Chrome Valley
Regular price
€18.99
1980s
1990s
A01=Mahogany L. Browne
adolescence
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Mahogany L. Browne
automatic-update
black girl magic
black power
blm
brooklyn
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DCF
coming of age
COP=United States
criminal justice
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
family
feminism
grief
kennedy center
Language_English
love
media literacy
mourning
naacp
PA=Not yet available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
sexuality
softlaunch
urban
violence
woke books
women
Product details
- ISBN 9781324095637
- Weight: 193g
- Dimensions: 142 x 211mm
- Publication Date: 24 Sep 2024
- Publisher: W W Norton & Co Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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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 mother’s bone structure / & her gap tooth slaughter / give me her spine—Redbone got a spine for the world.” Other moments explore the inherent anxieties shared among Black mothers, rhythmically intoning names like the tolling of a church bell: “Because Kadiatou Diallo / Because Sybrina Fulton / Because Valeria Bell / Because Mamie Till.”
The characters in Chrome Valley grapple with the legacies of inherited trauma but also revel in the beauty of the undaunted self-determination passed down from Black woman to Black woman. Transcendent and grounded, funny and furious, Chrome Valley brings depth to a movement, solidifying Mahogany L. Browne as one of the most significant poetic voices of our time.
Mahogany L. Browne is a Kennedy Center Next 50 Fellow, inaugural poet in residence at Lincoln Center, and cofounder of the Brooklyn Poetry Slam. She is the author of inyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, Woke Baby, and Black Girl Magic. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
