Research Catalog

Title

Chrome valley : poems / Mahogany L. Browne.

Author

Browne, Mahogany L.

Publication

New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

142 pages; 22 cm

Summary

"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"--

Subject

• Women, Black > Poetry
• African American families > Poetry
• African Americans > Poetry
• American poetry > African American authors
• American poetry > Women authors
• Women, Black
• African American families
• African Americans
• American poetry
• United States

Genre/Form

Poetry.

Call Number

Sc D 23-376

ISBN

• 9781324092278
• 1324092270
• 9781324092285 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2022057569

OCLC

1318987353

Author

Browne, Mahogany L., author.

Title

Chrome valley : poems / Mahogany L. Browne.

Publisher

New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., [2023]

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Local Note

Schomburg copy with dust jacket.

Local Subject

Black author.

Other Form:

ebook version : 9781324092285

Research Call Number

Sc D 23-376