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When I Was White
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Danielle Deadwyler
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's Summary
The stunning and provocative coming-of-age memoir about Sarah Valentine's childhood as a White girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her discovery that her father was a Black man.
At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the White girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a Black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race.
And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from White to Black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her White identity. The supreme discomfort her White family and community felt about addressing issues of race - her race - is a microcosm of race relationships in America.
A Black woman who lived her formative years identifying as White, Sarah's story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her "passing" was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being Black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she'd grown up with, in order to embrace a new one.
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What listeners say about When I Was White
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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- Santa Fe Lady
- 08-15-19
Too long and repetitive
I was eager to read this story because the subject interested me. But now I am struggling to finish this book.
The narrator is terrible. She strings the sentences together and leaves no pauses where there should be one, adds pauses where there should NOT be one and makes a lot of it hard to follow.
The author beats the subject to death, over and over. I am trying to grasp her struggle and I have no doubt it was hard for her to learn that she had an African American father, but the book is just too long.
1 person found this helpful
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- Carla
- 06-06-20
Amazing perspective
I highly recommend this book especially at this time. Sarah’s voice should not be ignored. Her brutal honesty makes teaches us about ourselves.
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- Robert R.
- 05-12-20
Enjoyable
Valentine offers her story in a captivating and delightful way that snares readers to want more. Her life, like most of ours, is filled with twist and turns she lays out in a relatable fashion. The only draw back is I was expect a better ending. Seems like she set it up for a future sequel.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-07-19
Enjoyed reading about your life journey.
Loved it! Simply amazing. Very well written. Thank you for sharing your truth. I pray all of your questions about your life have been answered.
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- LisaJ
- 09-10-19
Not as good as interesting as I'd anticipated...
With my too being biracial (blk/wht), ethnically ambiguous, with a mother that raised me to tell "half truths" when asked my ethnicity, along with family that didn't hold their tongue w/regards to their bigotry/bias towards blacks as well as much of those I went to school with, also with having white half siblings that looked nothing like me, in addition to not knowing my father (in my case mine passed away shortly after my birth) and even had my own 'coming out' of sorts (much to the chagrin of some family members)...there were many relatable parts in her book. W/that being said, I wholeheartedly understand why she didn't know/ask until her twenties and it pains me to see the backlash she has experienced from the naysayers that can't remotely begin to relate let alone understand her not knowing. Anyway...my review.
Again, it was relatable in ways and those are the parts that really kept my attention. However, too much detail was given when not relevant to anything. Unfortunately, that was frequent. The narrator...well, she made it difficult to stay focused with her monotone reading, especially with some of her pronunciation of words.
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- Lanay Cala
- 08-10-19
Great book!
I honestly loved this book. Even the narrator was great. I think the only odd thing is the random length of the chapters.
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For 25 years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn't understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction. As a teacher, she found her best efforts to reach out to students and families of color left her wondering what she was missing.
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White people learning from White people
- By Hyli~Fav on 05-23-20
By: Debby Irving
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Empty
- A Memoir
- By: Susan Burton
- Narrated by: Susan Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.
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Pick another book
- By A. I. Keller on 07-18-20
By: Susan Burton
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Passing
- By: Nella Larsen
- Narrated by: Tessa Thompson
- Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Light-skinned Black woman Irene Redfield encounters an old childhood friend - Clare - who is now "passing" as a White woman. Clare is married to a racist White man, who doesn't know she has African American blood. In spite of the danger of being found out by her husband and society at large, she finds herself helplessly drawn to Irene's world.
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Almost didn't finish-so glad I did.
- By Lisa C on 01-21-21
By: Nella Larsen
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Surviving the White Gaze
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- By: Rebecca Carroll
- Narrated by: Rebecca Carroll
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Rebecca Carroll grew up the only Black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic - and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young White woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her blackness and self-esteem.
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Outstanding
- By Steve Shirley on 02-08-21
By: Rebecca Carroll
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We Have Always Been Here
- A Queer Muslim Memoir
- By: Samra Habib
- Narrated by: Parmida Vand
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
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Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger. When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: Bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage.
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Wow.
- By Lannah E. on 05-19-21
By: Samra Habib
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Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed
- 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora
- By: Saraciea J. Fennell - editor
- Narrated by: Avi Roque, Elizabeth Acevedo, Frankie Corzo, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora. These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth. Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community.
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Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is a treasure trove of essays and poems.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 04-04-22
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The Good Immigrant
- 26 Writers Reflect on America
- By: Nikesh Shukla - editor, Chimene Suleyman - editor
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller, full cast
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An urgent collection of essays by first- and second-generation immigrants, exploring what it's like to be othered in an increasingly divided America.
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Loved it!
- By Kristie Smith on 11-06-19
By: Nikesh Shukla - editor, and others
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Black Is the Body
- Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine
- By: Emily Bernard
- Narrated by: Emily Bernard
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In these 12 deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up Black in the South with a family name inherited from a White man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a White man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily White New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it.
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Beautifully written
- By caradaya on 08-10-19
By: Emily Bernard
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Don't Let It Get You Down
- Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body
- By: Savala Nolan
- Narrated by: Savala Nolan
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A powerful and provocative collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between society’s most charged, politicized, and intractably polar spaces - between Black and White, rich and poor, thin and fat.
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Provocative and beautifully written
- By Lily's Mom on 08-13-21
By: Savala Nolan
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Surviving the White Gaze
- A Memoir
- By: Rebecca Carroll
- Narrated by: Rebecca Carroll
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Rebecca Carroll grew up the only Black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic - and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young White woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her blackness and self-esteem.
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Outstanding
- By Steve Shirley on 02-08-21
By: Rebecca Carroll
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We Have Always Been Here
- A Queer Muslim Memoir
- By: Samra Habib
- Narrated by: Parmida Vand
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger. When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: Bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage.
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Wow.
- By Lannah E. on 05-19-21
By: Samra Habib
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Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed
- 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora
- By: Saraciea J. Fennell - editor
- Narrated by: Avi Roque, Elizabeth Acevedo, Frankie Corzo, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora. These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth. Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community.
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Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is a treasure trove of essays and poems.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 04-04-22