The Young Lords

A Radical History

By: Johanna Fernández

Narrated by: Joana Garcia

Length: 23 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Against the backdrop of America's escalating urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla actions against the city's racist policies and contempt for the poor. Their dramatic flair, uncompromising vision, and skillful ability to link local problems to international crises riveted the media, alarmed New York's political class, and challenged nationwide perceptions of civil rights and black power protest. The group called itself the Young Lords.

Utilizing oral histories, archival records, and an enormous cache of police records released only after a decade-long Freedom of Information Law request and subsequent court battle, Johanna Fernández has crafted the definitive account of the Young Lords. Led predominantly by poor and working-class Puerto Rican youth, and consciously fashioned after the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords confronted race and class inequality and questioned American foreign policy. Their imaginative, irreverent protests and media conscious tactics won significant reforms and exposed US mainland audiences to the country's quiet imperial project in Puerto Rico. In riveting style, Fernández demonstrates how the Young Lords redefined the character of protest, the color of politics, and the cadence of popular urban culture in the age of great dreams.

©2020 Johanna Fernandez (P)2021 Tantor

Next time use a bilingual reader

The readers Spanish was terrible. Next time use someone that is fully bilingual. The readers Spanish as distracting.

Enlightening

I thought I knew everything there was to know about the Young Lords...I was wrong!

Great American history!

The details and background were very helpful to understanding the 1960s. Should be required reading for all middle and high school students.

Educating and Powerful

Educating and Powerful. Thank you for sharing. The narrator was very good. Great to hear the positive impact The Young Loards had on their community and for exposing the level of discussion at all levels.

Informative and Focused

Focused and well written. Will be very useful for anyone interested in 1960s social movements

Great Historical Information

I really enjoyed learning the historical information. The narration would have been better coming from someone more familiar with Spanish language and names.

what stood out the most is a negative

the story and book was overall good, I think it would of been better if you had a native Puerto Rican Spanish speaker cuz the narrator's Spanish is worse than fat Joe's Spanish interview. when she was reading the part about uncombed people took me a minute to understand what she was saying it was bad. like a non Spanish person speaking Spanish for the first time 💀. awful

Probably the worst reading I’ve come across

I want to say up front that the story of the Young Lords is so important and one that we can learn so much from and build on. That said, this was absolutely the wrong voice actor for the job. So many words in both English and Spanish were mispronounced, to the point that I was verbally correcting her as I listened, she lost her breath quite often, and her read of the manuscript was just awkward (i.e. she would put emphasis on certain words that didn’t make sense for how the sentence was written, or she’d go into a lower, huskier voice to signify that a male was speaking, which is normally fine, but really wasn’t called for in this situation). Now, I don’t know what happened during the recording process. Maybe they had an extremely short turnaround and couldn’t give it the attention it needed. Maybe there was a problem with getting a producer or a studio and she had to wing it or record it unsupervised. I’m sure this voice actor has other books she’s read just fine or that had more time dedicated to the production, but I found this reading to be so poor that it almost ruined the experience for me. I really hope someone who’s truly bilingual has a chance to do this book the justice it deserves. My cousin wanted to listen to this book, and I told her to just buy the paperback.

Horrible reader.

I was really looking forward to this book and the narrator completely ruined this experience she constantly mispronounced Spanish words and read the book with no life in her voice completely boring and dry. Please can someone just re do this audio book and get a better reader. I’m returning this book because of the horrible job done by the narrator.