His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Ethel Waters
His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Ethel Waters
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
Club: $11.47

His Eye Is on the Sparrow
An Autobiography

Author: Ethel Waters, Charles Samuels

Narrator: Robin Miles, Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 12 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/13/2022


Synopsis

Ethel Waters’s His Eye Is on the Sparrow stands as perhaps the greatest autobiography of a Black female performer, capturing both the horror and the joy of the African American woman’s experience through the often bitter yet always forgiving voice of an indomitable spirit. This edition is supplemented with a new historical preface.

About Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters (1896–1977) was an American singer and actress who began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Waters’s notable recordings include “Dinah,” “Stormy Weather,” “Taking a Chance on Love,” “Heat Wave,” and her version of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, and the first African American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.

About Charles Samuels

Charles Samuels (1902-1982), a New York newspaperman, wrote biographies of Judy Garland, Lizzie Borden, and Evelyn Nesbit. He worked with Buster Keaton on My Wonderful World of Slapstick.

About Robin Miles

Robin Miles, named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, has twice won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, an Audie Award for directing, and many Earphones Awards. Her film and television acting credits include The Last Days of Disco, Primary Colors, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order, New York Undercover, National Geographic’s Tales from the Wild, All My Children, and One Life to Live. She regularly gives seminars to members of SAG and AFTRA actors’ unions, and in 2005 she started Narration Arts Workshop in New York City, offering audiobook recording classes and coaching. She holds a BA degree in theater studies from Yale University, an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama, and a certificate from the British American Drama Academy in England.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards.

About Donald Bogle

Donald Bogle is one of the country's leading authorities on African Americans in Hollywood. He is the author of the groundbreaking Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films; the acclaimed biography Dorothy Dandridge; and Brown Sugar: Over 100 Years of America's Black Female Superstars. He teaches at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and at the University of Pennsylvania.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nancy on February 06, 2017

An autobiography of Ethel Waters, His Eye Is On The Sparrow was published in 1951 when Waters was staring in Member of the Wedding. The book was a best seller. I found a ragged and yellowed 1951 copy of the book on a free shelf at a library used book sale several years ago. I did not really know anyt......more

Goodreads review by Clare on April 11, 2014

absolutely fabulous book detailing the life of a young African American woman born and raised in poverty who makes her way to the big time using her beautiful voice! The name-dropping can be quite laborious at times but I believe Ethel included this so as to extend recognition to her fellow Black pe......more

Goodreads review by Just Janet on November 05, 2016

Miss. Waters grew up in the Jim Crow south among whores, pimps, thieves, alcoholics, drug addicts, gangsters and a world of much violence. Yet she survived to write her story about her love of God and how she overcame many an obstacle in the entertainment business and in life. Now, sixty-one years af......more

Goodreads review by Kerry on May 27, 2023

This autobiography of Ethel Waters, the famous singer, Broadway star, and movie actress, was recommended to me by a friend. At first I thought I had never hear of Ethel Waters, but I soon realized she sang many wonderful songs, including one of my mom's favorite songs, "Happiness Is a Thing Called Jo......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on June 18, 2015

Ethel Waters had a life that is almost too unbelievable to be real. Reading her autobiography now, over 60 years after it was published, one wonders how much of it is really true. I don't doubt her harrowing experiences on stage in Jim Crow America in the 1920s and '30s, but, if Waters was writing t......more


Quotes

“Robin Miles delivers a virtuoso performance…Her dramatic skills…[and] vocal beauty and sophistication are a big reason this audio will impact listeners in this way…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“I listened enthralled.” New York Times

“One of the two or three best as-told-to show business memoirs ever, a masterpiece of candor and righteous observation.” Gary Giddins, music critic and author

“With astonishing candor, Ethel Waters tells her dramatic and dazzling story…Hers is both an engrossing record of a topsy-turvy career and, just as importantly, an invaluable social document that traces the changing landscape for African American entertainers in the first half of the twentieth century.” Donald Bogle, author of Hollywood Black


Awards

  • AudioFile Earphones Award