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Modern Jungles
- A Hmong Refugee’s Childhood Story of Survival
- Narrated by: Craig Pierce
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
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Modern Jungles
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Publisher's summary
As a five-year-old boy, Pao Lor joined thousands of Hmong who fled for their lives through the jungles of Laos in the aftermath of war. After a difficult and perilous journey that neither of his parents survived, he reached the safety of Thailand, but the young refugee boy’s challenges were only just beginning.
Born in a small farming village, Pao was destined to be a Hmong clan leader, wedding negotiator, or shaman. But the course of his life changed dramatically in the 1970s, when the Hmong faced persecution for their role in helping US forces fighting communism in the region. After more than two years in Thai refugee camps, Pao and his surviving family members boarded the belly of an “iron eagle” bound for the United States, where he pictured a new life of comfort and happiness. Instead, Pao found himself navigating a frightening and unfamiliar world, adjusting to a string of new schools and living situations while struggling to fulfill the hopes his parents had once held for his future.
Now in Modern Jungles, Pao Lor shares his inspiring coming-of-age tale about perseverance, grit, and hope.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
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Solacers
- By: Arion Golmakani
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Solacers tells the touching story of a boy's search for family life and safety following the divorce of his parents in Iran during the 1960s. The first child of a heartless father and a discarded mother is left to fend for himself on the streets of Mashhad, seeking food and shelter wherever he can. His lonely early years are an unbelievable tale of cruelty and betrayal on the part of nearly everyone who might be expected to help, save for one aunt who does her best to keep him from starving.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not just a memoir!
- By William on 09-08-23
By: Arion Golmakani
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My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story well told
- By B. Cohen on 11-23-23
By: Ariel Sabar
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The Girl Who Smiled Beads
- A Story of War and What Comes After
- By: Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 631
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 538
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 536
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator detracts from story
- By Laura on 01-16-19
By: Clemantine Wamariya, and others
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They Called Me Number One
- Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School
- By: Bev Sellars
- Narrated by: Bev Sellars
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 108
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 95
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Story5 out of 5 stars 95
Like thousands of Aboriginal children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Shame on Church and State
- By Susie on 08-22-17
By: Bev Sellars
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Under Red Skies
- Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China
- By: Karoline Kan
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An intimate view of real life in China
- By Lonnie G. Hardy, Jr. on 08-15-19
By: Karoline Kan
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Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4 out of 5 stars 39
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
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America Is in the Heart
- By: Carlos Bulosan, Elaine Castillo - foreword, E. San Juan Jr. - introduction, and others
- Narrated by: Ramon de Ocampo
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
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Under the Same Sky
- From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America
- By: Joseph Kim, Stephan Talty
- Narrated by: Raymond Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 140
A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tugs at the heart strings
- By R3v13w3r on 07-15-15
By: Joseph Kim, and others
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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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In the Shadow of the Valley
- A Memoir
- By: Bobi Conn
- Narrated by: Bobi Conn
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 295
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 250
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 249
Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny’s; and her abusive father. An elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered, Bobi’s testament is one of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Hard Pass
- By Kathryn Liggett on 06-13-20
By: Bobi Conn
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How Dare the Sun Rise
- Memoirs of a War Child
- By: Sandra Uwiringiyimana, Abigail Pesta
- Narrated by: Sandra Uwiringiyimana
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 203
This profoundly moving memoir is the remarkable and inspiring true story of Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who tells the tale of how she survived a massacre, immigrated to America, and overcame her trauma through art and activism. Sandra was just 10 years old when she found herself with a gun pointed at her head. She had watched as rebels gunned down her mother and six-year-old sister in a refugee camp.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sandra's voice is mesmorizing!
- By Karissa Barber on 04-18-18
By: Sandra Uwiringiyimana, and others
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Braver Than You Think
- Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime
- By: Maggie Downs
- Narrated by: Rachel Fulginiti
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. "You are braver than you think," her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through seventeen countries - visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, could not visit herself - encountering some of the world's most striking locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not Ypur Typical Ttavel Destinations
- By Pammerpower on 06-12-20
By: Maggie Downs
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What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
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5 out of 5 stars
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We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
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Strength in What Remains
- A Journey of Remembrance and Forgetting
- By: Tracy Kidder
- Narrated by: Tracy Kidder
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 333
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 183
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 182
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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5 out of 5 stars
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My Favorite of Kidder's Books
- By Roy on 08-31-09
By: Tracy Kidder
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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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Dreams in a Time of War
- A Childhood Memoir
- By: Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
- Narrated by: Hakeem Kae-Kazim
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
Of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiongo was born in 1938 in the backlands of his country (Kiambu district) to a father whose four wives bore him two dozen or so children. Ngugi was the fifth child of the third wife. His father was a peasant farmer forced to become a squatter after the British Imperial Act of 1915. Before going off to school, he had what was then considered a bizarre and inexplicable thirst for learning....
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4 out of 5 stars
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An escape through education
- By Tango on 06-17-12