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True Notebooks (Abridged): A Writers Year at Juvenile Hall Audiobook, by Mark Salzman Play Audiobook Sample

True Notebooks (Abridged): A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall Audiobook

True Notebooks (Abridged): A Writers Year at Juvenile Hall Audiobook, by Mark Salzman Play Audiobook Sample
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Read By: Mark Salzman Publisher: Random House Audio Listen Time: at 1.0x Speed 3.67 hours at 1.5x Speed 2.75 hours at 2.0x Speed Release Date: September 2003 Format: Abridged Audiobook ISBN: 9780739307144

Quick Stats About this Audiobook

Total Audiobook Chapters:

86

Longest Chapter Length:

06:13 minutes

Shortest Chapter Length:

01:13 minutes

Average Chapter Length:

03:47 minutes

Audiobooks by this Author:

5

Other Audiobooks Written by Mark Salzman: > View All...

Publisher Description

When Mark Salzman is invited to visit a writing class at Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for Los Angeles’s most violent teenage offenders, he scrambles for a polite reason to decline. He goes—expecting the worst—and is so astonished by what he finds that he becomes a teacher there himself. True Notebooks is an account of Salzman’s first years teaching at Central. Through it, we come to know his students as he did: in their own words. At times impossible and at times irresistible, they write with devastating clarity about their pasts, their fears, their confusions, their regrets, and their hopes. They write about what led them to crime and to gangs, about love for their mothers and anger toward their (mostly absent) fathers, about guilt for the pain they have caused, and about what it is like to be facing life in prison at the age of seventeen. Most of all, they write about trying to find some reason to believe in themselves—and others—in spite of all that has gone wrong. Surprising, charming, upsetting, enlightening, and ultimately hopeful—driven by the insight and humor of Salzman’s voice and by the intelligence, candor, and strength of his students, whose writing appears throughout the book—True Notebooks is itself a reward of the self-expression Mark Salzman teaches: a revelatory meditation on the process, power, and meaning of writing.

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“Engaging…Salzmancreates a cast of lively, convincing, and hugely sympathetic characters and TrueNotebooks is filled with powerfully moving scenes.”

— O, The Oprah Magazine

Quotes

  • “Fresh, galvanizing, and articulate…A narrative that asks as many questions as it answers. Cogent, thoughtful, and honest.”

    — New York Times
  • “As moving as it is sparse, as revealing as it is concealing, as straightforward as it is complex.”

    — Los Angeles Times Book Review
  • “Extraordinary…Everything about this book seems perfect.”

    — San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Salzman never falls prey to preaching or moralizing about wayward teens; he keeps the focus on the students’ poems, essays, raps, and conversations.”

    — Washington Post

Awards

  • Winner of the 2004 YALSA Alex Award

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About Mark Salzman

Mark Salzman is an award-winning novelist and memoirist. The son of a social worker and a music teacher, he grew up in Connecticut and studied Chinese language and philosophy at Yale. After college he spent two years in China, learning martial arts from some of China’s most renowned teachers, an experience he documented in his bestselling memoir Iron & Silk. His other books include The Laughing Sutra, Lost in Place, The Soloist, and Lying Awake. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, director Jessica Yu, and their two daughters.