Andrea Johnson has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors. The most-rated is Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule.
On Michael Jackson
Summary
Michael Jackson was once universally acclaimed as a song-and-dance man of genius; Wacko Jacko is now, more often than not, dismissed for his bizarre race and gender transformations and confounding antics, even as he is commonly reviled for the child molestation charges twice brought against him. Whence the weirdness and alleged criminality? How to account for Michael Jackson's rise and fall? In On Michael Jackson, an at once passionate, incisive, and bracing work of cultural analysis, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times Margo Jefferson brilliantly unravels the complexities of one of the most enigmatic figures of our time. Who is Michael Jackson and what does it mean to call him a "What Is It"? What do P. T. Barnum, Peter Pan, and Edgar Allan Poe have to do with our fascination with Jackson? How did his curious Victorian upbringing and his tenure as a child prodigy on the "chitlin' circuit" inform his character and multiplicity of selves? How is Michael Jackson's celebrity related to the outrageous popularity of 19th-century minstrelsy? What is the perverse appeal of child stars for grown-ups and what is the price of such stardom for these children and for us? What uncanniness provoked Michael Jackson to become "Alone of All His Race, Alone of All Her Sex," while establishing himself as an undeniably great performer with neo-Gothic, dandy proclivities and a producer of visionary music videos? What do we find so unnerving about Michael Jackson's presumed monstrosity? In short, how are we all of us implicated? In her stunning first book, Margo Jefferson gives us the incontrovertible lowdown on call-him-what-you-wish; she offers a powerful reckoning with a quintessential, richly allusive signifier of American society and popular culture.
©2006 Margo Jefferson (P)2006 Books on Tape
Heaven
Summary
Heaven is the perfect name for the small Ohio town where 14-year-old Marley lives. Or at least she thought so until the fateful day when the mysterious letter arrived. Now her life has been turned upside down. Twelve years ago Momma chose to live in Heaven because she liked the name of the town and the white picket fences and the little schoolhouse by the river. Pops agreed that it was a good place after he made sure it had a Western Union office. Ever since she can remember, Marley's been sent to Western Union to wire money to Uncle Jack. Now that she's learned the significance of those errands, life will never be the same. This award-winning author introduces a likeable, believable young character. Listeners empathize with her search for identity and are edified by her choice to forgive the family who hid her adoption from her.
©1998 Angela Johnson (P)2000 Recorded Books, LLC
This Just In
Summary
WKBA news in Chicago is reeling. Their ratings are the lowest in town, and company morale has plummeted. At the end of their ropes, five women band together to correct injustices and hopefully shoot WKBA up the ratings chart. Their ideas are inventive, and their convictions are infectious, but they’ll need to crack the good-old-boys network before they ever get a chance to prove themselves. Through Yolanda Joe’s sharp observations about this cutthroat industry, the cameras are reversed and the inequalities of big-time television news are exposed. An all-star cast of Recorded Books narrators helps each character shine, bringing the story completely to life.
©2000 Yolanda Joe (P)2000 Recorded Books, LLC
Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule
Summary
Twelve-year-old Pascal can hardly believe his ears. His older, run-away brother has returned to the plantation with an amazing story: President Lincoln has freed the slaves. Not only that, each newly-freed family can have 40 acres of land and maybe a mule, just for the asking. Now all Pascal and his brother have to do is sneak away from their angry master - and find out where the government is giving away farmland. But as they search, they still must hide from men who would force them back to slavery. Will Pascal ever know true freedom? The granddaughter of slaves on Robert E. Lee's Virginia estate, Harriette Gillem Robinet bases this story on research and oral stories of slavery. Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule sheds new light on the little understood time of Reconstruction in the South. Narrator Andrea Johnson vividly brings to life the adventures that could have happened to one small group of African Americans.
©1998 Harriette Gillem Robinet (P)2000 Recorded Books, LLC