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The Baby on the Fire Escape
- Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem
- Narrated by: Marnye Young
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
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Publisher's summary
An insightful and provocative exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art through the lives of women artists and writers.
What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own," but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.
With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, who had to choose between her motherhood and herself; Ursula K. Le Guin, who found productive stability in family life; Audre Lorde, whose queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms; and Alice Neel, who once, to finish a painting, was said to have left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary women's lives.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Tons of info, poor format choice.
- By Gotta Tellya on 02-06-17
By: Charlotte Gordon
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Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Story5 out of 5 stars 139
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
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Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 74
Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
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The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 48
Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Unrequited
- Women and Romantic Obsession
- By: Lisa A. Phillips
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
The summer Lisa A. Phillips turned 30, she fell in love with someone who didn't return her feelings. She soon became obsessed. She followed him around, called him compulsively, and talked about him endlessly. One desperate morning, after she snuck into his apartment building, he picked up a baseball bat to protect himself and began to dial 911. Her unrequited love had changed her from a sane, conscientious college teacher and radio reporter into someone she barely recognized.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great book! So-so narrator....
- By ToluGrace on 04-14-15
By: Lisa A. Phillips
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The Feminine Mystique
- By: Betty Friedan
- Narrated by: Parker Posey
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,037
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 897
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 889
The book that changed the consciousness of a country - and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic - these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name", that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A landmark book of its time and relevant now
- By Anthony on 01-23-15
By: Betty Friedan
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Things I've Been Silent About
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Naila Azad
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 48
Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Family portrait in the frame of history
- By Galina COS on 07-02-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Becoming Faulkner
- The Art and Life of William Faulker
- By: Philip Weinstein
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Miss.'s BCS-Bundren.Compson.Snopes/Sutpen/Sartoris
- By W Perry Hall on 05-01-14
By: Philip Weinstein
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Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
- The Journals of Alice Walker
- By: Alice Walker, Valerie Boyd - editor
- Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis, Alice Walker, Janina Edwards
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
From National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker’s 50 years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and women’s activist, and intellectual.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must-read for any creative artist!!
- By amazonluver on 04-30-22
By: Alice Walker, and others
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Trapped in the Mirror
- Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self
- By: Elan Golomb
- Narrated by: Angela Brazil
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4 out of 5 stars 114
The difficulties experienced by adult children of narcissists can manifest themselves in many ways - for example, physical self-loathing that takes the form of overeating, anorexia, or bulimia; a self-destructive streak that causes poor job performance and rocky personal relationships; or a struggle with the self that is perpetuated in the adult's interaction with his or her own children. These dilemmas are both common and correctable, Elan Golomb tells us.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Am I trapped?
- By D. Villalpando on 10-11-16
By: Elan Golomb
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Bad Sex
- Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution
- By: Nona Willis Aronowitz
- Narrated by: Nona Willis Aronowitz
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
At thirty-two years old, everything in Nona Willis Aronowitz’s life, and in America, was in disarray. Her marriage was falling apart. Her nuclear family was slipping away. Her heart and libido were both in overdrive. Embroiled in an era of fear, reckoning, and reimagining, her assumptions of what “sexual liberation” meant were suddenly up for debate.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I was born in the 50s, sexually active in the mid 70s
- By Pixel on 08-22-22
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Crazy Time, Revised Edition
- Surviving Divorce and Building a New Life
- By: Abigail Trafford
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
In this intelligent and insightful book, Abigail Trafford charts the emotional journey of a breakup of a marriage, identifying the common phases in the evolution from marriage to separation to divorce, and eventually to a new life. This revised edition includes the most up-to-date research on the personal and economic effects of divorce in adults and children's lives, addresses the special challenges of becoming single again in the age of the Internet, and broadens the experience of divorce to the breakup of all committed relationships.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Better as an additional book
- By Ethan on 09-18-19
By: Abigail Trafford
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,047
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 921
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 915
Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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4 out of 5 stars
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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Committed
- A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,477
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,712
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,703
At the end of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government....
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4 out of 5 stars
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Perfect timing
- By Nancy on 01-15-10
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Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
What listeners say about The Baby on the Fire Escape
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
- Erin Morrison
- 11-23-23
A must read for Artist Mothers
I had heard of many of the visual artist who’s stories were included in this book, but not the literary ones. It is so wonderful to have them together, which has helped me better understand and articulate my own journey of motherhood while confronting the challenges of being a female artist in the world.
This book sent me down a rabbit hole of looking up so many authors. I loved it!

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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
- Anonymous User
- 01-08-23
Life changing
As an artist approaching motherhood, I am left deeply changed by this book. It was exactly what I needed to read in this moment. Marnye Young brought me on the most beautiful journey—pain, hope, fear, transcendence. What an important, MUST read for women artists. By the end I was in tears, I was so moved and thankful for what the author had laid out. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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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
- Amazon Customer
- 08-02-23
Life changing
I am purchasing a print version of this book to return to in times of need. As an actor and artist experiencing motherhood (and double pandemic motherhood at that) I have felt lost during this time of change. Thank you to Julie Phillips for her brilliant analyses and for profiling this wide range of incredible artist mothers. And for helping me see the mother’s journey as a hero’s journey!!
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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
- I.B. Smart
- 06-18-22
Wonderful Book Filled With Lively Biographies
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author's use of biography is artful. Unlike many non-fiction books, the narrative kept me wanting to listen and come back for more. Her use of the multiple mini-biographies that relate to each other creates a book that has the interest of fiction while providing real-life knowledge and perspective.
The choice of narrator matches the book well.
I am ready for more from Julie Phillips.
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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
- Margaret C. Murphy
- 01-16-23
Excellent and overdue
Great examination of the overwhelming task of being true to oneself while mothering. Great research, beautiful narratives, awe inspiring women.
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