Mahogany L. Browne

Recently named one of the Kennedy Center’s NEXT 50, Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, educator, and organizer. Browne is the executive director of JustMedia, a media literacy initiative designed to support the groundwork of criminal justice leaders and community members, founder of the diverse literature initiative, Woke Baby Book Fair, and the artistic director of Urban Word NYC. She is also the author of Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice, and the young adult novel Vinyl Moon. Chrome Valley is her latest book of poetry.

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Book by Mahogany L. Browne

Chrome Valley: Poems

From Lincoln Center’s inaugural poet-in-residence comes this unflinching collection that intricately mines the experience of being a Black woman in America.

Boldly lyrical and fiercely honest, Mahogany L. Browne’s "Chrome Valley" offers an intricate portrait of Black womanhood in America. “We praise their names / & the hands that write / Praise the mouth that speaks,” she writes in tribute to those who came before her.

Browne captures a quintessential girlhood through the pleasures and pangs of young love: the thrill of skating hip to hip at the roller rink, the heat of holding hands in the dark, and, sometimes, the sting of a palm across the cheek. Friendship, too, comes with its own complex yearnings: “you ain’t had freedom / ’til you climb on bus 62 / & head to the closest mall / for a good seat at the girl fight.”

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Mahogany L. Browne

Book by Mahogany L. Browne

Chrome Valley: Poems