#Joniece abbott-Pratt

[justbrainrot]

I have been listening to the BM audiobook nonstop for the past week and a half (shoutout to the public library!!) and Joniece Abbott-Pratt just slays these books y’all. Legendborn is good but her performance in Bloodmarked is somehow even better. I loved her voice for Nick in Legendborn and her Sel in Bloodmarked is absurdly perfect. She nails his affect and subtext just as thoroughly as she found Nick’s smooth blend of chivalry and justice in book one. Her Alice is my fav of the supporting voices; she sounds so fun and I want her to be my bestie. Plus obviously her Bree is growing and has changed so much since the beginning, just like the character itself. Highly recommended especially if you need to fill your brain with fictional shenanigans to make your boring life worth living like I do!

Anyway just wanted to pop in and gush about how happy I am to have really good audiobook performances for these books because having a comfort read always available no matter the format is so important for my functioning and mental health. It’s easy to always have an ebook on my phone or a physical book at home, but the only other comfort reads of mine that have great audio versions I’ve found are the second and third TDA books and a. they are kinda depressing for long stretches lol and b. it bothers me that the first one has a different narrator and she’s just not as good as James Marsters (but who is, really?) Anyhoodle that’s off topic byeeeeee.

[reviewsthatburn]

Clement (Clem) and Cristina (Cris) are twins, Gen(erational) magic users living in New Orleans. Cris has recently pulled away from her magic because she thinks a spell she performed is responsible for their father's death. It's a secret so terrible that she hasn't shared it with anyone, leaving Clem adrift and frustrated, not understanding why his sister refuses to do this thing she's so good at and used to love. Their family has been displaced from their previous position in the Gen Magic Council, of which their grandmother was the queen before she was killed and blamed for someone else's death. BLOOD DEBTS deals with trauma from racism, cultural appropriation, and self-interested cruelty, and how connection and family ties can help the Trudeau family withstand everything hurled against them.

Clem and Cris are the two main narrators, but occasional sections follow other perspectives, such as the girl who used to be Cris's best friend. Echoing what played out between their grandmothers decades ago, she turned cruel and seems to have made it her mission to wreck Cris's life. Clem has his own problems, frustrated with how his sister has pulled away since their father died, he's trying to feel connected with her seemingly revolving cast of brief links. He doesn't understand Cris dating a white boy and she doesn't understand him dating so many boys. I love the way their dynamic is written, because it really feels like teenage siblings who want to connect to each other but don't have the experience to understand the way that their mutual teasing is alternately a barrier as much as it's a connection. They're also stressed out by their mother's illness, but almost as soon as the story begins they discover it was unnaturally caused and the only way to protect their family is to get all of their aunts to come home and help cast a protection. There's a wonderful mix of showing and specifically processing the way the ways that the discord and difficulty communicating between their mother and her sisters has then made it harder for Clem and Cris to navigate their relationship with each other.

Full Review at link

[booknutmusings]

Audiobook: Blood Debts

by Terry J Benton-WalkerRead by Bahni Turpin, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Torian Brackett & Zeno RobinsonSupport your local independent bookstore: buy it there!Or Listen at Libro.fmRelease date: April 4, 2023Content: There is a lot of violence, a lot of swearing, including many f-bombs, and an on-screen sex scene. It will be in the Teen (grades 9+) of the bookstore. The basic plot? Clem and Chris…

[ficnoire2]

The audiobooks definitely hit different! The tone, the way Joniece Abbott-Pratt gives voice to the favs is masterful!

Tracy Deonn posted yesterday on Instagram something about doing stuff in 3s. I know folks have already pointed it out and she's probably said it before, but it was my first time seeing her say it and it was just nice hearing from the horse's mouth lol. I'm guessing then that LB Cycle will be 3 books instead of four or more. That 3rd book is going to be insane, I cannot wait!

She also said she's listening to the Legendborn audiobook again, for reasons. I wonder why. What's available on audiobook that isn't available in writing? Like, I will look for clues anywhere at this point people!

[blackinperiodfilms]

Petronia Paley as La Veuve / Marie Josephine, Tiffany Rachelle Stewart as Agnès, Lizan Mitchell as Beartrice, Flor De Liz Perez as Maude Lynn, Joniece Abbott-Pratt as Odette, and Harriett D. Foy as Makeda in The House That Will Not Stand.

SYNOPSIS: Set in 1836 New Orleans where free women of color are permitted to enter into common-law marriages with wealthy white men. The home and life that Beartrice has built for herself and three daughters, on a foundation of money, freedom and secrets, threatens to collapse after her husband mysteriously dies.

Directed by Lileana Blain Cruz

Playwright: Marcus Gardley

[larryland]

REVIEW: "Where Storms Are Born" at Williamstown

REVIEW: “Where Storms Are Born” at Williamstown

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

Going to finish this duology. The audiobooks reader is the same too. 

[readintheclouds]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book is amazing, heart wrenching, thrilling and completely captivating. It’s a YA contemporary that handles a lot of important themes in relation to today’s society, in a way that highlights how young women are treated in the justice system in response to sexual assault. I loved everything about this book, especially the ending which was an interesting concept. I listened to the audiobook for this which was narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, and I recommend this for anyone interested.

“What a woman wears, or doesn’t wear, doesn’t give anyone the right to touch them.”

Content warnings: emotional abuse, child abuse, physical/sexual assault, addiction, mental illness.

[missbookiverse]

The Other Black Girl von Zakiya Dalila Harris

Harris’ Debütroman lässt sich am besten in die folgenden drei Aspekte unterteilen:

Office Novel Im Hauptteil der Handlung geht es um Nella, die seit ein paar Jahren bei dem großen Verlag Wagner Books in New York City tätig ist. Sie ist dabei, sich im Lektorat langsam nach oben zu arbeiten, was viele Überstunden und schlechte Bezahlung bedeutet. Genau da wird subtil an der Arbeitswelt, vor allem im Literaturbetrieb, Kritik geübt: an den unnatürlich hohen Ansprüchen und der viel zu langen “Probezeit” bis du es in eine annehmbaren (An)Stellung geschafft hast. Trotz des Stresses, der sich allein durch Nellas nicht enden wollende To Do Liste überträgt, wird mit viel Liebe zum Detail der Alltag im Verlag geschildert: Manuskripte lesen, Texte lektorieren, Autor:innengespräche und Meetings, um Cover zu diskutieren. In dieser Welt müssen sich Lesende schon ein bisschen wohlfühlen, um Nellas endlose Arbeitstage auch mit Freude zu verfolgen.

The only black girl Bisher unerwähnt blieb, dass Nella zu Beginn die einzige Schwarze Frau im Büro ist. Sie beschreibt Mikroaggressionen und den andauernden Kampf mit sich selbst: Soll sie diesmal etwas sagen oder liebe stumm den Bürofrieden bewahren? Bewertet sie die Situation über oder war das gerade Rassismus? Auf die Spitze wird das ganze getrieben als Nella die Darstellung eines Schwarzen Charakters im neuen Manuskript eines weißen Starautors kritisiert und dabei von ihren Vorgesetzten nur halbherzige Unterstützung erhält. Ihre Wut ist (hoffentlich) ansteckend für Lesende. Zum Glück bekommt Nella bald Unterstützung in Form einer weiteren Schwarzen Kollegin. Endlich ist sie nicht mehr die Einzige und kann sich mit Hazel über die Unwissenheit des weißen Büros austauschen und dagegen stark machen, mit jemandem Schwarze Referenzen und Haarstylingtipps austauschen ohne verwirrte Blicke zu ernten. Aber ist Hazel wirklich die Mitstreiterin, die sie vorgibt zu sein?

Mystery Thriller Horror? Von Anfang an macht etwas an Nellas neuer Kollegin Hazel misstrauisch. Im einen Moment verbündet sie sich mit Nella, im nächsten über(hinter?)geht sie sie und hat bei der darauf folgenden Konfrontation wieder eine überzeugende Erklärung parat. Dazu kommt, dass Nella plötzlich anonyme Drohbriefe erhält, die sie drängen, ihren Job aufzugeben. Und so schlittert unsere Protagonistin ganz langsam in eine Verwirrung mysteriöser Machenschaften. Perspektivwechsel zu anderen Personen und in die Achtziger verkomplizieren das Mysterium und manchmal ist nicht ganz klar, ob Nella überreagiert oder ob ihre Paranoia gerechtfertigt ist. Erst ganz am Ende wird dieses perfide Spiel bis ans Äußerste getrieben, nimmt so richtig an Fahrt auf und mündet in einem Gänsehaut erregenden Szenario. Allerdings geht alles so schnell, dass bestimmte Aspekte auch an Tiefe vermissen lassen und die Grenze zwischen Metapher und Übernatürlichem hässlich verwischt wird.

Alles in allem ein spannender Genremix, bei dem sich vielleicht nicht alle Lesenden mit allen Aspekten anfreunden können, aber gerade solche, die sich für die ersten beiden interessieren, sollten zugreifen.

2021 erschienen | goodreads | Verlagsseite Gelesen von Aja Naomi King, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Heather Alicia Simms & Bahni Turpin

[kimabutch]

If you're still adding to your 'booket list', can I recommend Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko, read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, read by Lenny Henry? I'm recommending those because those are the two narrators that absolutely blew me away. It's a slightly different metric than the other rec's you've gotten, and Anansi Boys doesn't really fit the categories you had put up on your blog, but I just keep coming back to these books bc of their stellar narrators!

Ahh thank you! And I’m always looking for great narrators!

[twoontheaisle]

“Eclipsed” at The Curran

Eclipsed, currently playing at the beautifully-restored Curran Theatre, is a harrowing, powerful, elemental work of theatrical art that is as disturbing as it is illuminating. If you are seeking to have your bubble of privilege popped (or at least opened up to a reality few in this very stable and very rich part of the world take the time to notice), this is not to be missed. But if you’re looking for theater that will distract you from the cares of the world, fill your heart with good will toward humankind, or plaster a smile across your face, perhaps it’s better you wait for the next revival of The Music Man or The Odd Couple. For the darkness at the heart of Eclipsed is dark indeed.

The action is set in Liberia, a country established as a colony composed of freed slaves searching for a better shot at true freedom and independence than they were likely to find in America. The colonists, however, were not interested in living on an equal footing with the indigenous peoples of the region, establishing an almost caste-driven society, with the literate freed slaves assuming the role of masters over the Africans living in the bush. This inequity was never truly resolved, but after decades of virtual dictatorship and two civil wars, Liberia finally held free and fair elections in 2005.

Eclipsed plays out over the course of several months during the final civil war, in which rebels from Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy defeated the armies of President Charles Taylor, forcing him into exile. (With significant help from the US, the UN and others, including the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement.)

Atrocities often rise in the last phases of a conflict, and so it is here. The play takes place in a bullet-ridden tin roof shack where the (never seen) commander of a group of rebels is housing (using that term loosely here) the girls and young women he’s kidnapped from the regions he’s conquered and is keeping as his wives/sex slaves. As emotionally challenging as it was to witness the action onstage (especially given the powerful performances by this brilliant cast), the play is so cunningly-wrought that to engage with it is to allow yourself to rev your empathy engine and experience the broader themes playwright Danai Gurira is addressing: power (and powerlessness), gender, identity, humanity. These are deep, complex themes, and the genius of Gurira is her ability to address them so expertly through the most elemental of motivations: survival.

As the play begins, Wife #1 and Wife #3 (the women have abandoned their names as a coping mechanism) attempt to hide the newest resident in the house, known only as The Girl, from the CO. This doesn’t last long, and the CO soon has Wife #4. Wife #3? She’s off in the bush with the soldiers, toting a rifle. When she returns to camp, she exhibits a swagger and confident bearing that is almost completely absent in the other Wives. Her AK-47 serves as a phallus to imbue in her a power her society reserves only for men.

Like the war raging outside the camp, the women’s lives could be described like those of soldiers: suffering long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. One moment the Wives are pounding cassava root or deciphering a coverless hardbound biography of Bill Clinton, and in the next a light at stage left comes on and they jump to their feet, form a line and wait at attention.  When the chosen Wife acknowledges her selection by pointing a shy index finger at herself, you can sense the dehumanizing horror of being seen as little more than a piece of meat. When the Wives return from their rapes, the first thing they do – in a heartbreakingly casual way – is dip a cloth into a basin and wipe their vulvas clean.

The cast – Stacy Sargeant (Wife #1), Adeola Role (Wife #2), Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Wife #3), Ayesha Jordan (The Girl) and Akosua Busia (Rita, a peace worker who visits the camp occasionally) – is wonderful – beautifully balanced, completely in tune with their scene partners, expressing power even in characters who often feel (or appear) powerless. The set is suitably restrained – just a plaster hut on a turntable, with the trunks of branchless trees arranged in thin groves at stage left and right. The sound design is stellar – the far off gunfire sounds different than the nearby gunfire which sounds different than the gunfire in the camp, and when a baby cries, the sound actually comes from the prop baby.

It’s not all bleak.  There’s still quite a bit of humor in Eclipsed - that the cast handle deftly and which elicited good laughs from the audience.  I missed several of these – in part because of a lack of volume from the stage/sound system, and in part because of the Liberian pidgin of the dialogue, which I sometimes couldn’t quite decode.

What I’m trying to say here is that I loved the play, but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. At least on an emotional level. I’m glad I saw it, I think it’s important. It addresses – in a surprisingly reserved, even gentle manner – a horror most people would prefer not to contemplate. Even if your empathy engine is only barely sputtering along, you’re still going to feel sad for a significant portion of the evening. And touched. And hopeful. And sad again.

So take my recommendation: you won’t like it. Go anyway.

Eclipsed is in a brief run, open only through March 19 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary Street, San Francisco. Performances are Thursdays at 7:00pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm, with matinees at 2:00pm Saturday and Sunday. Tickets range from $29-$135, and can be purchased by visiting sfcurran.com, calling 415-358-1220, or visiting the box office between 10:00am and 6:00pm Monday-Friday.

(Photo by Little Fang)

[nightingveilxo]

'The House That Will Not Stand’: Film In Development On Free Black Women Who Became Millionaires, Fought Racial Oppression In 1800s

Playwright Marcus Gardley's award-winning historical play The House That Will Not Stand is on its way to becoming a film.

MWM Studios is the company behind the adaptation of the play to film, according to Deadline, and Gardley, who has also written for shows like Showtime's hit The Chi, will write the script. The plot is something that hasn't been explored a lot in Hollywood — free Black women living in 1800s New Orleans.

As the article states, The House That Will Not Stand, a historical dramedy, is vaguely inspired by The House of Bernarda Alba by Carcia Lorca and is set in Faubourg Treme in 1813. The main characters are free Black Creole women who fought against racism and became millionaires through plaçage, or the practice of common-law marriages between white men and Black women, biracial women of color, or Native American women). The play, which premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop this year, was directed by Liliana Blain-Cruz and starred Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Juliana Canfield, Harriet D. Foy, Lynda Gravátt, Nedra McClyde, Marie Thomas and Michelle Wilson.

People have been clamoring for a different type of story about Blackness in America, something made even more apparent with the amount of backlash Green Book has gotten from viewers, critics and from the family of Mahershala Ali's character, Dr. Don Shirley. A lot of films have been about Blackness from a white perspective, and while The House That Will Not Stand is far from the movie theater right now, the plot alone promises something fresher and more interesting than the usual depth films about race often go to--the 1960s and 1970s, two decades of racial turmoil that are the freshest in the mainstream memory.

[bookclub4m]

20 Fiction Audiobooks written & read by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors and Narrators

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen, narrated by Catherine Ho

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, narrated by Isabella Star LaBlanc

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, narrated by the author

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson, narrated by Peter Jay Fernandez

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe, Yohanca Delgado, Eve L. Ewing, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, Sheree Renée Thomas; narrated by Janelle Monae and Bahni Turpin

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, narrated by Nancy Wu

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, narrated by Robin Miles

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi, narrated by Adepero Oduye

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka, narrated by Traci Kato-Kiriyama

The Beadworkers by Beth Piatote narrated by the author, Christian Nagler, Fantasia Painter, Drew Woodson, Phillip Cash Cash and Keevin Hesuse

Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma, narrated by Soneela Nankani, Sunil Malhotra and Vikas Adam

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, narrated by Cherise Boothe

Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto, narrated by Risa Mei

The Strangers by Katherena Vermette, narrated by Michaela Washburn

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, narrated by the author

Zone One by Colson Whitehead, narrated by Beresford Bennett

The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson, narrated by Kyla Garcia

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, narrated by Joel de la Fuente

[booknutmusings]

Audiobook: Whiteout

by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, Nicola YoonRead by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Dion Graham, Imani Parks, Jordan Cobb, Shayna Small, A.J Beckles & Bahni TurpinSupport your local independent bookstore: buy it there!Or listen at Libro.fmOthers in the “series” BlackoutContent: There is some mild swearing and one almost on-screen sex scene. It’s in the YA…

[rebeccaheyman]

Thank goodness I grew up in the 90s

aBook Review: The Rumor Game by Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra (Disney Audiobooks 3/1/22)

The Rumor Game is a multi-POV contemporary YA about the lengths some people will go to for popularity (or notoriety), and what happens when bad actors take control of the narrative -- perfect for fans of Karen M McManus and Tiny Pretty Things (a previous Clayton & Charaipotra's collaboration). The story follows Bryn, a fallen star trying to stage a social recovery after her life fell to pieces over the summer; cheer captain Cora, whose every trend-setting step dictates the power structure at posh Foxham Prep; and Georgie, a one-time nerd learning to navigate the world in a new, slim body that's garnering more attention -- good and bad -- than she's ever received before.

Three-sentence summary: When rumors erupt around the dominant social players at Foxham Prep, social media spins the narrative out of control fast. Bryn sees an opportunity to regain what was lost, while Cora strives to hang on to the status quo. Meanwhile, Georgie is jettisoned into a cutthroat culture she's profoundly unprepared to navigate -- and the consequences, both for her and Foxham at large, are devastating.

Narrators Joniece Abbott Pratt, Taylor Meskimen, Deepa Samuel & Julie Nathanson do a phenomenal job voicing each of the main characters, and the production on the audiobook -- complete with the pings and alerts that signal breaking social media updates -- made for a unique and enjoyable listening experience. Bryn, Cora, and Georgie's arcs show strength, vulnerability, volatility, passion, ambition, and doubt, and their stories force consideration of what it means to grow up in the age of social media, camera phones, and constant online chatter.

While I suspect this is an important read for the high school set, I would have liked to see a more compelling central mystery winding through the narrative. The Act III reveal will be obvious to canny readers/listeners as early as Act I, which took some of the fun out of the experience for me. Ultimately, I cared about these young women's stories, and appreciated the diverse (though able-bodied) cast. It's a solid 3.5-star story for me, rounded up to 4 for an exquisite aBook performance.

Thanks to NetGalley and Disney Hyperion for the advance copy.

[blackinperiodfilms]

Flor De Liz Perez (Maude Lynn), Lizan Mitchell (Beartrice), Tiffany Rachelle Stewart (Agnès), and Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Odette) in Marcus Gardley’s The House that will not Stand.

SYNOPSIS: Set in 1836 New Orleans where free women of color are permitted to enter into common-law marriages with wealthy white men. The home and life that Beartrice has built for herself and three daughters, on a foundation of money, freedom and secrets, threatens to collapse after her husband mysteriously dies.

Directed by Lileana Blain Cruz

Playwright: Marcus Gardley