Cherríe Moraga
- Narrated by: Cherríe Moraga
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Native Country of the Heart is the writer and activist Cherrie Moraga's love letter to her "unlettered" mother. It begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherrie and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline.
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a must read for all chicanx
- By Rachel Barnett on 04-28-19
By: Cherríe Moraga
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The Longest Trip Home
- By: John Grogan
- Narrated by: John Grogan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the highly anticipated follow-up to Marley & Me, John Grogan again works his magic, bringing us the story of what came first. Before there was Marley, there was a gleefully mischievous boy growing up in a devout Catholic home outside Detroit in the 1960s and '70s. Despite his loving parents' best efforts, John's attempts to meet their expectations failed spectacularly.
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As real as it gets
- By bclmb on 12-06-08
By: John Grogan
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Until I Say Good-Bye
- My Year of Living with Joy
- By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, Bret Witter
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Susan Spencer-Wendel's Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy is a moving and inspirational memoir by a woman who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). After Spencer-Wendel, a celebrated journalist at the Palm Beach Post, learns of her diagnosis of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, she embarks on several adventures, traveling to several countries and sharing special experiences with loved ones.
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Until I Say Good-Bye is a paradox for me.
- By Bonny on 03-19-13
By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, and others
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Finding Grace
- A True Story about Losing Your Way in Life...and Finding It Again
- By: Donna VanLiere
- Narrated by: Donna VanLiere
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Finding Grace is the powerful, often humorous, and deeply moving story of one woman's journey of broken dreams. It is the story of how a painful legacy of the past is confronted and met with peace. This book is for anyone who has struggled to understand why our desires---even the simplest ones---are sometimes denied or who has questioned where God is when we need Him most. This story is about one woman's unlikely road to motherhood. Finally, it's a book about the "undeserved gift which is life itself."
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Finding Grace... and joy, delight, and camaraderie
- By WeRLoved on 02-02-17
By: Donna VanLiere
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Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
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Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
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Why I Hate Green Beans
- And Other Confessions About Relationships, Reality TV, and How We See Ourselves
- By: Lincee Ray
- Narrated by: Lincee Ray
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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If there is one thing Lincee Ray has learned over the years, it's that the majority of women on the planet struggle with insecurities. Our skinny jeans mock us. Our just-trying-to-help mothers are just driving us crazy. Our social media feeds taunt us with everyone else's picture-perfect lives. It's enough to send you on a gummy-bear bender while binge-watching Friends reruns and not showering for a week. Lincee knows. She's been there. Right there, in fact. Gummy bears and all.
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Perfect in every way!
- By Anonymous User on 10-19-22
By: Lincee Ray
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The Boys in the Bunkhouse
- Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland
- By: Dan Barry
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disabilities and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than 30 years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse.
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Our Brothers' Keepers?
- By Gillian on 12-01-16
By: Dan Barry
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Forgiveness
- A Gift from My Grandparents
- By: Mark Sakamoto
- Narrated by: Geoff Sugiyama
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Admirable progenitors
- By M. D. Baines on 04-24-18
By: Mark Sakamoto
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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Everything You Ever Wanted
- A Memoir
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Jillian Lauren
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei's harem, an experience she immortalized in her best-selling memoir, Some Girls. In her 30s, Jillian's most radical act is learning the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs.
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Great for adoptive families
- By berry bomb on 07-06-22
By: Jillian Lauren
What listeners say about Grinnin' Like a Jackass Eatin' Briars
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Charlie Bennefield
- 09-25-22
Hilarious and heart wrenching.
Full disclosure, I graduated from LaGrange College with Jeff in 1985. We were not close friends but spent many hours together at Price Theatre. Our lives took very different roads but had literally and metaphorically brushed shoulders at many intersections. With his unmistakable southern voice describing his childhood through a tumultuous life of highs and lows, fighting his inner demons and joy, he weaves a delightful tale culminating in a peace of self acceptance.
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- Becky
- 08-13-22
Book of the century!!
When I started reading ‘Grinnin’ I quite literally couldn’t put it down!! This book covers a multitude of sins, joys, struggles, triumphs, demographics, geographies, missteps and surrenders. Jeff Batton has lead a life with so many twists and turns you can’t help but root for him every step of the way! I highly recommend this book, read here by the author himself!
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