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Black Shack Alley Audiobook, by Joseph Zobel Play Audiobook Sample

Black Shack Alley Audiobook

Black Shack Alley Audiobook, by Joseph Zobel Play Audiobook Sample
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Read By: Ron Butler Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc. Listen Time: at 1.0x Speed 6.33 hours at 1.5x Speed 4.75 hours at 2.0x Speed Release Date: May 2020 Format: Unabridged Audiobook ISBN: 9781980060871

Quick Stats About this Audiobook

Total Audiobook Chapters:

14

Longest Chapter Length:

59:41 minutes

Shortest Chapter Length:

17 seconds

Average Chapter Length:

41:16 minutes

Audiobooks by this Author:

1

Publisher Description

The semiautobiographical Caribbean novel that explores shifting race relations in early twentieth-century colonial Martinique, with a foreword by Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau

A Penguin Classic

Following in the tradition of Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Joseph Zobel’s semiautobiographical 1950 novel Black Shack Alley chronicles the coming-of-age of José, a young boy grappling with issues of power and identity in colonial Martinique. As José transitions from childhood to young adulthood and from rural plantations to urban Fort-de-France on a quest for upward mobility, he bears witness to and struggles against the various manifestations of white supremacy, both subtle and overt, that will alter the course of his life. His ally in this struggle is his grandmother, M’man Tine, who fights her own weariness to release at least one child from the plantation village, a dirt street lined with the shacks of sugarcane workers.

Zobel’s masterpiece, the basis for the award-winning film Sugar Cane Alley directed by Euzhan Palcy, is a powerful testament to twentieth-century life in Martinique, with a foreword by award-winning Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau.

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“This classic of West Indian literature from Zobel is the heady semiautobiographical account of José…Zobel relays José’s pain and frustration in measured, matter-of-fact prose. This perfectly captures the education of an outsider in the shadow of colonization.”

— Publishers Weekly

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About Joseph Zobel

Joseph Zobel (1915–2006), noted poet, author, and gifted sculptor, was born in Petit-Bourg, Martinique. He has published many collections of stories and a volume of verse, Incantation pour un retour au pays natal. His novel La fête à Paris is the continuation of La rue cases-nègres (translated as Black Shack Alley).

About Ron Butler

Ron Butler is a Los Angeles–based actor, Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator, and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits. Most kids will recognize him from the three seasons he spent on Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP. He works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks. He is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company and an Independent Filmmaker Project Award winner for his work in the HBO film Everyday People.