So thought provoking, emotionally intelligent, heartbreaking, wise, entertaining.... It is alive in itself. Narrator was made to do this story! Beautiful experience all the way around.

The personal, although fictional, history is so well authored. Mr. Coates transports you to his era. However; the book is long winded, repetitive. I got lost in the sea of characters. Also, I’m not a lover of the mystical part, especially referring to actual people in history.

When I didn\'t get it the first time, the subtle time, the unfamiliar time, the time I recall but did not understand at the time time, no worry, he tells it again and again until it all comes rolling into the very characteristics and inhumane experiences of enslavement that we see upon us today... Concentration camps. Children being ripped from their parents. The ongoing rape, extraction and abandonment of the land we get rich from and move on when its used up. The condoned rape of women. Sterilization of women without their consent, who are imprisoned for seeking asylum from violence. The kind of morals and values required for the integration of lives and all the stories that must be remembered in order to ?conduct? and not be stuck in an endless loop of despair, imposed by and evolving-with-the-times kind of force, relentlessly applied to continue the ongoing death of everything \'else\' - even if unwittingly. The need to recognize deep freedom that is inclusive of a woman\'s freedom to do and have her body on her own terms. Black women\'s bodies freedom. Black female slave\'s freedom who no one owns any part of. And never did. This is a literary model of grown man integrity from the perspective of a growing man, written by and narrated by grown men; of female leadership, of white ally ship and its fallibility yet integral necessity for the reader to be guided by in this new era of hearts and minds so narrowly twisted into an ideal based in slavery yet so far removed from they can forget and deny there are any remnants of it left. The very definition of complacent, proclaiming some myth of \'worked and fought hard for the freedoms\' they are therefore entitled to. But those battles were the force put onto other people\'s lives and the cruel work of assimilating - from a pure child - to a murderous culture of violence and force and \'winning\', in ongoing battles where the heart begins to fade away and shrivel and all memory is lost. All connectivity to anything...is lost. Thus the need to conduct. TC makes very clear why we all must remember, through the pain and the shame. He conjures a spiritual ecstasy like non other I have experienced in literature, of the parallels of then and today by diving so deeply into your heart and conjuring a different rhythm therein. Like music, but even more. It\'s Matrix, slave narrative, and historical document so well researched and brought home into a kind of Afrofuturism.

I have just retired as a History high school teacher. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There are so many ways that students can learn from this book. A few to mention symbolisms especially about the water and about different characters. Looking at a story from a fifferent perspective and allowing them to research and allow them to dare wtite this story differently. Relationships with your family and what would you do if you lost your love ones at a young age. Your first love and how it can and does affect you for the rest of your life. How are we enslaved today? I would have them compare this book with stories and books from the Holocaust. So much more. Great book. Pat Mal

absolutely enjoyed this book. the reader made it very interesting too.

Powerful, challenging, engaging, heartbreaking, thought provoking… I could continue but don’t need to as the bottom line is this a definite must read.

I’ll try again, but tried to listen for 10 minutes but the narrator was too fast, no inflection or pause for punctuation. Shouldn’t be fast and furious. Made me anxious.

Wonderful book. The narrator was excellent.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes as if he was actually a slave and living among those people. I was captured in the antagonist plot from the start of the book. I was waiting behind a tree or next to the river just waiting to see where he goes or what he has planned. There wasn't a dull moment. Wow-what a mind what an imagination. Thank you for bringing slavery to the forefront. Thank you for all the characters, just wonderful. I just wanted to keep listening.

A story about how to escape the thoughts, struggles, chains ...etc that hold us as back from achieving our God given goals!!