Explore New Full Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Women

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/451455 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Author: Tiya Miles

Narrator: Janina Edwards

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

Release date: June 8, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.55 of Total 11

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 3

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives.   WINNER: Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Harriet Tubman Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Lawrence W. Levine Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award, Cundill History Prize, Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Book Award ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Vulture, Publishers Weekly “A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States   In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language.    Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honors the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today.   FINALIST: MAAH Stone Book Award, Kirkus Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize, Chatauqua Prize, Women’s Prize ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Smithsonian Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, Book Riot, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/494014 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: As a Woman: What I Learned about Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy after I Transitioned

Author: Paula Stone Williams

Narrator: Paula Stone Williams

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 55 minutes

Release date: June 1, 2021

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

This moving and unforgettable memoir of a transgender pastor’s transition from male to female is an “audacious, gripping, and profoundly real journey that speaks to the mind, heart, and soul” (Joshua J. Dickson, director of Faith Based Initiatives, Biden Campaign)—perfect for fans of Redefining Realness and There Is Room for You. As a father of three, married to a wonderful woman, and holding several prominent jobs within the Christian community, Dr. Paula Stone Williams made the life-changing decision to physically transition from male to female at the age of sixty. Almost instantly, her power and influence in the evangelical world disappeared and her family had to grapple with intense feelings of loss and confusion. Feeling utterly alone after being expelled from the evangelical churches she had once spearheaded, Paula struggled to create a new safe space for herself where she could reconcile her faith, her identity, and her desire to be a leader. Much to her surprise, the key to her new career as a woman came with a deeper awareness of the inequities she had overlooked before her transition. Where her opinions were once celebrated and amplified, now she found herself sidelined and ignored. New questions emerged. Why are women’s opinions devalued in favor of men’s? Why does love and intimacy feel so different? And, was it possible to find a new spirituality in her own image? In As a Woman, Paula’s “critical questions about gender, personhood, and place are relevant to anyone. Her writing insightfully reveals aspects of our gender socialization and culture that often go unexamined, but that need to be talked about, challenged, and changed” (Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her) in order to fully understand what it means to be male, female, and simply, human.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/465608 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: House of Sticks

Author: Ly Tran

Narrator: Ly Tran

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 16 minutes

Release date: June 1, 2021

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

New York City Book Awards Hornblower Award Winner One of Vogue and NPR’s Best Books of the Year This beautifully written “masterclass in memoir” (Elle) recounts a young girl’s journey from war-torn Vietnam to Queens, New York, “showcas[ing] the tremendous power we have to alter the fates of others, step into their lives and shift the odds in favor of greater opportunity” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis). Ly Tran is just a toddler in 1993 when she and her family immigrate from a small town along the Mekong river in Vietnam to a two-bedroom railroad apartment in Queens. Ly’s father, a former lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army, spent nearly a decade as a POW, and their resettlement is made possible through a humanitarian program run by the US government. Soon after they arrive, Ly joins her parents and three older brothers sewing ties and cummerbunds piece-meal on their living room floor to make ends meet. As they navigate this new landscape, Ly finds herself torn between two worlds. She knows she must honor her parents’ Buddhist faith and contribute to the family livelihood, working long hours at home and eventually as a manicurist alongside her mother at a nail salon in Brooklyn that her parents take over. But at school, Ly feels the mounting pressure to blend in. A growing inability to see the blackboard presents new challenges, especially when her father forbids her from getting glasses, calling her diagnosis of poor vision a government conspiracy. His frightening temper and paranoia leave a mark on Ly’s sense of self. Who is she outside of everything her family expects of her? An “unsentimental yet deeply moving examination of filial bond, displacement, war trauma, and poverty” (NPR), House of Sticks is a timely and powerful portrait of one girl’s coming-of-age and struggle to find her voice amid clashing cultural expectations.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/513796 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live

Author: Danielle Dreilinger

Narrator: Rachel Perry

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 18 minutes

Release date: May 25, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 3

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

The term 'home economics' may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist, and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field's history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics' women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/504950 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Women On Top of the World: What Women Think About When They're Having Sex

Author: Various

Narrator: Alex Tregear, Avita Jay

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 4 hours 25 minutes

Release date: May 25, 2021

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

This collection of fifty true disclosures by women around the world from all ages and walks of life reveals their innermost thoughts and feelings during sex. Author Lucy-Anne Holmes has spoken to women from around the globe, ranging in age from 19-75, as they reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings during sex. The result is an incredible compendium of true disclosures that are funny and sad, shocking and tender. Women on Top of the World will be a provocative collection of female voices. It promises to contribute to the changing way women are now talking about their sexuality, and their journeys toward self-discovery.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/489714 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams

Author: Jonathan Ned Katz

Narrator: Romy Nordlinger

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

Release date: May 18, 2021

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

Eve Adams was a rebel. Born Chawa Zloczewer into a Jewish family in Poland, Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912. The young woman befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, took a new name, and ran lesbian-and-gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and New York. Then, in 1925, Adams risked all to write and publish a book titled Lesbian Love. In a repressive era, long before today's gay liberation movement, when American women had just gained the right to vote, Adams's bold activism caught the attention of the young J. Edgar Hoover and the US Bureau of Investigation, leading to her surveillance and arrest. In a case that pitted immigration officials, the New York City police, and a biased informer against her, Adams was convicted of publishing an obscene book and of attempted sex with a policewoman sent to entrap her. Adams was jailed and then deported back to Europe, and ultimately murdered by Nazis in Auschwitz. In The Daring Life and Deadly Times of Eve Adams, acclaimed historian Jonathan Ned Katz has recovered the extraordinary story of an early, daring activist. Drawing on startling evidence, carefully distinguishing fact from fiction, Katz presents the first biography of Adams, and the publisher reprints the long-lost text of Adams's rare, unique book Lesbian Love.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/506910 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Breathe Cry Breathe: From Sorrow to Strength in the Aftermath of Sudden, Tragic Loss

Author: Catherine Gourdier

Narrator: Petrea Burchard

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Release date: May 11, 2021

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

One accident. Two victims. Three deaths. A moving account of grief and its aftermath. In the fall of 2009, Catherine Gourdier and the other members of her family were happily gathering for a surprise horror-themed birthday party for their youngest member, Julie, when the unthinkable happened. As Julie and her parents were walking home from church, they were hit by a car driven by an eighty-four-year-old woman. While Catherine’s father somehow escaped without harm, Julie and her mother were rushed to hospital, where they succumbed to their injuries. The family was still reeling from the tragedy when, several weeks later, Catherine’s father died suddenly, most likely from a broken heart. Breathe Cry Breathe is the story of Catherine’s journey through grief, as she tries to come to terms with the traumatic loss of three close family members. In the ensuing weeks, months and years, Catherine realizes that “grief doesn’t vanish so quickly. It packs a suitcase and moves into your heart and head.” To help overcome and accept her loss, Catherine seeks alternative healing therapies and throws herself into practical diversions—trying to get a crosswalk installed at the site of the accident; advocating for organ donation and mandatory road tests for elderly drivers; and hosting fundraisers for Special Olympics. After years of struggle, it is these pursuits that finally help her to move beyond her devastating grief.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/451831 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind

Author: Barbara Becker

Narrator: Gabra Zackman

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 4 hours 37 minutes

Release date: May 11, 2021

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

“We can do extraordinary things when we lead with love,” Barbara Becker reminds us in her debut memoir Heartwood. When her earliest childhood friend is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Becker sets off on a quest to immerse herself in what it means to be mortal. Can we live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die? With a keen eye towards that which makes life worth living, interfaith minister, mom and perpetual seeker Barbara Becker recounts stories where life and death intersect in unexpected ways. She volunteers on a hospice floor, becomes an eager student of the many ways people find meaning at the end of life, and accompanies her parents in their final days. Becker inspires listeners to live with the end in mind and proves that turning toward loss rather than away from it is the only true way to live life to its fullest. Just as with the heartwood of a tree—the central core that is no longer alive yet supports the newer growth rings—the dead become an enduring source of strength to the living. With life-affirming prose, Becker helps us see that that grief is not a problem to be solved, but rather a sacred invitation—an opportunity to let go into something even greater…a love that will inform all the days of our lives. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books 'Becker’s eloquence is a salve for confronting a difficult topic...This will be a comfort for anyone contemplating their own mortality, or those in search of advice for others. ' —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/486016 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Windsor Diaries: My Childhood with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret

Author: Alathea Fitzalan Howard

Narrator: Alice Mcmillan, Sandra Duncan

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 30 minutes

Release date: May 4, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

The never-before-published diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard—who spent her teenaged years living out World War II in Windsor Great Park with her close friends Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom—provide an extraordinary and intimate look at the British Royal Family. Like so many others in Great Britain, young Alathea Fitzalan Howard’s life was turned upside down by the start of the Second World War. Sent to stay with her grandfather at the historic Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park, Alathea found the affection she so craved through her close friendship with the two princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, and their parents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, her neighbors at nearby Windsor Castle. Together, the girls enjoyed parties, cinema evenings, picnics, and more, all recorded in honest and captivating detail in Alathea’s diary, which she kept as a constant source of comfort. Day by day, from ages sixteen to twenty-two, she recorded the intimate details of her life with the Royal Family and the anxieties of wartime Britain. Now, published for the first time, these unique diaries unveil a candid and vivid portrait of the British Royal Family and of Princess Elizabeth in particular, the warm, quiet young girl who was already on her journey to her ultimate destiny: the Crown.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/493892 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy

Author: Lindsay Moran

Narrator: Jennifer Jill Araya

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 37 minutes

Release date: April 27, 2021

Genres: Women

Publisher's Summary:

Call me naïve, but when I was a girl—watching James Bond and devouring Harriet the Spy—all I wanted was to grow up to be a spy. Unlike most kids, I didn't lose my secret-agent aspirations. So as a bright-eyed, idealistic college grad, I sent my resume to the CIA. Getting in was a story in itself. I peed in more cups than you could imagine, and was nearly condemned as a sexual deviant by the staff psychologist. My roommates were getting freaked out by government investigators lurking around, asking questions about my past. Finally, the CIA was training me to crash cars into barriers at 60 mph. Jump out of airplanes with cargo attached to my body. Survive interrogation, travel in alias, lose a tail. One thing they didn't teach us was how to date a guy while lying to him about what you do for a living. That I had to figure out for myself. Then I was posted overseas. And that's when the real fun began.