James Shippey has narrated 3 audiobooks on Listento.it by 5 authors. The most-rated is A Place Like Mississippi.
Garvey's Choice
Summary
Garvey's father has always wanted Garvey to be athletic, but Garvey is interested in astronomy, science fiction, reading - anything but sports. Feeling like a failure, he comforts himself with food. Garvey is kind, funny, smart, a loyal friend, and he is also overweight, teased by bullies, and lonely. When his only friend encourages him to join the school chorus, Garvey's life changes. The chorus finds a new soloist in Garvey, and through chorus Garvey finds a way to accept himself and a way to finally reach his distant father - by speaking the language of music instead of the language of sports. This emotionally resonant novel in verse by award-winning author Nikki Grimes celebrates choosing to be true to yourself.
©2016 Nikki Grimes (P)2016 Recorded Books
The Gumbo Coalition
Summary
To be a great leader, you must be able to unite people from all backgrounds with seemingly competing agendas to come together under a common cause. Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and current president and CEO of the National Urban League, has been such a leader and shares the lessons he learned along a legendary journey of achievement. Morial knew his calling from a young age - he was meant to be a leader in the fight for meaningful change. Growing up in the segregated South and helping his father realize an incredible victory as the first African American mayor of New Orleans, Morial was shown that, with the right tools, significant change is possible. Less than two decades later, in his own mayoral race in New Orleans, Morial built what he christened the “Gumbo Coalition”, an incredible mixture of all of New Orleans’s ingredients - African Americans, Whites, Latinos, Asians, business leaders, grassroots community activists, business leaders, clergy, and many more. Each ingredient brought its own flavor, creating a dish that was able to reduce crime and rebuild New Orleans’s reputation with such power that the city was able to successfully attract an NBA franchise, multiple Super Bowls, and the Essence Festival, the largest African American event in the nation. Now, Morial fights on behalf of the National Urban League to create a community with a voice so strong that nothing can stand in the way of change. He is ready to teach others what he has learned along the way, by showing listeners what it means to be a leader who can unite voices and create meaningful change.
©2020 Marc Morial (P)2020 HarperCollins Leadership
A Place Like Mississippi
Summary
There is a palpable connection to the landscapes of Mississippi displayed in the work of the state’s many lauded writers. This connection to the land runs deep - across onerous lines of class, gender, and race - and spans generations of authors birthed in the Magnolia State. It’s difficult to read Faulkner, Welty, Wright, and Ward and not come away with the very particular sense of place that the state and the greater American South represent in their work. In A Place Like Mississippi, W. Ralph Eubanks takes listeners on a visionary tour of the real and imagined landscapes that have inspired generations of authors. Eubanks is a native Mississippian and he knows its writers and its complicated history well. In A Place Like Mississippi, Eubanks reveals how a little state that rests alongside the banks of a great and mighty river has made so many significant contributions to American letters, carrying an outsized role in the national imagination. The answer lies in a landscape that pairs ordinariness with beauty, magic with madness, and mystery with magnificence.
©2021 W. Ralph Eubanks (P)2021 Workman Publishing