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.
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