Tonya Bolden has 7 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is We Are Not Yet Equal.

7 audiobooks
Cover art for We Are Not Yet Equal

We Are Not Yet Equal

1 rating

Summary

Carol Anderson's White Rage took the world by storm, landing on the New York Times best-seller list and best book of the year lists from New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Review of Books. It launched her as an in-demand commentator on contemporary race issues for national print and television media and garnered her an invitation to speak to the Democratic Congressional Caucus. This compelling young adult adaptation brings her ideas to a new audience.  When America achieves milestones of progress toward full and equal black participation in democracy, the systemic response is a consistent racist backlash that rolls back those wins. We Are Not Yet Equal examines five of these moments: the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with Jim Crow laws; the promise of new opportunities in the North during the Great Migration was limited when blacks were physically blocked from moving away from the South; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to laws that disenfranchised millions of African American voters and a War on Drugs that disproportionally targeted blacks; and the election of President Obama led to an outburst of violence including the death of black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the election of Donald Trump.  This YA adaptation is written in an approachable narrative style that provides teen listeners with additional context to these historic moments. 

©2018 Carol Anderson (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Narrator: Robin Miles
Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Saving Savannah

Saving Savannah

1 rating

Summary

Savannah is lucky. The daughter of upper-class African-American parents in Washington DC in 1919, she lives luxuriously, with an elite education and her pick of the young men in her set. But lately the structure of her society - the croquet games, the Sunday teas, the pretentiousness - has felt suffocating.  When she meets a young man from the working class named Lloyd, Savannah has a chance to see how the “other half” lives. Saddened by their situation, she is motivated to make a true difference. But suffragist lectures and socialist meetings are a radical interest for a young girl from society, and Savannah must find a way - her way - to change the world.  Deeply relevant and emotionally resonant for a modern audience, this searing story reveals a girl becoming a woman in a world on the brink of sweeping change.

©2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Narrator: Robin Eller
Author: Tonya Bolden
Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Dark Sky Rising

Dark Sky Rising

Summary

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents a journey through America's past and our nation's attempts at renewal in this look at the Civil War's conclusion, Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crow segregation.   This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In a stirring account of emancipation, the struggle for citizenship and national reunion, and the advent of racial segregation, the renowned Harvard scholar delivers a book that is illuminating and timely. Real-life accounts drive the narrative, spanning the half century between the Civil War and Birth of a Nation. Here, you will come face-to-face with the people and events of Reconstruction's noble democratic experiment, its tragic undermining, and the drawing of a new "color line" in the long Jim Crow era that followed. In introducing young listeners to them, and to the resiliency of the African American people at times of progress and betrayal, Professor Gates shares a history that remains vitally relevant today.

©2019 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (P)2019 Scholastic Inc.

Narrator: Dion Graham
Length: 3 hrs and 4 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Inventing Victoria

Inventing Victoria

Summary

In a searing historical novel, Tonya Bolden illuminates post-Reconstruction America in an intimate portrait of a determined young woman who dares to seize the opportunity of a lifetime. As a young black woman in 1880s Savannah, Essie's dreams are very much at odds with her reality. Ashamed of her beginnings, but unwilling to accept the path currently available to her, Essie is trapped between the life she has and the life she wants. Until she meets a lady named Dorcas Vashon, the richest and most cultured black woman she's ever encountered. When Dorcas makes Essie an offer she can't refuse, she becomes Victoria. Transformed by a fine wardrobe, a classic education and the rules of etiquette, Victoria is soon welcomed in the upper echelons of black society in Washington, DC. But when the life she desires is finally within her grasp, Victoria must decide how much of herself she is truly willing to surrender.

©2019 Tonya Bolden (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Narrator:
Author: Tonya Bolden
Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Strong Voices

Strong Voices

Summary

"A wide-ranging collection of speeches and a worthwhile resource for students of American history." (Booklist) "A golden celebration of the multicultural voices who demand the U.S. - and the world - do better." (Kirkus)  "An important addition to American history collections." (School Library Journal) Strong Voices: Fifteen American Speeches Worth Knowing is a collection of significant speeches, made both by those who held the reins of power and those who didn’t, at significant times in American history. Listen to the original words - sometimes abridged and sometimes in their entirety - that have shaped our cultural fabric. Introductions by acclaimed writer Tonya Bolden provide historical context and critical insights to the meaning and impact of every speech. Illustrations by award-winning artist Eric Velasquez illuminate what it was really like at each moment in history. This collection includes the following: Patrick Henry, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" George Washington, Farewell Address Red Jacket, "We Never Quarrel about Religion" Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Sojourner Truth, "I Am a Woman’s Rights" Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic" Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself" Lou Gehrig, "Farewell to Baseball" Langston Hughes, "On the Blacklist All Our Lives" John Fitzgerald Kennedy, "We Choose to Go to the Moon" Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" Fannie Lou Hamer, "I Question America" Cesar Chavez, Address to the Commonwealth Club of California, 1984 Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Women’s Rights Are Human Rights" Strong Voices includes a foreword by number one New York Times best-selling author and celebrated journalist Cokie Roberts, as well as a timeline in the back of the audiobook, along with letters to the listener from Tonya Bolden and Eric Velasquez. Strong Voices is a tremendous introduction to the extraordinary words spoken in history. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Tonya Bolden and Cokie Roberts (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Facing Frederick

Facing Frederick

Summary

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) is best known for the telling of his own emancipation. But there is much more to Douglass' story than his time spent enslaved and his famous autobiography. Facing Frederick captures the whole complicated and, at times, perplexing person that he was. Statesman, suffragist, writer, and newspaperman, this book focuses on Douglass the man rather than the historical icon.

©2018 Tonya Bolden (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Author: Tonya Bolden
Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for One Person, No Vote (YA Edition)

One Person, No Vote (YA Edition)

Summary

In her New York Times best seller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organising, activism and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans as the nation gears up for the 2020 presidential election season.

©2020 Carol Anderson (P)2020 Audible, Ltd

Narrator: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
Available on Audible