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Postcards from Cookie
- A Memoir of Motherhood, Miracles, and a Whole Lot of Mail
- Narrated by: Caroline Clarke
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Award-winning journalist and host of Black Enterprise Business Report Caroline Clarke’s moving memoir of her surprise discovery of her birth mother - Cookie Cole, the daughter of Nat King Cole - and the relationship that blossomed between them through the heartfelt messages they exchanged on hundreds of postcards.
Caroline Clarke was born in an era when adoptions were shameful, secret, and sealed. While she wondered about her biological parents, she kept her curiosity in check, until a series of small health problems raised concerns about her genetic heritage and its consequences for her two children’s lives as well as her own.
Though Spence-Chapin Family Service, the agency that handled her adoption, could not reveal the name of her birth mother, it was able to provide details that lead to a shocking truth. Caroline’s birth mother and her family were related to a friend. The woman who gave her life was none other than Carole “Cookie” Cole, the daughter of iconic crooner and pianist Nat King Cole.
Drawing on details provided by the agency and her own investigative skills, Caroline embarked on a life-changing journey of discovery that stretched from coast to coast, forged through email, phone calls, and postcards. The constancy, volume, and intimacy of her steady correspondence with Cookie filled the days and distance between them. Through brief yet poignant messages squeezed onto three-inch open-faced squares, mother and daughter revealed themselves, sharing secrets, taking risks, and ultimately building a bond like no other.
A heartfelt, inspiring tribute to both Caroline’s adoptive parents and her biological mother, Postcards from Cookie illuminates the enduring power of love to shape and guide our lives.
What listeners say about Postcards from Cookie
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Darleen
- 03-22-23
Lessons of life.
Loved each teachable moment of this book. The author truly let us in on very personal experiences with such intentional scriptive thoughts. Thank you for sharing.
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Performance
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Story
- Silencer A.
- 02-13-23
WOW! WOW! WOW!
Story so vivid and captivating. The story transports you in the journey; time and place. You can see yourself a fly on the wall as everything transpires.
I didn’t want to stop the audio, I didn’t want it to end. Sigh, what a story and narration.
Thanks Caroline for sharing your life with us. Just wonderful!
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Performance
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-09-23
Fascinating story
One of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to. So much history and even ties to a city close to where I’m from in North Carolina.
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Performance
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Story
- Amazon Customer
- 01-04-23
tear jerker
definitely loved this book. not everyone can bond like that with so much time in between. they allowed themselves to become friends. what a treasure.
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- Sonya
- 11-27-22
Thanks For Sharing
I love memoirs. Each story is perfectly unique to the author so how can they truly be rated. Thanks for sharing your story.
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- amazonluver
- 11-05-22
Fascinating story!
The events are both stunning and ordinary, and told with such frankness and compassion. Don't miss this one!
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Performance
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Story
- JRC
- 10-27-22
Beautiful story
I loved this book! I cried at the end. It’s beautifully written and read by the author. I don’t write many reviews, but this book moved me. Highly recommend!
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- Kem4god
- 09-30-22
Amazing!!
Loved every single bit of this. God Bless you Caroline and Cookie. Love & Light🕉
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- MrsO
- 09-18-22
A peek into a long kept secret
I’m glad she shared her story. It was an interesting one. Some parts dragged but I stayed with it until the end.
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- marlene lenker
- 09-06-22
Excellent read!
loved the author reading this book. she drew me into the story quickly. I highly recommend.
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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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Things I Should Have Told My Daughter
- Lies, Lessons, & Love Affairs
- By: Pearl Cleage
- Narrated by: Pearl Cleage
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this inspiring memoir, the award-winning playwright and best-selling author of What Looks like Crazy on an Ordinary Day reminisces on the art of juggling marriage, motherhood, and politics while working to become a successful writer. In addition to being one of the most popular living playwrights in America, Pearl Cleage is a best-selling author with an Oprah Book Club pick and multiple awards to her credit. But there was a time when such stellar success seemed like a dream.
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Intimate and Intriguing
- By RLita U on 05-17-14
By: Pearl Cleage
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Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo
- A Novel
- By: Ntozake Shange
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Ntozake Shange’s most beloved novel, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, is the story of three “colored girls,” three sisters and their mama from Charleston, South Carolina. Sassafrass, the oldest, is a poet and a weaver like her mother, gone north to college and living with other artists in Los Angeles, trying to weave a life out of her work, her man, her memories, and her dreams.
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This is a beautiful story, told by people that speak a beautiful dialect
- By Elaina Dariah on 08-12-20
By: Ntozake Shange
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When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
- A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down
- By: Joan Morgan, Dr. Treva B. Lindsey - afterword
- Narrated by: Brittney Cooper - foreword, Joy Bryant, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Morgan offers a provocative and powerful look into the life of the modern Black woman: a complex world in which feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men, where women who treasure their independence frequently prefer men who pick up the tab, and where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds Black women who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than 40 percent of the population.
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Amazing
- By M. McGregor on 09-20-20
By: Joan Morgan, and others
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Confessions of a Token Black Girl
- By: Danielle Small
- Narrated by: Lisa Renee Pitts
- Length: 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Confessions of a Token Black Girl is a snappy comedic tale framing Danielle's first-hand experiences in Wisconsin and other places as the perpetual "token Black girl", fraught with dark moments and hate crimes. It's a coming-of-age-story but instead of finding herself during a road trip, Danielle found herself through the effects of racism. This book humorously chronicles Danielle's quest for understanding what Black identity means to her - instead of what it means to everyone else.
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Unapologetically truthful
- By Monica on 04-28-21
By: Danielle Small
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Black Girl Lost
- By: Donald Goines
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this shocking novel of a young girl alone on the streets, Donald Goines delves into yet another facet of the ghetto experience - the dark, despair-ridden world of a black girl's soul.
Sandra took to the streets when she was eight years old and tried to fight off the hunger pangs by shoplifting and moving into the profits of drug pushing. Then she met Chink, and with him she discovered love and affection...as well as rape and murder.
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Great Performance of a tragically beautiful tale
- By E. H. Joiner on 09-06-16
By: Donald Goines
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Dispossession
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Gabrielle Union
- Length: 57 mins
- Original Recording
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Motherhood isn’t easy, especially when you’re a mother of a Black son. Ten years ago, Cheryl jumped at the chance to send her son, Javonte, to an exclusive boarding school in New England - far away from Atlanta and the violence of the city streets. It was the American dream, or was it? Now settled in Vermont, Javonte is married and well-employed, but Cheryl hardly ever sees him, and when she does, her own son seems like someone she only used to know.
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Wanted more
- By Sarah Peters on 01-19-21
By: Tayari Jones
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Silver Sparrow
- A Novel
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Coleman Williams, Heather Alicia Simms
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, Silver Sparrow revolves around James Witherspoon's two families - the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters - the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle - she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another's lives.
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underwhelming ending
- By Keisha on 01-17-13
By: Tayari Jones
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Them
- A Novel
- By: Nathan McCall
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Barlowe, a single African-American in his 40s, shares a ramshackle house with his 20-something nephew in the old Fourth Ward of downtown Atlanta. When Sean and Sandy, a white married couple from Philadelphia, buy and renovate the house next door in anticipation of a neighborhood "turnaround", everyone tries at first to go about their daily business. But fear and suspicion begin to build as more and more new whites move in and make changes, and once familiar people and places disappear.
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A look at Race Issues
- By Sharon R Wilson on 08-28-09
By: Nathan McCall
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A Kind of Freedom
- A Novel
- By: Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of black society, and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves. In 1982, Evelyn's daughter Jackie is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband's drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life.
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What a beautifully written, engrossing book!
- By Bonnie B. on 09-30-17