Audiobook Sample
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- Title: Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
- Author: Kate Moore
- Narrator: Angela Brazil
- Length: 15:54:27
- Version: Abridged
- Release Date: 02/05/2017
- Publisher: HighBridge Company
- Genre: History, World
- ISBN13: 9.78E+12
As I pressed play on “Radium Girls”, Angela Brazil’s voice transported me back to my graduate school days at Berkeley, where I first encountered the intersection of labor history and women’s narratives. Kate Moore’s meticulously researched account of these luminous martyrs of industry resonates with the same power as the oral histories I collected from textile workers in Shanghai – voices that refuse to be silenced by time or corporate negligence.
What fascinates me most is how Moore reconstructs these women’s lives beyond their victimhood. Through a cultural lens, we see how the radium dial painters embodied both the promise and peril of the Roaring Twenties. Brazil’s narration captures this duality beautifully – her bright, energetic tone when describing the girls’ initial excitement about their ‘glamorous’ work gradually darkens as the tragedy unfolds, mirroring the radium’s own deadly luminescence.
This reminds me of when I taught a seminar on industrial literature, comparing Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” with contemporary Chinese worker poetry. Like Sinclair, Moore makes us feel the physicality of labor – the way Brazil enunciates each brush-licking motion makes your own lips tingle with imagined radioactivity. The audio format intensifies this visceral connection, creating what Walter Ong might call ‘secondary orality’ with remarkable effectiveness.
Brazil’s vocal performance deserves particular praise for its emotional intelligence. She differentiates dozens of characters without resorting to caricature, and her pacing during the courtroom scenes had me holding my breath as if listening to a thriller. The audio medium transforms Moore’s archival research into something profoundly intimate – when describing Grace Fryer’s crumbling jawbone, Brazil’s voice cracks just enough to convey horror while maintaining journalistic restraint.
From my comparative literature perspective, Moore’s work joins the canon of industrial disaster narratives like Bhopal or Triangle Shirtwaist stories, yet stands apart through its focus on the legal precedent these women established. The audiobook format makes their legal battles particularly gripping – I found myself shouting at my car speakers during the corporate evasion scenes, much as I did when first reading Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”.
The production quality merits mention – subtle sound design choices (the faint echo during factory scenes, the clearer acoustics for domestic moments) create an unconscious spatial awareness that enhances comprehension. This thoughtful production reminds me of my Tokyo year discovering how audio textures affect narrative perception.
While the audiobook excels in emotional engagement, I occasionally wished for Brazil to slightly slow her delivery during complex medical explanations. Some statistical passages might benefit from a print reference. Yet these are minor quibbles in an otherwise masterful adaptation that makes this crucial history accessible to commuters and students alike.
For listeners who appreciate “Hidden Figures” or “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, this audiobook offers a similarly revelatory experience. Moore and Brazil have created not just a historical account, but an act of posthumous justice – making these women’s voices literally audible again.
In solidarity with all shining women,
Prof. Emily Chen
