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'Free State of Jones' Audiobook Excerpt

The good folks at Audible were kind enough to pass along a brief snippet of the audiobook for The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War, which is narrated by one of the film's stars, Mahershala Ali. In it, he sets the scene for one of the film's subplots, about a man in 1948 who has been charged with miscegenation despite appearing white. Here's the clip:

(The entire audiobook is available from Audible here.)

This part of the film hasn't really been highlighted in ad campaigns, and you can understand why: Frankly, it's kind of hard to explain in a 30-second spot that Free State of Jones looks at race relations in Mississippi across almost a century of history. As I noted in my review, I think the story the film tells would've been better suited as a six- or eight-hour HBO miniseries, one that uses the struggles of Newton Knight's (Matthew McConaughey) great-grandson to set the scene at the beginning of each episode. The past impacts the present, etc.

You probably know Ali, the book's narrator, from the TV show House of Cards. His turn as Moses—a runaway slave who joins Newton Knight's fight for freedom—is one of the film's highlights. Though, again, I wish we could have spent a bit more time with him during Reconstruction: Moses' mistreatment during this time is given an almost perfunctory hearing.

Anyway, you should give the clip a listen: it's short, and Ali's voice is pleasing to listen to. And you should check out Free State of Jones, in theaters now. Given the weekend's box office figures, I don't know that it'll be in them for long.