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This book of poetry, essays and antecdotes offers a peek at the life of a single parent to die hard romantic. The pages are filled with true life conversations between mother and child, to the everyday life and fear of being woman. Short stories and poems accentuate the true stories with a beautiful silk of imaginative delight. Table of Contents: 1. Empty (poem to prose) 2. Scenes from Alternative Parenting #1 3. Abbreviated Conversations 4. Elope 5. Scenes from Alternative Parenting #2 6. Dusk (poem to prose) 7. Things That Happen 8. Scenes from Alternative Parenting #3 9. Kiss Count 10. Un-kept 11. Dysfunctional Fam 12. Bullet Points: Self Defense 13. Scenes from Alternative Parenting #4

A collection of poems, stories and essays about the fallible woman, the sensitive girl-child and the fearless warrior, His Rib, offers an inside look at her story. The written works featured in this project includes women from both the literary field and the performance poetry circuit, creating a symbiotic kinship between the two art forms. After combing several continents, the women within these pages were found scribing folk tales in California, sonnets in New York, producing prose in London and breaking stereotypes with each stanza in Colorado, Texas and Canada. The result, a quilt weaved perfectly of compassion, self-respect, discipline, lust and hunger. Enjoy the crack and thunder of His Rib.

Poetry. African American Studies. This new novelty item is a hit for anyone with a friendly addiction to twitter, love, and laughter. "Mahogany L. Browne has her own style of Tweeting, her own unique Twitter voice. She can talk about being her and still make it universal"—Touré. "Writers are too verbose for plays; poets make better playwrights. Poets might tweet better too. Mahogany's #DEAR TWITTER is proof"—Miles Marshall Lewis.

Poetry. Edited by Geoff Kagan Trenchard, Adam Falkner and Mahogany L. Browne, this Penmanship Books anthology includes poems and writing prompts by Ken Arkind, Joshua Bennett, Mahogany L. Browne, Michael Cirelli, William Evans, Adam Falkner, Falu, Barbara Fant, Rico Frederick, Vanessa Hidary, Chinaka Hodge, Eboni Hogan, Zora Howard, Geoff Kagan Trenchard, Dasha Kelly, Carvens Lissaint, Aja-Monet, Justin Long-Motion, Sean Patrick Mulroy, Jive Poetic, Jaha Zainabu and Lauren Zuniga.

Poetry. African American Studies. "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 top of her game."—Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, NEA Poetry Fellow & author of The Year of No Mistakes

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Edited by Randall Horton. Nominated for an NAACP Image Award. "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

Poetry. Like most young black girls growing up in Northern California, Mahogany L. Browne tussles with ideas of femininity & gender roles, addiction & the prison industrial complex, sexuality & seclusion. Inquiries of the living and dying survive on the pages of KISSING CASKETS as the reader is invited to do the self excavation. Each poem is a eulogized celebration of what we lose to the dark when no one is looking.

Black Girl, they say you ain't 'posed to be here Much of what twenty-first century culture tells black girls is not pretty: Don't wear this; don't smile at that. Don't have an opinion; don't dream big. And most of all, don't love yourself. In response to such destructive ideas, internationally recognized poet Mahogany Browne challenges the conditioning of society by crafting an anthem of strength and magic undeniable in its bloom for all beautiful Black girls. She has travelled the world sharing her vision of Black Girl Magic , and now in collaboration with artist Jess X. Snow, presents her acclaimed tribute in a visual form. Black Girl Magic is a journey from girlhood to womanhood and an invitation to readers to find magic in themselves.

Best Books of 2023: TIME, Electric Literature 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 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.

In this poignant mixed voice, mixed form collection of interconnected prose, poems and stories, teen characters, their families, and their communities grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst fear and loss, these New York City teens prevail with love, resilience and hope. From the award-winning author of Chlorine Sky and Vinyl Moon. "[A] gorgeous, tender testament to the generation of young people who shouldered the pandemic.” --Brendan Kiely, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Grief, pain, hope, and love collide in this short story collection. In New York City, teens, their families, and their communities feel the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst the fear and loss, these teens and the adults around them persevere with love and hope while living in difficult circumstances: Malachi writes an Armageddon short story inspired by his pandemic reality. Tariq helps their ailing grandmother survive during quarantine. Zamira struggles with depression and loneliness after losing her parents. Mohamed tries to help keep his community spirit alive. A social worker reflects on the ways the foster system fails their children. From award-winning author Mahogany L. Browne comes a poignant collection of interconnected prose, poems, and lists about the humanity and resilience of New Yorkers during the Covid-19 pandemic.