Happy Thursday!

Below are the week 8 audiobook selections. This week’s audiobooks look very interesting to me, specifically the selection by W.E.B. DuBios, as I took a Sociology class last fall and found him fascinating.

Free from SYNC Summer Reading program:

By Christina Diaz Gonzalez

Read by Kyla Garcia

The Red Umbrella is a moving tale of a 14-year-old girl’s journey from Cuba to America as part of Operation Pedro Pan—an organized exodus of more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, whose parents sent them away to escape Fidel Castro’s revolution.

In 1961, two years after the Communist revolution, Lucía Álvarez still leads a carefree life, dreaming of parties and her first crush. But when the soldiers come to her sleepy Cuban town, everything begins to change. Freedoms are stripped away. Neighbors disappear. And soon, Lucía’s parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her little brother to the United States—on their own.

Suddenly plunked down in Nebraska with well-meaning strangers, Lucía struggles to adapt to a new country, a new language, a new way of life. But what of her old life? Will she ever see her home or her parents again? And if she does, will she still be the same girl?

The Red Umbrella is a touching story of country, culture, family, and the true meaning of home.

By W.E.B. Du Bois

Read by Rodney Gardiner

A cornerstone of African-American literary history, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work by W. E. B. Du Bois. Originally published in 1903, it contains many essays on race and equality, but is also a piece of seminal history as laying the groundwork for the field of sociology. Some of the essays in the novel were even previously published by the Atlantic Monthly magazine. When writing, Du Bois drew from his personal experiences as an African-American in America to highlight the issues of prejudice that were still going on into the 20th century.