Showing results by narrator "Amir Abdullah" in All Categories

This is a SoundCraft Audiobooks production featuring digitally enhanced performances of some of history's greatest speeches - all presented as they might have originally been heard. The immersive audio experience presented here - complete with sound effects, music, and atmospherics - allows the listener to feel as if they were in attendance when these speeches were first delivered.

A Cadillac, a pistol, and a corpse make for another morning in Chicago. The body belongs to Walter Griffin, a prominent Black Chicagoan insider hailing from the city’s West Side. He ascended to the upper echelons of the mayor’s office only to meet his end in a watery grave at Wolf Point. Forensics finds his prints on the gun; it’s ruled a suicide. But grizzled private investigator Ashe Cayne knows better. Griffin’s children plead with a reluctant Ashe to hunt their father’s killer.

From 17 acclaimed Black male and nonbinary authors comes a vibrant collection of stories and poems about the power of joy and the wonders of Black boyhood.

Unlike their younger brother, André, whose star as a comedian is rising, neither Dwayne nor Brick Duquesne is having luck with his career - and they're unluckier still in love. Former child star Dwayne has just been fired from his latest acting role and barely has enough money to get by after paying child support to his spiteful former lover, while Brick struggles to return to his uninspiring white-collar job after suffering the dual blows of a health emergency and a nasty breakup with the woman he still loves.

The immersive audio experience presented here - complete with sound effects, music, and atmospherics - allows the listener to feel as if they were in attendance when these speeches were first delivered. The orations are performed by a select group of amazing actors who uniquely capture the essence, power, and complexity of these magnificent addresses, universally acknowledged as some of the greatest speeches in world history.

The courthouse is an important part of every story of mass incarceration in America and, too often, it is a place of powerlessness for those facing criminal charges, their families, and their communities. But the courthouse can also be an important site of resistance, a place where Americans affected by incarceration can become agents of change—even though they are not lawyers or judges.

This volume cultivates, for students and teachers in classrooms, as well as citizens in libraries and cafes, a language to deliberate about the possibilities and problems of democracy in America.

Since its publication in 1982, The Color Purple has resonated with generations of readers across the globe. The novel catapulted author Alice Walker to international fame, brought Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg acting acclaim in the 1985 film adaptation, and inspired theatrical productions around the world, including the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical. This cultural touchstone—which so profoundly touches on race, family, survival, spirituality, sisterhood, and love in all forms—continues to beget new iterations, most recently a feature film.

It's been nearly a decade since Rakta Velbrun of Gelvurt battled the evil Zactrik. Eight long years, to be exact, during which he slept the sleep of death, and those who loved and relied on him were forced to grieve, cope, and move on as best they could. Now, revived by a mysterious force, Rakta awakens to a world that is at once achingly familiar and dangerously broken.

"12 Years a Slave" is the harrowing, true account of a free Black man living in New York during the early 1800's who is kidnaped, transported to Louisiana and forced to work and live as a slave for over a decade. Written by the man who experienced these horrors - Solomon Northup - this book is a powerful and disturbing first-hand account of what it was like to live under the lash and chronicles the torments Northup endured in attempting to escape his captors and return home to his family in New York.

Joshua Myers considers the work of thinkers who broke with the racial and colonial logic of academic disciplinarity and how the ideas of Black intellectuals created different ways of thinking and knowing in their pursuit of conceptual and epistemological freedom. Bookended by meditations with June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, Of Black Study focuses on how W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers, and Cedric Robinson contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge.

In Frontline Bodies, Nicolas Martin-Breteau argues that sports are not—and have never been—purely about entertainment for Black Americans. Instead, beginning in the 1890s during Reconstruction, Black Americans proactively used athletics as a tactic to fight racial oppression. Martin-Breteau considers the work of Edwin B. Henderson, a prominent Black physical educator, civil rights activist, and historian of Black sports.

Overlooked for decades, Henderson was finally enshrined in the National Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 as a contributor. The Grandfather of Black Basketball gives long-overdue recognition to a sports pioneer, civil rights activist, author, educator, and pragmatic humanitarian who fought his entire life to improve opportunities for youth through athletics.

After winning Olympic medals for Britain in 1920, Harry Edward (1898-1973) decided to try his luck in America. The country he found was full of thrilling opportunity and pervasive racism. Immensely capable and energetic, Harry rubbed shoulders with kings and presidents, was influential in the revival of Black theatre during the Harlem Renaissance, and became a passionate humanitarian and advocate for child welfare.

Zaire. Late 90's. Mobutu's thirty-year reign is tottering. In Lubumbashi, the stubbornly homeless Sanza has fallen in with a trio of veteran street kids led by the devious Ngungi. A chance encounter with the mysterious Monsieur Guillaume seems to offer a way out . . . Meanwhile in Angola, Molakisi has joined thousands of fellow Zairians hoping to make their fortunes hunting diamonds, while Austrian Franz finds himself roped into writing the memoirs of the charismatic Tshiamuena, the "Madonna of the Cafunfo Mines."

Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family's difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret.