
Mainline Mama
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Bahni Turpin
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By:
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Keeonna Harris
About this listen
A powerful exploration of self-resilience, family, and community from activist and prison abolitionist Keeonna Harris.
Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was “grown.” Within a year she was pregnant and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a “mainline mama,” a parent facing the task of raising a child—while still growing up herself—with an incarcerated partner.
In this triumphant memoir, Keeonna recalls her challenging journey as a mainline mama, from learning to overcome the exhausting difficulties of navigating the carceral system in the United States to transforming herself into an advocate for women like her—the predominantly Black and Brown women left behind to pick up the pieces of their families and fractured lives.
Keeonna speaks frankly about the forces that threatened to defeat her, how she learned to re - build her broken relationship with a mother who had lost trust in her, and how time eased the shame, guilt, and stigma of being a young Black teen mom with a partner behind bars. She offers inspiration and solace, showing how to create moments of beauty, humanity, and love—such as picking the perfect wedding dress for a ceremony in a state prison visiting room—in a place de - signed to break spirits.
Mainline Mama is about creating self-love and community—crucial acts of radical resistance against a prison industrial complex designed to dehumanize and to separate and shut away incarcerated individuals and their loved ones from the world.
©2025 Keeonna Harris (P)2025 HarperCollins PublishersRelated to this topic
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Gather Me
- A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me
- By: Glory Edim
- Narrated by: Glory Edim
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back. Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library.
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This book was EVERYTHING! 🖤✨️
- By Ms. Reece on 02-10-25
By: Glory Edim
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MOVE: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy
- By: Curtis Bryant, Kevin Arbouet
- Narrated by: Tariq Trotter
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Original Recording
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This searing audio documentary brings listeners deep inside the unforgettable story of MOVE, gaining unprecedented access to surviving MOVE members, elected officials from the era, eyewitnesses, and historians to create an indelible portrait of an American tragedy.
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Balanced Examination of History
- By James Peacock on 08-14-24
By: Curtis Bryant, and others
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Beauty in the Blood
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Carter
- Narrated by: Marie-Francoise Theodore
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Sarah Toomey is a successful young black lawyer, lovely but straitlaced–and afraid that she is losing her mind. Since the death of her mother, a force she can neither understand nor control is manipulating her memory and driving her to unexplained acts of violence and destruction. At the same time, Sarah is swept up in a highly charged relationship with a work colleague that portends a danger of its own. As she moves through her privileged life in New York, Sarah comes to learn how her past—her haunted history—is intertwined with America’s.
By: Charlotte Carter
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People of Means
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Johnson
- Narrated by: Nancy Johnson, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope, carrying a suitcase and the voice of her father telling her she’s part of a family legacy of greatness. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and she’s thrust into a movement for social change. Freda is reluctant to get involved, torn between a soon-to-be doctor her parents approve of and an audacious young man willing to risk it all in the name of justice.
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Beautifully Told
- By Dr. Judy A. Alston on 02-19-25
By: Nancy Johnson
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Lovers Rock
- Seven Jamaican Love Stories
- By: Alexia Arthurs, Mateo Askaripour, Maisy Card, and others
- Narrated by: Elle Cleviden, Roger Cross, Tamika Katon-Donegal, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Original Recording
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Lovers Rock stars Jamaica: its language, its landscape, its vibe, its humor, its edge and its persistent, dogged beauty. These seven stories imagine strange, quirky, familiar and delicious encounters between people in search of romantic love in the twenty-first century. Featuring characters from of all walks of life, each story is connected by the unique vibe of Jamaican desire.
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I love the concept
- By K. A. on 02-26-25
By: Alexia Arthurs, and others