Free Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/707139 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Lucky: Learning to live again Author: Louise Thompson Narrator: Louise Thompson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 21 minutes Release date: May 23, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 2.5 of Total 2 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. The Number One Sunday Times bestseller How do you learn to live again when you've danced with death? Louise was like any other excited mother-to-be during her first pregnancy, but no one could have predicted what happened when she gave birth. During an emergency c-section, she had severe complications and fought for her life over a number of days, whilst her son was taken into NICU. This terrifying experience impacted on Louise's mental health in a way that completely changed her life, as she has battled to come to terms with what happened to her, whilst also becoming a mother. As Louise has rebuilt herself step by step, she has reflected back on her life – from her childhood and close relationship with her brother, Sam Thompson, to her struggles with alcohol and toxic relationships, as well as the rollercoaster years of her time on Made in Chelsea. Louise’s experience has changed the way she sees the world and redefined what's important to her. Although it has not been an easy road, she is determined to come out more alive than ever. Louise’s powerful story, told with raw honesty, shows the incredible human ability to overcome anything, no matter what life throws at you. 'Her battle, viscerally told in this harrowing account, is one to be in awe of and might have you reconsidering your own appreciation of luck' Mail on Sunday ©2024 Louise Thompson (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/707315 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Paris Trilogy: A Life in Three Stories Author: Colombe Schneck Narrator: Hillary Huber Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 31 minutes Release date: May 23, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: 'This is valuable writing. It has immense vitality. You will encounter a female narrator whose direct and bright-eyed stare at the world, and her self, is without shame or faux modesty. At the same time, it is also a deep study of existence, at various ages and stages in life.' — Deborah Levy 'Swimming is a dreamy, bruised, and carnal book that pretty much no American would write and pretty much every American will thrill to read. Schneck’s “discovery of her body, at the age of fifty” is our encounter with an entrancing mind.' — Lauren Collins From celebrated author Colombe Schneck, in her first translation into English, The Paris Trilogy is three semi-autobiographical takes on a woman’s life, starting with Seventeen, progressing with Friendship, and then Swimming: A Love Story. Exploring questions of sexuality, bodily autonomy, femininity, friendship and loss, The Paris Trilogy is a moving meditation on a lifelong journey to reclaim the female body, accepting it for all its faults and learning to celebrate its strength. The Paris Trilogy is translated into English by award-winning translators Natasha Lehrer and Lauren Elkin.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/705858 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Nephew: A Memoir in 4-Part Harmony Author: M.K. Asante Narrator: Neph, M.K. Asante, Adenrele Ojo, Dion Graham Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 16 minutes Release date: May 21, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: As urgent, resonant, and essential as The Fire Next Time and Between the World and Me, a poetic, raw, and inspirational love letter from the bestselling author of Buck, written to a nephew who was shot nine times and survived—a reflection on life, overcoming odds, finding your voice, and the power of music and family. Waiting in the emergency room at Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia where his eighteen-year-old nephew, Nasir, lay unconscious after being shot nine times, MK Asante began pouring his heart and soul into a series of letters to a beautiful, dying Black boy so full of life. As Nasir fought for survival, MK realized there was so much—too much—that he had kept from his nephew, starting with the truth about his father, MK’s brother, Uzi, whom Nasir had never met. MK could no longer remain silent because in many ways, his nephew was repeating the mistakes of the past. MK began his confessional to repair family bonds—to save Nasir from the same streets that stole his father and to introduce him to the man and family history the young man had never known. The result is this beautiful, poignant, and honest family memoir. Nephew introduces us to two men, strangers to each other, whose similarities are astonishing. Both have red hot tempers, both struggle with opioid addiction, and most profoundly, both are lyrical geniuses whose raps are raw, powerful, and autobiographical. Yet neither had ever heard the other’s lyrics. As he tells his family’s story, MK draws vivid portraits of both Nasir and Uzi through their songs—lyrics that become the touchstone of their relationship. When father and son eventually meet, they confront each other and share a dialogue through their lyrics. An explosive, innovative memoir of family, faith, poetry, secrets, love, race, poverty, redemption, addiction, Philadelphia, hip-hop, jail, purpose, mental health, and violence. Nephew is fast-paced, intimate, lyrical, educational, and inspirational. It is the epic, painful, poetic, and miraculous redemptive story of a new generation—a new style of memoir for a new decade, the rhythmic story of a family in love, struggle, and verse.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/704939 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Drive: Scraping By in Uber's America, One Ride at a Time Author: Jonathan Rigsby Narrator: Ryan Self Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 42 minutes Release date: May 14, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: One father, 3 years, and thousands of rides Poverty, By America meets Maid in this dad’s darkly humorous yet humanizing story of working long hours and late nights behind the wheel as a rideshare driver Jonathan Rigsby spends his days as a crime intelligence analyst and his nights as an Uber driver. Reeling from his divorce and struggling to pay rent while caring for his autistic son, Rigsby became a rideshare driver, joining the millions of people with a side hustle just to make ends meet. With a compelling blend of honesty and sardonic wit, Rigsby invites readers into his car to reveal the harsh reality of gig work for so many: grueling hours, living paycheck to paycheck, and hoping to avoid disaster long enough to prepare for the next bill. Along the way, he showcases the humor and humanity in the private moments of vulnerability that happen when people are left alone with a stranger—from the amusing tales of drunk college students to a passenger getting sick on the dashboard, a mother expressing distress about her son’s addiction, and a violent encounter on the job. Unflinching and raw, Drive exposes an ugly truth that hides in the gaudy background of the American dream: you can do everything right and still fail. Buckle up.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/711732 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders Author: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal Narrator: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 24 minutes Release date: May 14, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Longlisted for the National Book Award A brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture—from Beyoncé to Game of Thrones—to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by migration and colonialism. Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality. In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all. The border between the real and imagined is a speculative space where we can remember, or re-world, what has been lost—and each chapter engages in this essential project of world-building. In one essay, Villarreal examines her own gender performativity through Nirvana and Selena; in another, she offers a radical but crucial racial reading of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones; and throughout the collection, she explores how fantasy can help us interpret and heal when grief feels insurmountable. She reflects on the moments of her life that are too painful to remember—her difficult adolescence, her role as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, her divorce—and finds a way to archive her history and map her future(s) with the hope and joy of fantasy and magical thinking. Magical/Realism is a wise, tender, and essential collection that carves a path toward a new way of remembering and telling our stories—broadening our understanding of what memoir and cultural criticism can be.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/707113 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life Author: Nicholas D. Kristof Narrator: Nicholas D. Kristof Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 0 minutes Release date: May 14, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: From New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner, and best-selling author Nicholas D. Kristof, an intimate and gripping memoir about a life in journalism “Nick Kristof takes us behind the scenes as he risks his life to shine a light on the world’s most pressing problems and blaze a trail to a better future. In a time when trust in journalism is in jeopardy, his honesty, humility, and humanity are rays of hope.”—Adam Grant, author of Hidden Potential Since 1984, Nicholas Kristof has worked almost continuously for The New York Times as a reporter, foreign correspondent, bureau chief, and now columnist, becoming one of the foremost reporters of his generation. Here, he recounts his event-filled path from a small-town farm in Oregon to every corner of the world. Reporting from Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo, while traveling far afield to India, Africa, and Europe, Kristof witnessed and wrote about century-defining events: the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the Yemeni civil war, the Darfur genocide in Sudan, and the wave of addiction and despair that swept through his hometown and a broad swath of working-class America. Fully aware that coverage of atrocities generates considerably fewer page views than the coverage of politics, he nevertheless continued to weaponize his pen against regimes and groups violating basic human rights, raising the cost of oppression and torture. Some of the risks he took while doing so make for hair-raising reading. Kristof writes about some of the great members of his profession and introduces us to extraordinary people he has met, such as the dissident whom he helped escape from China and a Catholic nun who browbeat a warlord into releasing schoolgirls he had kidnapped. These are the people, the heroes, who have allowed Kristof to remain optimistic. Side by side with the worst of humanity, you always see the best. This is a candid memoir of vulnerability and courage, humility and purpose, mistakes and learning—a singular tale of the trials, tribulations, and hope to be found in a life dedicated to the pursuit of truth.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/704339 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Giant on the Skyline: On Home, Belonging and Learning to Let Go Author: Clover Stroud Narrator: Clover Stroud Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 27 minutes Release date: May 9, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. What is it that makes a home? What is a home without the roots that tie you to a place? What is a home when a family is split? Clover's eldest children are leaving home for university. Her husband Pete's work is in America. The only way for Clover and the younger children to live with him is to uproot, leave their rural life near the ancient Ridgeway in Oxfordshire and move to Washington DC. Forced to leave the home she loves and consider these questions, Clover sets out to explore the place where she lives, walk the Ridgway, understand a little of the history of her landscape and work out why it is that it is so hard for her to go. In doing so she paints a beautifully layered portrait of family, community and of belonging in a landscape that has drawn people to it for generation after generation. 'Clover Stroud is a fearless explorer of the human heart, and a writer of incomparable grace and passion.' Elizabeth Gilbert 'Clover's writing is sensationally beautiful.' Laura Cumming 'Stroud's writing is knife-sharp, beautiful and profound.' Madeline Miller ©2024 Clover Stroud (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/707065 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Love Is a Burning Thing: A Memoir Author: Nina St. Pierre Narrator: Nina St. Pierre Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 55 minutes Release date: May 7, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A riveting memoir about a daughter’s investigation into the wirings of her loving, unpredictable mother: a woman who lived her life in pursuit of the divine, and who started two big fires, decades apart.   Ten years before Nina was born, her mother lit herself on fire in a dual suicide attempt. During her recovery in the burn-unit, a nurse initiated her into Transcendental Meditation. From that day on, her mother's pain became intertwined with the pursuit of enlightenment.    Growing up, Nina longed for a normal life; instead, she and her brother were at the whims of their mother, who chased ascension up and down the state of California, swapping out spiritual practices as often as apartments. When they finally settled at the foot of a mountain—reputed to be cosmic—in Northern California, Nina hoped life would stabilize. But after another fire, and a tragic fallout, she was forced to confront the shadow side of her mother's mystical narratives. With obsessive dedication, Nina began to knit together the truth that would eventually release her.   In Love Is a Burning Thing, Nina interrogates what happens to those undiagnosed and unseen. This is a transfixing, moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship that also examines mental health, stigma, poverty, and gender—and the role that spirituality plays within each. Nina’s writing skirts the mystical, untangles it, and ultimately illuminates it with brilliance.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/707066 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown Author: Nina Sharma Narrator: Nina Sharma Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 21 minutes Release date: May 7, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: “Remarkable . . . The Way You Make Me Feel affirms that Black and Brown existence in America comes with no guarantee of collective solidarity, no innate promise of racial equality. The path to justice is uncertain, Sharma reminds us, and we must each work hard—and be bold enough to sacrifice our own comfort—to actualize it.” —Washington Post A hilarious and moving memoir in essays about love and allyship, told through one Asian and Black interracial relationship When Nina Sharma meets Quincy while hitching a ride to a friend’s Fourth of July barbecue, she spots a favorite book, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, in the back seat of his cramped car, and senses a sadness from him that’s all too familiar to her. She is immediately intrigued—who is this man? In The Way You Make Me Feel, Sharma chronicles her and Quincy’s love story, and in doing so, examines how their Black and Asian relationship becomes the lens through which she moves through and understands the world. In a series of sensual and sparkling essays, Sharma reckons with caste, race, colorism, and mental health, moving from her seemingly idyllic suburban childhood through her and Quincy’s early sweeping romance in the so-called postracial Obama years and onward to their marriage. Growing up, she hears her parents talk about the racism they experienced at the hands of white America—and as an adult, she confronts the complexities of American racism and the paradox of her family’s disappointment when she starts dating a Black man. While watching The Walking Dead, Sharma dives into the eerie parallels between the brutal death of Steven Yeun’s character and the murder of Vincent Chin. She examines the trailblazing Mira Nair film Mississippi Masala, revolutionary in its time for depicting a love story between an Indian woman and a Black man on screen, and considers why interracial relationships are so often assumed to include white people. And as she and Quincy decide whether to start a family, they imagine a universe in which Vice President Kamala Harris could possibly be their time-traveling daughter. Written with a keen critical eye and seamlessly weaving in history, pop culture, and politics, The Way You Make Me Feel reaffirms the idea that allyship is an act of true love.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/707088 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood Author: Lucy Jones Narrator: Lucy Jones Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 48 minutes Release date: May 7, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A New Statesman and Daily Mail BOOK OF THE YEAR 'The best book I've ever read about motherhood' Jude Rogers, Observer 'I kept scribbling in the margins: 'We need to know this stuff!'' Joanna Pocock, Spectator A radical new examination of the transition into motherhood and how it affects the mind, brain and body During pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, women undergo a far-reaching physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis. There is no other time in a human's life course that entails such dramatic change-other than adolescence. And yet this life-altering transition has been sorely neglected by science, medicine and philosophy. Its seismic effects go largely unrepresented across literature and the arts. Speaking about motherhood as anything other than a pastel-hued dream remains, for the most part, taboo. In this ground-breaking, deeply personal investigation, acclaimed journalist and author Lucy Jones brings to light the emerging concept of 'matrescence'. Drawing on new research across various fields - neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology - Jones shows how the changes in the maternal mind, brain and body are far more profound, wild and enduring than we have been led to believe. She reveals the dangerous consequences of our neglect of the maternal experience and interrogates the patriarchal and capitalist systems that have created the untenable situation mothers face today. Here is an urgent examination of the modern institution of motherhood, which seeks to unshackle all parents from oppressive social norms. As it deepens our understanding of matrescence, it raises vital questions about motherhood and femininity; interdependence and individual identity; as well as about our relationships with each other and the living world. Cover image: Pregnant Woman, 2008, by Louise Bourgeois © 2024 The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Cristopher Burke