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Some Sing, Some Cry cover art

Some Sing, Some Cry

By: Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza
Narrated by: Robin Miles
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Summary

Audible presents the multigenerational epic Some Sing, Some Cry. Created by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza, this audiobook takes listeners on a journey through Reconstruction, two world wars, the Harlem renaissance, and Vietnam to modern day America.

Some Sing, Some Cry begins at the threshold of one family’s freedom. We meet Betty Mayfield, newly emancipated from Sweet Tamarind, a lush and haunted rice plantation off the Carolina coast. Betty and her feisty teenage granddaughter Eudora are leaving for the mainland, bringing with them the ghosts, scars, and songs they have carried for so long as they meet unknown challenges ahead. From there, we meet seven generations of Mayfield men and women, and hear the songs that provide the score to their lives. Acclaimed narrator Robin Miles goes beyond the prose to transform song lyrics sprinkled throughout the book into beautiful music, making this a uniquely rich literary and audio experience.

Playwright, poet, and novelist Ntozake Shange’s Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be a star-studded major motion picture this fall, directed by Tyler Perry.

Ifa Bayeza is an Edgar Award-winning playwright, producer, and conceptual theater artist.

Yale Drama School-trained Robin Miles has appeared on stage and TV and narrated over 100 audiobooks.

Free with this audiobook: an exclusive interview with the authors.

©2010 Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“If there are shoulders modern African-American women's literature stands upon they belong to Ntozake Shange who revolutionized theater and literature with her iconic work for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf in the 1970's. Any of us writing today are inheritors of her genius. Some Sing, Some Cry will show her to be as potent and irrepressible a force as she was thirty years ago.” (Sapphire, author of Push)

“In this epic saga, the sister-sister author combination of Bayeza and Shange offers a richly detailed and boldly colored account of one family’s experience in slavery and its legacies for the generations that followed. Some Sing, Some Cry is both moving and arresting.” (Annette Gordon-Reed, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family)

“This is a complex poetic treatise on race, culture, love, and family, the use of regional vernacular, dialect, and pure song, resulting in a provocative fictional history.” (Publishers Weekly)

"Vibrant... Some Sing, Some Cry is Shange and Bayeza at their poetic best." (Essence)

"Keeps the reader turning page after page…. This story of lifesaving music and heartbroken maternity is engaging from start to finish. The Mayfield women are hilarious and sexy, gorgeous and strong." (New York Times Book Review)

What listeners say about Some Sing, Some Cry

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Some Sing Some Cry

This is amazing. Colour and class in the post slavery American South. Well developed plot and characters. Well worth listening to!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Good book,

This book was quite clever in the way in authors incorpoated the family's musical talent within the story line. I also liked the way the events of the family crossed over the time lines from slavery to the modern day.

The narration was good, as was the singing!, I watched the film of 'For Coloured Girls', the author's other book and it was very good, poetic almost, this is much the same. Very beautifully worded and poetic but still just an ordinary book, not overly arty (which i was at first concerned about).

There were a couple of surprising moments when the narrator made two errors which somehow made it to the final edit but that was funny more than annoying.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

brilliantly black

this powerful story is an amazing heartfelt beautiful journey into black history and soul literally and metaphorically

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