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."Reflections of Browne's mother, Redbone, bolster the collection with moments of unwavering strength: "give me my...

A teen girl hiding the scars of a past relationship finds home and healing in the words of strong Black writers. A beautiful sophomore novel from a critically acclaimed author and poet that explores how words have the power to shape and uplift our world even in the midst of pain.When Darius told Angel he loved her, she believed him. But five weeks after the incident, Angel finds herself in Brooklyn, far from her family, from him, and from the California life she has known. Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can’t shake the feeling everyone knows what happened—and that it was her fault. The only place that makes sense is Ms. G’s class. There, Angel’s classmates share their own stories of pain, joy, and fortitude. And as Angel becomes immersed in her revolutionary literature course, the words from Black writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Zora NEale Hurston speak to her and...

The long form poem is a practice of poetics in joy, gratitude, sadness, resilience and pain. This literary work serves as a practice of self-reflection and accountability in the wake of the prison system. This poem is dirge work acknowledging unjust atrocities, but reveling in our human resilience.

A novel-in-verse about a young girl coming-of-age and stepping out of the shadow of her former best friend. Perfect for readers of Elizabeth Acevedo and Nikki Grimes."Mahogany L. Browne's debut YA ia an absolute masterpiece. It will leave you breathless." -Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet XShe looks me hard in my eyes& my knees lock into tree trunksMy eyes don't dance like my heartbeat racingThey stare straight back hot daggers.I remember things will never be the same.I remember things.With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and when growing up means growing apart from your best friend.

Acclaimed poet Mahogany L. Browne triumphs again with her latest poetry collection SMUDGE, a powerful, intimate, and complex portrait of a girl who deserves more than what she is given: a world in which our hero is both painfully invisible and vulnerably exposed. Browne masterfully invites us into this girl's life with language that is evocative, nuanced and immediate. The result is a book that is incredibly present. You live each moment presented in the book as if it were your own, and feel deeply the girl's fears and her humiliations, her hopeful trust and blind love, her shifting sense of safety and self. But despite the honest and harrowing heartbreak that finds its way into the girl, the book nonetheless has a defiant beauty, a strength of character and self that willfully defies the limits others attempt to put on this girl. Browne continues her tradition of creating rich, unflinching, and unapologetic work cataloguing the world as she sees it, and SMUDGE sees her at the...