An Amerikan Family
The Shakurs and the Nation They Created
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Narrated by:
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Adam Lazarre-White
About this listen
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' PICK
An NPR Best Book of the Year • Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
"Magnificent…. A uniquely intimate history of Black liberation." – Los Angeles Times
The long overdue story of the Shakurs, persistent fighters in the U.S. struggle for racial justice, and one of the most prominent, influential and fiercely creative families in recent history
For over fifty years, the Shakurs have inspired generations of activists, scholars, and music fans. Many people are only familiar with Assata Shakur, the popular author and thinker, living for three decades in Cuban exile; or the late rapper Tupac. But the branches of the Shakur family tree extend widely, and the roots reach into the most furtive and hidden depths of the underground. Whether founding one of the most notorious Black Panther chapters in the country, spearheading community-based healthcare, or engaging in armed struggle with systemic oppression, the Shakurs were at the forefront.
They have been celebrated, glorified, and mythologized. They have been hailed as heroes, liberators, and freedom fighters. They have been condemned, pursued, imprisoned, exiled, and killed. But the true and complete story of the Shakur family—one of the most famous names in contemporary Black American history—has never been told.
An Amerikan Family is a history of the fight for Black liberation in the United States, as experienced and shaped by the Shakurs. It is a story of hope and betrayal, addiction and murder, persecution and revolution. Drawing from hundreds of hours of personal interviews, historical archives, court records, transcripts, and other rare documents, An Amerikan Family tells the complete and often devastating story of Black America’s long struggle for racial justice and the nation’s covert and repressive tactics to defeat that struggle. It is the story of a small but determined community, taking extreme, unconventional, and often perilous measures in the quest for freedom.
In short, the story of the Shakurs is the story of America.
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- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of The Wire, the “utterly absorbing” (The New York Times) story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America’s bustling cities - rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality - from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin.
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Forty Years Ago or Yesterday?
- By Anka on 07-20-20
By: Nicholas Griffin
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Black Detroit
- A People's History of Self-Determination
- By: Herb Boyd
- Narrated by: James Shippy
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Baldwin's Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit - a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city's past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation's fabric.
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Selective Recall
- By Rick on 07-19-17
By: Herb Boyd
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Paddy Whacked
- The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paddy Whacked, best-selling author and organized crime expert T. J. English brings to life nearly two centuries of Irish American gangsterism, which spawned such unforgettable characters as Mike "King Mike" McDonald, Chicago's subterranean godfather; Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner during Prohibition; Mickey Featherstone, troubled Vietnam vet turned Westies gang leader; and James "Whitey" Bulger, the ruthless and seemingly untouchable Southie legend.
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First Half - 4 Stars - Second Half - 2 Stars
- By Lulu on 08-29-16
By: T. J. English
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Black Against Empire
- The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party
- By: Joshua Bloom, Waldo E. Martin Jr.
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the US, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the US government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism.
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the explanation of rise and fall Black Panther
- By Antwine Hurst on 03-24-17
By: Joshua Bloom, and others
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Days of Rage
- America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. The FBI’s response to the leftist revolutionary counterculture has not been treated kindly by history, and in hindsight many of its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual, if not criminal in themselves.
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Amazing treatment of tough history
- By Steven on 05-13-15
By: Bryan Burrough
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The Lynching
- The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan
- By: Laurence Leamer
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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On a Friday night in March 1981, Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile in their car, hunting for a black man. The young men were members of Klavern 900 of the United Klans of America. They were seeking to retaliate after a largely black jury could not reach a verdict in a trial involving a black man accused of the murder of a white man. The two Klansmen found 19-year-old Michael Donald walking home alone.
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Very Readable
- By Jean on 06-10-16
By: Laurence Leamer
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Ida B. the Queen
- By: Michelle Duster
- Narrated by: Michelle Duster
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Ida B. Wells committed herself to the needs of those who did not have power. In the eyes of the FBI, this made her a “dangerous negro agitator”. In the annals of history, it makes her an icon. Ida B. the Queen tells the awe-inspiring story of a pioneering woman who was often overlooked and underestimated - a woman who refused to exit a train car meant for White passengers; a woman brought to light the horrors of lynching in America; a woman who cofounded the NAACP.
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I was expecting something different
- By L on 02-01-21
By: Michelle Duster
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By Hands Now Known
- Jim Crow's Legal Executioners
- By: Margaret A. Burnham
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Margaret A. Burnham challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in harrowing cases between 1920 and 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system of the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the line from slavery to the legal structures of this period—and through to today.
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Heartbreaking
- By sharon on 11-24-22
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State of War
- MS-13 and El Salvador's World of Violence
- By: William Wheeler
- Narrated by: William Wheeler
- Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in Los Angeles, the gang MS-13 was founded in the 1980s by Salvadoran refugees who had been hardened in a civil war stoked by American foreign policy. Foreign correspondent William Wheeler tracks MS-13 from LA, where he meets the founders of the gang, to El Salvador, where three generations of Salvadorans have been drawn into an escalating cycle of conflict. State of War tells the tragic story of a brutal civil war that has never ended.
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Great insight!
- By jose flores on 05-19-23
By: William Wheeler
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Tulsa 1921
- Reporting a Massacre
- By: Randy Krehbiel
- Narrated by: Kevin Meyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1921, Tulsa’s Greenwood District - known then as the nation’s “Black Wall Street” - was one of the most prosperous African American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, a white mob, inflamed by rumors that a young black man had attempted to rape a white teenage girl, invaded Greenwood. By the end of the following day, thousands of homes and businesses lay in ashes, and perhaps, as many as 300 people were dead.
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Exceptional and
- By Heath on 03-07-20
By: Randy Krehbiel
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Witness to the Revolution
- Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul
- By: Clara Bingham
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 18 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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As the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the nation witnessed 9,000 protests and 84 acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching 50,000, and the ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American society.
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great perspective on an era
- By james on 04-02-18
By: Clara Bingham
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Black Birds in the Sky
- The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
- By: Brandy Colbert
- Narrated by: Brandy Colbert, Kristyl Dawn Tift
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a White mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District - a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they'd razed 35 square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in US history. But how did it come to pass?
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Incredible story and sooo well written
- By Deby on 02-17-22
By: Brandy Colbert
What listeners say about An Amerikan Family
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Alday
- 12-27-23
Drama, only in Amerika
this tells the story of the Black Liberation movement, it's in and out and intricacy. the Black Liberation movement highly influential in shaping our culture today. at the center of it is the Shakur family, who over many generations have been at the Forefront of the search for making black people's lives better. I highly recommend this book
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- James M
- 07-27-23
Phenomenal book and excellent performance
I’ve always wanted to learn about the Shakur Family. This book is amazing. So much history and so many parallels. The book takes you on an historical emotional roller coaster. Great production.
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