Mahogany L. Browne

Writer/Educator/Activist/Curator ///////////// Instagram & Twitter: @mobrowne

[mahoganybrowne]

Tonite. #LA #onenightonly #calilove (at Art Share-LA)

[liftedbrow]

‘In Conversation With Mahogany L. Browne’ by Sista Zai Zanda

Photo by Shell Daruwala. Image reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

We at The Lifted Brow are presenting this conversation in support of Footscray Community Arts Centre’s phenomenal West Writers Forum 2016 program. If you like what you’ve read/heard in this conversation, come along to the One Night Stanza event at FCAC on Sunday July 22nd, 6pm–7pm, where both Mahogany L. Browne and Sista Zai Zanda will be performing alongside Candy Bowers, Bigoa, and DJ Wahe.

Introduction: I Stand as One But I Come as Ten Thousand

I first met Mahogany L. Browne when she came to Australia in 2011 as one of three poets on the Global Poetics Tour. We all need role models; and when she came to town and spread her poetry over us like the fairy dust that is #Blkgirlmagic, we all fell in love.

When I first met Mahogany, I was tongue-tied but I knew in my bones that there was something about her and her poetry that allowed me to see myself as a performance artist. As a young Black woman who had just started out on the local scene, I needed to hear a voice that spoke bravely about experiences and themes I had tucked away in my heart and only shared within the secure confines of my storytelling collective, Stillwaters.

As a Black artist I live in a time when there is an urgent need to speak out about the silently-acknowledged-and-yet-still-unspoken. Collectively unleashed, our tongues could expose systematic oppression and alter the status quo; they do say that the personal is political. Even so, I definitely still battle an inexplicable urge to self-censor and to tell ‘pretty’ and ‘uncomplicated’ stories that do not rock the white supremacist boat. We all need to stand in the physical presence of: the writer and performer who looks like us and dares break free, willfully lives liberated outside of pre-determined boxes. Mahogany taught me to honour poetry as a place to speak up, take up space and tell my truth.

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photo credit: Aaron Coury

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Mahogany L. Browne in Australia on ABC radio

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#BlackPoetsSpeakOut -- Live today everywhere. Join us. Record your poem via #Facebook Live & tag us! (at The George Washington University)

[mahoganybrowne]

#AltonSterling is the #558 black or brown body slain by this hands of police brutality, gunshot wounds & a crooked justice system. - #sayhername #sayhisname #sayournames #blackpoetsspeakout #claudiarankine

[mahoganybrowne]

#ThePoetryGods part two. So excited to listen again!!! #icantkeepcryingibthesewoods

[frankocean]

I read in the paper that my brothers are being thrown from rooftops blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs for violating sharia law. I heard the crowds stone these fallen men if they move after they hit the ground. I heard it’s in the name of God. I heard my pastor speak for God too, quoting scripture from his book. Words like abomination popped off my skin like hot grease as he went on to describe a lake of fire that God wanted me in. I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month. I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. I heard the news say he was one of us. I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t. Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year. So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest? I daydream on the idea that maybe all this barbarism and all these transgressions against ourselves is an equal and opposite reaction to something better happening in this world, some great swelling wave of openness and wakefulness out here. Reality by comparison looks grey, as in neither black nor white but also bleak. We are all God’s children, I heard. I left my siblings out of it and spoke with my maker directly and I think he sounds a lot like myself. If I being myself were more awesome at being detached from my own story in a way I being myself never could be. I wanna know what others hear, I’m scared to know but I wanna know what everyone hears when they talk to God. Do the insane hear the voice distorted? Do the indoctrinated hear another voice entirely?

[mahoganybrowne]

We out. #smudge #summerstagenyc #imanidavis #LeslieMoreaux #MahlaneyWilson #amaresymone

[mahoganybrowne]

This Friday folks!! #Summerstage showing excerpts of #Redbone & #Smudge!! So excited. Hope to see you there! #poetlife with stars: #ImaniDavis #MahlaneyWilson #LeslieMoreaux & #AmareSymone #babiesbethefuture (at Betsy Head SummerStage)

[mahoganybrowne]

Oh what a life! Check out #ThePoetryGods to hear what happened... #poetlife (at Brooklyn, New York)

[raychjackson]

Mahogany Browne with the solid bars the other day.

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Mahogany L. Browne’s NYC Book Release!

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Poetry collection by Mahogany L. Browne, Cave Canem Fellow, Poets House alum, and Director of the Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Program. “What I may love most about Redbone is the way it strains—formally, with syntax and diction, with voice and perspective, searching for the right space on the page—to make of this complex family story—which, like most family stories, is made of sweetness and plain old hurt—a kind of bearable song. It's such a moving act. Such a caring and true telling. Such a singing.” —Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude “A woman—a black woman—a high-yellow black woman—depending on the

Redbone is here... Pre-order your copy today!

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Redbone Dances

If you ain’t never watched your parents kiss ain’t neva have them teach you ‘bout the way the lips will to bend and curve against a...

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Selections from Sequoia Maner, Mahogany L. Browne, Veronica Golos, JP Howard, and Zanzooba Magdoos – Finalists for our Poetry Contest

The following 5 pieces were finalists for our 1st TFW Poetry Contest, judged by Evie Shockley. Please click the above link for an audio recording of "Black Boy Contrapuntal" by Sequoia Maner. Sequoia Maner is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Bachelors in English from Duke University. Her scholarship concentrates on performances of black masculinity, the radical potential of hip-hop culture, and the formal aesthetics of black poetry. Her most recent projects look at the art of Evie Shockley and Kendrick Lamar. During the 2013-2014 school year, she served as graduate assistant to the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies (TILTS) which brought Junot Diáz, Sherman Alexie, and Julia Alvarez to campus. She has also served as the graduate coordinator for P.S. Poetry, a monthly reading series which has featured poets such as Roger Reeves and Lisa Olstein. --------------------------------- [...]

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Because "Everywhere is Ferguson"