The Origin of Benson: Columbus to Washington Heights

By Vernon Snell
Listen with Sir Michael Caine™ and 1,000+ voices
Length1h 27m

About this audiobook

The Origin of Benson: Columbus to Washington Heights is a Poetic Cinema testimony tracing a provocative line through history, economics, culture, survival, substance, behavior, and identity. Beginning with European arrival in the Caribbean, Vernon Snell explores how land became property, people became labor, and crops such as sugar became engines of commerce and control. The journey moves through plantations, slavery, displacement, resistance, consumption, addiction, and generational trauma before arriving in Washington Heights—and Benson himself. Told through cinematic scenes and the distinct voices of Benson, Vernon, and the Curator, the book asks readers to look beyond individual choices and examine the systems that existed before any of us entered them. Nothing starts where you think it does. Sometimes understanding who you became means traveling back to where the system began.

Audiobook details

GenreHistory, Psychology
Length1 hr 27 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateAug 25, 2020
LanguageEnglish

Table of contents

1Copyright
2Dedication
3Before You Enter
4Scene 1 — The Arrival
5Scene 2 — The Sweet Beginning
Show all chapters
6Scene 3 — The Plantation Machine
7Scene 4 — The Blueprint of Control
8Scene 5 — The Illusion of Freedom
9Scene 6 — The Invisible Chains
10Scene 7 — From Islands to Blocks
11Scene 8 — The Sweet Loop
12Scene 9 — The Body as Land
13Scene 10 — The Demand for Labor
14Scene 11 — The Crossing
15Scene 12 — The Breaking of Bloodlines
16Scene 13 — The Making of Property
17Scene 14 — The Resistance
18Scene 15 — The Memory That Refused to Die
19Scene 16 — The New Culture
20Scene 17 — The Trauma That Stayed
21Scene 18 — The Expansion of the System
22The Islands That Fed the World
23The Price Paid
24The Greed That Drove It
25The Unwarned Consumer
26The Sweet Deception
27The Chemical Effect
28Scene 19 — The Origin of Benson
29After the Last Page
30The Night After Understanding
31The Author’s Closing
32Final Line
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