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Permission to Speak

Permission to Speak

How to Change What Power Sounds Like, Starting With You

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

What does power sound like? Loud? Brash? Masculine? Well, it's time to change that.

In this warm and witty manual, foremost Hollywood voice coach Samara Bay offers a compelling approach to asserting your power in all arenas of life. And it's not what you think. Packed with expert tips, easy-to-follow exercises, eye-opening research and anecdotes, Permission to Speak is designed to liberate and inspire even the most tentative of public speakers.

Here's the truth: if you're a woman, a person of colour, an immigrant or queer, there's often dissonance between how you speak and how we collectively think powerful people should speak. We're encouraged to chase the standard set by the wealthy white men who've historically been in charge - while trying to 'be authentic' at the same time! It doesn't make sense.

PERMISSION TO SPEAK is the solution. Moving deftly from the fundamentals of breath, pitch and tone to the musicality of storytelling, the art of emotion and why exactly you've picked up the habits you have, Samara Bay explodes what we think we know about our voices and how they should sound, and gets to the very heart of what they can be.

©2023 Samara Bay (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reviews

  • No-one knows more about voice than Samara Bay. This is a brilliant user-friendly guide to speaking up. I love it.
    Viv Groskop, author of How to Own the Room

About the author

Samara Bay

Samara Bay is a speaker, author, and coach for Hollywood stars, politicians, business leaders, and creatives. She supports women and marginalized speakers to use their voices to get what they want in the moments that matter, and her work on rethinking the sound of power has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Slate, CBS Sunday Morning, Create & Cultivate, Jezebel, and MSNBC's Know Your Value. She speaks and runs workshops on voice and power for founders, foundations, women's organizations, universities, and Fortune 500 corporations, and is a sought-after dialect coach for television and film.
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