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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: Mom, I Love You

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off the Shelf. I’m Helena de Groot. Today, Mom, I Love You. One of the earliest things Mahogany Browne can remember is a dream she had when she was about three or four. In the dream, her father is taken away by a SWAT team. Much later, when she told her mother, her mother looked at her in shock and said, “That really happened.” Her father was really taken to prison. And that fact rippled through her family’s life. Her mother developed an addiction. Mother and daughter grew apart, which in turn meant that Mahogany’s own daughter didn’t get to grow up with grandparents. Her story is unfortunately not unique: almost half the people who are incarcerated in this country have children, and these kids have so much taken from them. But even though so much was taken from Mahogany Browne, she has made herself into a giver. She’s a community organizer, a criminal justice activist, an educator, and of course, a writer. And especially her books for kids and young adults feel generous, like a warm hug. Take her book-length YA poem, Black Girl Magic, where she encourages Black girls to let their inner light shine, or Woke Baby, a picture book full of radical hope and heart. When I sat down to talk with her about her latest collection, Chrome Valley, she was still recuperating from what is both an exhilarating and exhausting part of being a writer: book tour.

Helena de Groot: And so when you’re traveling and you’re going through all this, like, nonsense of airports and cancellations and hotel rooms, how do you ground yourself?

Mahogany L. Browne: I try to find a book on tape. If there’s not a book on tape, there’s a podcast. I have a hand sanitizer that I created. And it has a lot of aromatherapy properties attached to it, so it allows me to, even in the midst of the busy rush-rushness, like, not allow all of my senses to be overstimulated.

Helena de Groot: What’s the scent that you put in there?

Mahogany L. Browne: We have some eucalyptus. Let me see which one. Oh, right now I have eucalyptus, lavender, some lemon grass, a little bit of clove, you know, some special spices. Is that what KFC says?

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Exactly.

Mahogany L. Browne: Special spices.

Helena de Groot: It’s great. It feels like it wakes you up, like essential oils, it feels like it wakes you up. And it warms you too.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: Cloves are so comforting, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: Well, I’m, you know, it’s not surprising to me that you’re reaching for like a very sensual way to ground yourself, you know, something connected to your senses, because that’s really what I found in your poetry, too.

Mahogany L. Browne: Oh wow.

Helena de Groot: You know, that like, whatever you’re writing about, even if it’s like really big societal horrors that you always ground it in the body and perception, and it makes it feel so close. You know? It’s just great.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm. Thank you for that. It’s funny, because I think that’s one of the first things that we learn when we’re teaching writing, right? When we’re facilitating writing workshops, the first thing we teach is, start using five senses. So the reader does not feel pushed away or just as a viewer, but they feel more as if they are the protagonists, they are, they’re reading it, but they’re also becoming as they read it. The fact that I said clove, you said, “Oh, yes, that’s grounding. That means—” right? So you already have a relationship with that smell. And I’m relying on our personal relationships with the inanimate to forge a way forward for our humanity. So as people, are we compassionate, are we empathetic? And I believe that we can be if we remove that barrier of you versus me. And the smell, for me, the sonic, for me, the sight, for me, always makes it so.

Helena de Groot: And do you—is there a way in which you feel like, because in our culture, especially, I think sight is sort of overvalued over the other senses, right? What are the senses that for you, you feel like you have to kind of remind yourself to lean into that? That when you go into the editing phase that you’re like, oh, I have nothing of this sense in here.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm. I reckon it would probably be the tactile one, the touch. And I don’t know why. (LAUGHS) Until you just said something, I’m like, huh, why is that?

Helena de Groot: It’s so interesting that you say touch because I feel like, to me, and to many writers, I feel like I read, it is indeed touch that often takes the backseat. But that’s why I was so fascinated by Chrome Valley, because I thought, there are so many poems that seem to come alive on my skin. And I don’t know, there’s this one poem that I wanted to start with. I actually wasn’t planning on asking you to read this poem, but let me just find it again.

Mahogany L. Browne: Okay.

Helena de Groot: You know, the speaker of the poem is like a teenager and for the first time, kind of being close to a boy, touching him.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm, okay. Is that “Slink”?

Helena de Groot: No, it’s not that one. No.

Mahogany L. Browne: Okay.

Helena de Groot: Oh, “Vast.”

Mahogany L. Browne: “Vast.” Yes, yes, yes.

(READS POEM)

Vast

you held Justin’s hand in the dark

in the garage corner while everyone

else pretended to not watch

you both were slippery tongues

& new with the idea of girlfriend

& and drunk off the parentless gaze

of a house party

you held your breath & his hand wandered

he tripped across your skin

his eyes brown & one lazy

remain partially closed & full

aware of the dark

his lap a hot brick

& your desire to be wanted

a cooling dam so

vast it drenched you both

Mahogany L. Browne: Okay.

Helena de Groot: Right?

Mahogany L. Browne: I hear what you’re saying.

Helena de Groot: You did hit the touch, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: The touch.

Helena de Groot: I mean, there are so many bits in this that are just amazing, you know, “drunk off the parentless gaze,” it’s so great. Because it also, you know, I mean to stay with touch, right, “he tripped across your skin / his eyes brown & one lazy.” Like, I can almost see, like, how close, how weird, in a way, someone’s face is when it’s so up close, you know? Then you kind of see only like an edge of a nose and one eye maybe, you know?

Mahogany L. Browne: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: I feel like you were able to transport yourself back into that first kiss moment where everything is like, you kind of drink in that moment with your eyes, right? Because you don’t know what it’s like to be out of your body, like, our bodies are our own countries, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: This is my only country, is this body. And for me to open this border to this other person, it’s overwhelming. It’s like, overload. It’s sensory overload.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: So I do like that you caught that. I think that’s something that we all, definitely when we’re younger, are aware of, because there was never a moment where it wasn’t just this body, or this tongue, or this mouth. And now I have to consider how our countries collide.

Helena de Groot: That is so beautiful, that for the first time, your boundaries expand, you know?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm.

Helena de Groot: I mean, you know, what I thought was also so great in this poem, and in many poems in Chrome Valley, is that you manage to pick up on a memory from a long time ago, you know, that first kiss, right, when we’re teenagers, for most of us, and you excavate that memory with such precision. That kind of thrill of the parentless gaze, that first time that we’re, you know, having our own party, and we’re all standing around, kind of super awkward, but also just full of promise, you know? And I’m just wondering, like, how did you remember so well? Like, did you have diaries from that time? Objects that, like, triggered something? How did you get there?

Mahogany L. Browne: I think—I don’t have any diaries that have lived this long. But I definitely have pictures. And I sit with these pictures, just like, looking at them, looking through the yearbook, and trying to remember the moment. I also have a lot of, like, conversations with, like, a home girl from high school. So things that I thought I remembered very clearly, she’s like, “That didn’t happen like that.” So I have my little resource, right, (LAUGHING) come back in to say, “Hey, hey, make this Facebook group, does anybody have a picture?” And someone did send me a picture of several teenage concerts. And I literally can just look in the frame and I see everyone that was there and it just rushes back. All the memories, all of the trepidation, all the anxiety, all of the, like, the odd, I don’t know if I should say, can I, am I in the way, I can see it very clearly.

Helena de Groot: And so we’re speaking, we’re talking about the ’90s here, right, I imagine?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And so this was obviously before cell phones, before we had, you know, the capacity to take pictures on this thing that we always have with us. So do you remember like, when would you or your friends take a picture? And then what was that like to get the pictures developed? And did you spread them around amongst yourselves? Like how did that whole work? Do you remember?

Mahogany L. Browne: I do. Like my first, YA novel in verse, it’s all about 1-hour photo. It’s about these friends that go to 1-hour photo. And that was, that, that ruled my life.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: My poor little weekly, (LAUGHS) my allowance was stretched, okay?

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: Stretched for that Sears package. (LAUGHS) That Olan Mills set. But before I could afford that, we had like, little handy dandy disposable camera. You know, the 330 film, that zut, zut, zut, zut, zut.

Helena de Groot: Oh yeah!

Mahogany L. Browne: You know, and that really wild flash, really loud.

Helena de Groot: Absolutely.

Mahogany L. Browne: Waiting for those photos was like waiting with bated breath.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: You just prayed that your eyes were open for that one photo.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: And then there were a whole bunch of photos with your thumb in it. But like, there was about, out of 24, there’s about five, there’s about five good ones. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yes, absolutely. Oh God.

Mahogany L. Browne: I felt like we were owning the moment with pictures. We were owning that moment, we were crystallizing our histories, so that not only would we be remembered by others, but that we remember ourselves. That’s what it reminds me of.

Helena de Groot: It’s so interesting, because, in a way, like the old timey way of taking pictures, right, where like, okay, you have 36 on a little disposable camera, and that’s it. And so, over a whole night, you’re only going to have like very few snapshots. And I feel like what you’re doing in your poems is that, too. Like this collection, Chrome Valley, in some ways, works like a memoir.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm.

Helena de Groot: But instead of like, telling one continuous story, you have snapshots. I mean, the one that we just read, you know, you held Justin’s hand in the dark in the garage corner, while everyone else pretended not to watch. So it’s such a small, literally corner of your life then. And I’m wondering, why is that the detail, like the crumb that survives?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm. Writing Chrome, specifically, Chrome is a snapshot of a specific time in my life, which was like 1990, I think that’s the first year. And it is following me between middle school to high school to graduation. It was during a truncated time in my life. This teen time. And the things that I learned, I learned many things from one situation. But it requires me to go through the perspective once. And then say, “Oh, let me turn that a little bit to the left, and look at it again, and maybe, maybe chase this idea counterclockwise. Let’s see what I see that time.” And of course, what ends up happening is, I get to write a poem from the perspective of a dark corner, instead of a poem just from the perspective of two kids dancing, close to close on the dance floor. And then I can just think about the chaperone, and what they see. I think, who taught me that? Patricia Smith is excellent at developing a scene. And like, really extrapolating every single detail that you can, and allowing yourself to break those moments up into several poems. So that you’re not constantly saying the same thing, necessarily in one poem, but you are looking at a thing from different sides of the sun.

Helena de Groot: I mean, it makes it also, I don’t know, what is the opposite of generic, but it makes it that, you know?

Mahogany L. Browne: Unique? (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yeah, unique. And I mean, and in that way that only the very specific can make us feel like we’re there.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: Because I feel like sometimes you see that in movies or television series that are kind of made on the cheap or written too quickly or whatever. There’s something so generic about it that just feels alienating, you know?

Mahogany L. Browne: Yeah. It’s asking folks to just rely on the cliché.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: And then we will do the extra legwork of devising our own personal connection. And I’m not leaving—I want folks to be connected to the poem. I want them to find their way in. But I’m also not going to leave so much space that it can just become anytime USA.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: Right? I want it to be any, any moment in this femme body.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. It’s funny, right, that like, the more you go into the specifics of your body, your Black American body, which is very different from my white, European body,

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: it’s funny that the more specific you get about your experience, the more of an entryway I have into it.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: Right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes. Because you also trust. You trust the person who is willing to be as vulnerable and say, “Here’s all of our differences. But let me tell you how my blood moves.” Have you ever felt that? Have you ever felt someone that you don’t like smell on your neck, and the difference, that, and that anatomical difference that your body like, will feel if someone you love or are even interested in, they’re interested, speak and they smell on your neck? Those are two different moments. And we both have an access to that conversation.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: So, I want that. I want more of that.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: You told me that, you know, you sometimes would go to your friend from high school to kind of fact check, you know, a memory that you had or just kind of, you know, put the two together. And that makes sense for like the, you know, the friend, the high school poems, but there are also a lot of poems about your family. And so I’m wondering, did you interview any family members, when you sat down to write these poems?

Mahogany L. Browne: I absolutely did. All of the Redbone poems were from interviews with my aunt, grandmother, uncles, and my mom. So those are—which is why you’ll see Redbone series is actually me speaking with my mom, and then kind of rephrasing and tightening up so that the language became more poetic. But that was the essence of what she was saying in those, back on the wine chronicles. I’d get a little bottle of wine, turn the recorder on, and then just try and forget that the recorder was on. Which the wine helps you do.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) How did your mom react when you said like, “Hey, I’d like to try this.”

Mahogany L. Browne: She was into, she was fine. She was down. She’s like, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.” It was when it was printed that I think (LAUGHING)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: I think that was the part she was not necessarily ready for. She thought she was.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: And then those poems are also a part of a larger manuscript just called Redbone that was nominated for an NAACP. So, it then had a larger readership, and she was just like, “Uh, what? What’s happening?”

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: (LAUGHS) And then, of course, you know, after several months of—“And I didn’t say that, I actually said this,” and I was like, “Mom, that’s what you said. I hear you. But this is what you said. I’m sorry.” We actually just had a conversation—the most recent conversation, because there’s plenty—the most recent one was her saying, “I did pray with you, you know.” And I said, “Mom, I love you. And I know you are a God-fearing woman. And I know you pray. But during that time of our lives together, I went to church by myself. You don’t remember the church bus coming to pick me up? You don’t remember you had to stop me from getting baptized alone? You don’t remember that?” And she said, “Oh, that’s right.” So (LAUGHS) and the moments are like, yes, and.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: You know, like, “I know this is a hard thing to listen to, to hear, because it feels like that someone is charging you for being a bad parent. And I am not. I’m not saying that you are bad parent. I’m saying you are human. And you are my mother and I love you. And I know you did your absolute best. And these poems are going to help us. They’re going to heal us. And they’re going to offer healing for others who don’t have the articulation for feeling abandoned even though your parent is right there.” And I love my mother. And my mother suffered from addiction and in turn, her children were impacted by that. That’s it. It happens. I don’t blame you, I love you, we’re good, but yes, that’s what I’m speaking about. Enough. That’s what I’m—you didn’t pray with me then.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Let’s correct the records.

Mahogany L. Browne: She’s like, “Okay.” Yeah. Let the record show. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHING) Yeah, exactly. So, I was wondering if we can get to another poem.

Mahogany L. Browne:Sure.

Helena de Groot: It’s the one called “Redbone & Box Wine” on page 19.

Mahogany L. Browne: Okay.

Helena de Groot: I think you already hinted at it, but so, “Redbone,” can you just, you know, for anyone listening, can you make it clear what that means? And then also, “Bam” is in there. So can you just, you know,

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes. Okay. Redbone is my mother, and Bam is my father.

Helena de Groot: Right. And so those were the nicknames that everyone would use for them?

Mahogany L. Browne: Correct.

Helena de Groot: Or just you?

Mahogany L. Browne: No, everyone. Like, well, Bam, actually called my mother Redbone. That was her nickname. So it’s a, you know, considered a loving, a loving term of endearment. Even though if you look at it in the scheme of the Black America culture, then you’re looking at it as also a colorism device.

Helena de Groot: Uh-huh.

Mahogany L. Browne: To delineate light skin from bright skin from brown skin to dark skin. And Bam is what they called my father. His nickname was Sam, but he fought so much they called him Bam. (LAUGHS) And so here we are.

Helena de Groot: And so, okay, the in the poem, there’s also like a mention of Bam not being there. Can you just, whatever you want to say about that.

Mahogany L. Browne: And so this is really because my father was incarcerated for the majority of my life. And his incarceration was for these, you know, low level crimes that when a three strike rule became law, it basically took him from, you know, my life forever. I, I guess if today is 2023, my daughter’s 25. The last time I saw him was 24 years ago. So, saw and spoke to him 24 years ago. So this is, anytime I’m thinking of Bam and my mother, or Redbone, and we’re reading about them in Chrome Valley, it is always a nod at the impact of mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex, but also, looking at the absence where the absence has grown. And in my father’s absence grew this addiction that my mother had for drugs, and in his absence grew my own insecurities and abandonment issues, which is why there’s so much tumultuousness when it comes to any man showing me some kind of affection. So, it’s looking at, it’s looking at how I found love through their love.

Helena de Groot: Do you want to read the poem?

Mahogany L. Browne: Sure.

(READS POEM)

Redbone & Box Wine

You were the hardest to raise—

you just needed too much. By

the time you was thirteen, maybe

fourteen years old, I was done

being anybody’s Mama. I had

us a nice place, a desk job for the

State. I had me some friends with

no drama. Just music & Kools

Playing cards & box wine. You like

to drive me crazy always asking

‘bout Bam, where & when he

coming to visit . . . if he goin’ send

more of them earrings in the broken

china box that turn ya ears all types

of nasty colors. I still don’t know

where they came from—all I know

is I smell another woman on the

hot plastic . . . But hell, I let you be.

You ain’t got much to remember him

by nohow. You got his eyes though,

. . . Yeah, them all his.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, you can’t see it when you’re reading it, of course, but on the page, it’s all in cursive. So it’s really clear that this is just kind of like a direct quote, you know, in a way, I’m sure it’s edited. But that it’s a direct quote from your mother. And again, you know, you said earlier, you said a little bit about, yeah, that you tried to not take things personally, you know, when she was talking. But this must have been hard. I mean, when your mother says to you, “You were the hardest to raise—you just needed too much.” What was that like for you to hear that?

Mahogany L. Browne: It was, I always was regarded as the more sensitive child.

Helena de Groot: Because there’s three of you, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes, it’s my older brother, my older sister, and myself. And then my little brother did not come along until I was like 16. So there’s a whole decade and a half of me being the sensitive one. So, even when she said something like that, I heard it and I was like “Oh, that’s, hmm, I need people, too.” But I had already been kind of worked away from speaking my truth because (LAUGHS) I was regarded as overly sensitive. So I just like, held it and was like, but that’s not fair. Like I was, it’s not my fault I was born last. It’s, I’m literally thinking all these things to myself. And when I read it out loud now, what I hear is, “I tried my best. I ran out of steam.” That’s it. Like, as a mother with one child, I am so tired. I have no idea how my mother did it. Three of us? OMG. I have no idea. So even now, while I can use the page to write the poem exactly how she spoke it to me, what I’m trying to, like, add in there, with the spacing, with the cursive, with the familiar tone, is that this wasn’t a woman who was angry about it. She had just hit, you know, she extended the rope. Like she had burned the wick at both ends. And all she wanted was no drama. Drinking wine from the—box wine, no less, very easy to get. Okay.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: She just wanted an easy life. What are the young people calling it now, the soft era?

Helena de Groot: Yeah, or soft life.

Mahogany L. Browne: I’m just like, my mama been searching for that, you know? She just wanted an easy, an easy life. And my stars, I just, there’s so much compassion that I was able to extend after listening to her, sure, but like, after writing it, it hit different. Because, and when I’m listening to her, I put me in the center. But when I wrote about it, I put her in the center. And even as she said, “I didn’t want to do all this. I’m tired. I just want this, and I have this good job,” but then she looks at this baby that she made with this man who hasn’t been there in a long time, who’s, you know, it comes out that he’s a cheater, it comes out that he’s physically abusive. And still, “You have his eyes.” And the adoration of someone who, even at the end of their rope, can lovingly look in your face and say, “Those are his, that means you are mine, we’re still connect— .” Like, I just tried to be as common, common with our language for love and like, being fed up.

Helena de Groot: I think that’s what, what kind of pulled at my heart, or squeezed my heart the most in your collection. That you’re, you’re so tender about moments that like, you know, maybe you could be angry about it. Maybe you are a little bit angry about, you know? But you’ve done something with that. And so, yeah, you said that the process of writing it was like, part of that healing, you know? So can you talk about that? Can you take me to that moment? So okay, you have all this tape recording stuff, right? And then you sit at your desk, and you’re listening back. And then what? Can you take me there?

Mahogany L. Browne: Hmm. Well, I transcribe it all. And then in the transcription, I like, stop listening, because I think I get caught up, I get like, caught up in the rapture of a voice. If, like, there’s moments of her, like, crying or like, her, her throat catching, tightening, I can’t hear that and be not affected. So, the first thing I do is transcribe everything. And then I just let the words, that word bank serve as a landing pad if while writing the poem, something isn’t jammin’. If there’s a moment of like, my mom didn’t actually say this, this is me. This is Mo in my mom’s place, I need to pull back a little bit and figure out how to tap into like, her essence again. And then the word bank always serves as a great space for oscillation.

Helena de Groot: Oh, interesting. I mean, that’s also something I wanted to ask you about. Because in interviews, you talked a little bit about like, in high school, you had this teacher who kind of, you know, reprimanded you, right? For writing the way you do, you know, like with African American vernacular, which is like, you know, that is your native language, like, that, of course, what else would you be writing in, you know? And that she was like, “Yeah, no, that’s not what we do in poems.”

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: You know? And so, because, your poems now, many of them are written in the cadence of your, of your tongue, you know, like the way your mother talks to you.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: So, can you tell me about the effect of that when you finally embraced that? Do you remember when you were like, “No, that is actually okay. I’m gonna write like this, and I’m gonna celebrate that.” Do you remember when that was or how that came about?

Mahogany L. Browne: I love that, that’s such a good question. When I graduated from, I don’t know if I should be teaching in schools. When I just stopped asking myself that. When I realized, I’m a teaching artist, I’m facilitating workshops in schools, because the young people trust me, and they’re tired of people telling them how they speak, how they look, how they walk, how they wear their clothes is not good enough. They see me, I come into class, I’ll have on the same J’s, I’ll have, you know, probably a pair of jeans, my shirt may be less useful, but like, I don’t look like a buttoned-up teacher. So, there’s already a moment of, “Okay, what’s she talking about?” And then I speak to them like an auntie, like someone that they know from their block. And they’re like, “Okay, I can, I can give her the truth. I don’t have to hold the truth from this one.” That is when. That is when I knew. When I kept going into these spaces, and the teachers would say, “They refuse to write.” And then after my first day, I have a class of 30 kids, and I have 30 poems, I knew it was them. It wasn’t me. It is the constant desire to harness an energy that you can’t contain. And so, sorry for them, I’m so glad I made it out alive. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Absolutely.

Mahogany L. Browne: And just in time.

Helena de Groot: I mean, it’s such a wild thing that you would, like, cut someone off from their language, cut someone off from their past, and then you’re surprised that they can’t write. You know?

Mahogany L. Browne: Well, they can, you just don’t deem it correct, right? And you’re sitting there waiting for the moment where folks just start standing up for themselves and saying, “But even your language is incorrect.” (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Uh huh.

Mahogany L. Browne: I love that quote from Jai Poetic, he says, “language is culture and culture changes,” which means language changes. And if language is evolving, it’s because the people are evolving. And if the language is not evolving, it is because the culture is dead.

Helena de Groot: Right. Like Latin or something like that. I mean, there’s so, again, you know, I grew up far from here. Obviously, for that reason, I didn’t grow up around African American vernacular. And so, there are some things that just strike me extra. Because they also make me think of like, other languages. You know, like, for instance, the way, what is that? Is it like reflexive, I think?

Mahogany L. Browne: Okay.

Helena de Groot: Or what is the word, like, you know, here, so your mother is talking? “I had / us a nice place, a desk job for the / State, I had me some friends with / no drama.” You know, that construction, right? I had us a nice place. I had me some friends, you know.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: There’s like that extra kind of little relationship, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And I just love how tight that makes the love in this poem.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: And I’m just wondering, like, is there, is there something in this poem that just cracks you wide open with tenderness for your mother?

Mahogany L. Browne: Nohow!

Helena de Groot: That! (LAUGHS) Ah, can you read that sentence again?

Mahogany L. Browne: She said, “But hell, I let you be. / You ain’t got much to remember him / by nowhow.” My mom is a walking poem. Like, true facts, my mother is a walking poem. She is a poet, and she knows it, but she refuses it! (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) She gave the gift to you.

Mahogany L. Browne: She did. She did. I appreciate her, so. (LAUGHS) That is it, the nohow. Very—even though she is from California, her mother’s from Texas. Her father is from Kansas City, St. Louis. And so there’s a lot of twang that migrated, right? My grandfather, my paternal grandfather and grandmother were from Louisiana. So, you have all of these Southern roots tied into our cooking, our language, who watches the kids, how we clean the house. I’m, you know, I’m just lucky that it stayed with her so that I could see it in real time.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: I was wondering if we can get to another Redbone poem, but that one is really late in the book. It’s page 118. And it’s called “Redbone in God’s Image.”

Mahogany L. Browne: Okay. Oh, I love this one, too. I actually love the Redbone series. This was also when me and my mother were reconnected after some time apart and this is like, you know, it made it possible for us to be back together in a real way, not just like, I’m hurt, and I’m judging you and I’m upset, and her you know, having the same similar feelings like “I’m hurt because you’re judging me and I’m upset.” So, Redbone was the, that was not just an art piece, but it also was like a family portrait.

Helena de Groot: I mean, it’s beautiful because I feel like they’re so, it’s like a testament to you not going around but through.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes. Yes.

Helena de Groot: Right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Yep.

Helena de Groot: Like, let’s really sit with what happened. And let’s really hear each other.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: And it’s wild to me that you did that sort of right on the heels of, of having—how many years did you not see each other?

Mahogany L. Browne: We didn’t have the same relationship, like, we may have seen each other at like, a family outing. But it was at least, I would say, seven years of strained relationship.

Helena de Groot: Oh wow.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: When you were how old?

Mahogany L. Browne: 24.

Helena de Groot: Oh, right. So from 24 to like, 31 or something like that, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And do you know, like what, you know, because, again, I’m struck by the tenderness in your poems.

Mahogany L. Browne: Thank you.

Helena de Groot: What was it that made you think, “You know what? The time is there. I want to be close to her again.”

Mahogany L. Browne: Well, I missed my mom. She was like, my favorite person. And during that time, I think my daughter was coming into her high school era, which is very, I don’t know, it’s a jarring moment for me, because that’s when I lost my mother. So I really put a lot of effort into being the mom that I felt like I needed. And failing, right? Because, hey, it never works out the way we think. And then I, like, connected with my mom. And now that I’m speaking it, I recognize that, oh, yeah, Maria was going to high school, there was a tough transition. And I didn’t have my mother to talk to about like, “What was it like for you? To go through that with my sister and me? What did you do you wish you could do differently?” I didn’t have that relationship with her. And that’s what I think I started doing the interview for the Redbone series. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And in those conversations, did she give you what you needed?

Mahogany L. Browne: No. Not in regards to my daughter. But yes, in regards to what I needed as her daughter. I just needed to be reminded that while I am someone else’s mother, I am also someone’s daughter. And that someone cares if I’m okay. And not that like, you know, my partner, my daughter, like, not that I don’t have that love, but like, the, the, the, you know, the adult, the adult. The elder, the matriarch. We need those people, we need them. Even if you don’t have them alive in your, like, bloodline, you have a matriarch in your neighborhood, you have a matriarch in your religious prayer spaces, you have a matriarch or, or, you know, an elder that you turn to, to make sure you are on the right path. And so, I didn’t have that from my mother. And I wanted that. I didn’t want to just talk to folks in the community, because I do have them, you know, to rely on. But I wanted to know, my mom thought, what she would do, and if she could do it differently. And it was good. It honestly saved us. It brought us to this point where we speak two, three times a day.

Helena de Groot: Oh, wow.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yep. That is the truth.

Helena de Groot: That’s a whole other kind of level.

Mahogany L. Browne: It’s a lot.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: Because she’s so sweet and cute. She’s like, I just called to tell you, I went to—” and I was like, okay, that’s great. I love these conversations, but if I don’t pick up, if I’m in a meeting, if I’m on stage, don’t let her call go unanswered. She just roasted me like, last night and I was like, “All right lady, look. I was stuck in an airport. I was stuck on the tarmac. It’s about to sleet, snow, and I got a parking ticket. What? Like, I’m at the end of my rope.” (LAUGHS) And she said, “All right, just call me later then.” And I was like, AHHHH. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Yeah, exactly. Bye for now. Don’t think you’re off the hook, you know?

Mahogany L. Browne: No, you’re not. She’s like, “All right, here’s the perspective I’m giving you back: handle that, then call me back.” (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: Shout out to mothers, they set the record straight.

Helena de Groot: Absolutely.

Mahogany L. Browne: I would love to share the poem. You want to hear it?

Helena de Groot: I would love that.

Mahogany L. Browne:

(READS POEM)

Redbone in God’s Image

Redbone live across the street from the mall now

She used to have a BMW, she used to have a husband,

She used to own a house,

With kids in the front room & a crack habit

That got too big to hide in a valley’s cul de sac

She says she clean now

She say she top heavy & in God’s image

She say “we blessed, tho, we sure are blessed

to be here”—Coco’s descendants

She say she live by the 99 cent store now

She say she need the Obama phone

She say, I live by the mall, everything is around here

She say, “I’m good with that”

Mahogany L. Browne: She did say that. She did. She’s adorable. I really like her.

Helena de Groot: I mean, it’s amazing. I mean, the gratitude is amazing, too, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm.

Helena de Groot: Like, she’s had a hard life it sounds like.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yeah, she survived a lot.

Helena de Groot: But it doesn’t sound like she’s bitter.

Mahogany L. Browne: She survived a lot. She’s lived and is living a very, very full, robust life. And it is absolutely not what we all anticipated. And I’m sure every time she looks back, she’s like, “Oh, my goodness, I can’t, I can’t believe I did that.” So even when I interviewed her for this, at this point, she’s now moved to San Diego. That was in the valley still. She was only down the street from where all these poems took place. So, to have that conversation happen and her still be optimistic, was really riveting.

Helena de Groot: Right. Like she could kind of see like, Oh, this is where I used to have my BMW and own a house. And now look at me, you know, “live by the 99 cent store,” “need the Obama phone,” you know.

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And it’s so beautiful: “She say, I live by the mall, everything is around here,” “I’m good with that.”

Mahogany L. Browne: Boom. I’m good. I’m good. I love the positive refrain of “She say,” “She say, “She say,” and then just the absolute unnerved, unmoored “And that’s it. I’m good.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: I love that. I love that, too. But I mean, that’s really probably the closest to who she is now, that small little snapshot is very much how she walks through the world today.

Helena de Groot: I mean, you just talked about matriarchs, right, and how important it is to have them in your life, even if it is not your mother, if she were not around anymore, or, you know, that you need someone, a figure like that in your community. And this book is dedicated to your grandmother, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: This is. Who we just lost in July.

Helena de Groot: I’m so sorry. How old was she?

Mahogany L. Browne: Oh, she was in her 80s. She had a nice long life as well. But we did lose her. One of the best to do it. Elsie Jean.

Helena de Groot: Did she get to see any of the poems?

Mahogany L. Browne: She got to see Redbone. She actually got to see Redbone. And she got to see Redbone on stage. And, but the dementia kind of took over with like, really heavy within the last year and a half. So, my last three books she hasn’t been aware of. But the last one that she was aware of, she got to, see she got to speak to me about it, was Redbone. And that was important to me because it talks about her son. And them, you know, him being with my mother. And I just wanted to make sure I didn’t—I was afraid that I would, you know, be spilling secrets, even though everybody knows, but like, it means something different to put it in a book. And I also nod very openly, clearly, and honestly at the abuse that she survived, because the abuse that she survived is the abuse that taught my father how to abuse. So I was afraid of how that would fit. Even though my grandfather has passed and, you know, she was there by his side when he died. He is still, you know, he’s a beloved of all of the grandchildren. So I was more nervous about like, that. And her response was, “No, I’m not I’m not crying anymore. You told the truth. Fine.”

Helena de Groot: Wow, that’s the highest praise. Someone in your family says that.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: Because family secrets are not easy secrets and we never agree on how they should be told, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: That’s it. That’s it.

Helena de Groot: So, the grandfather in your poem, Muddy Waters, was that her husband?

Mahogany L. Browne: Correct. That’s him. Paul.

Helena de Groot: Do you want to read the poem?

Mahogany L. Browne: Sure.

(READS POEM)

Muddy Waters

When I think of my grandfather:

I never think of him as a fighter

I think of him military memory

hand tools, slapping five & sipping coffee

a chipped cup to his lips. Easy. Like his

smile. Like a man that loved the Blues.

I never think fist / shove / pummel

loosening teeth or bursting lips like fruit.

I only remember a kind man

Beckoning me to the kitchen table, his legs

crossed noose-like in a pair of paint-speckled

jeans. His smile, a ray of whatever brightens

the sun. He always offered me a sip of his coffee.

Sweet & mud dark.

Helena de Groot: Thank you.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, this poem really haunted me in so many different ways. And I’ll tell you a little bit why, because I want to ask you about it. But first, you know, did I understand that right that he apologized?

Mahogany L. Browne: Well, I wouldn’t have been the one to be there to see it.

Helena de Groot: Sure.

Mahogany L. Browne: But, in their living? Yes, yes. Yes, there was accountability. There was apology. I think at one point she left him. Right? So like, they’re, they had a long life together. That was her first love. She was 14, 15. And he was not. He was like 22, 23. So that’s another layer. When you’re looking at the patriarchy, it’s no wonder people think they can put their hands on somebody, right? It’s like, they believe that they own you, they own your person, your body. So however long that domestic abuse lasted, me and my grandmother didn’t speak about that. But I made sure that the poems that I wrote about him and her honored her memory.

Helena de Groot: It’s so inter—I mean, so as you said, you know, like, here was a man who, you know, beat your grandmother, taught your father how to be violent, and yet he was beloved, right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And it’s this very complicated character. And, you know, the poem is, is absolutely a reflection of that. But I’m wondering why you chose to tell the story with that perspective. The person who was centered is your grandfather, the perpetrator of the domestic violence, and not your grandmother, who this book is dedicated to, the victim of the—it’s not a judge-y question, by the way, right. I hope you know that. It is really, it was, it was a very, it was a very haunting choice that you made. And I’m just curious what went into that?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm. Well, he’s beloved to all of us. And while I heard all about this person that he was, by the time his grandchildren were born, she had already stabbed him in the leg,

Helena de Groot: Right!

Mahogany L. Browne: and put it in put a kibosh on that. She was like, “You gotta keep your hands to yourself, this is it.” So, and she didn’t leave him. She stayed with him. They raised their family together, nine children, and double digit grandchildren. And I think they have about, I would say, half a dozen great grandchildren that my grandmother was able to be alive to hold.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yeah, yeah, they have like four, four great grandchildren. But that said, we all make mistakes, right? Not one of us is infallible. Not one of us has not committed harm to someone we love, in the name of love, even.

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Mahogany L. Browne: And we are redeemable. And that’s what this book is about. This book is about looking at those who love. Love you dearly and love you wrongly. And ways in which they can not necessarily atone, but like, your boundaries can be fixed. And you can find a place of care for them. If there was some kind of restoration of justice, of power, apologies, accountability, which have all happened within my family, specifically with my grandfather and my grandmother. So yeah, it didn’t feel like a hard thing for me to do because he is still, or was still the love of her life. And I didn’t get to see that part of him. I got to see the aftermath. I got to see what he had learned. And what he had learned is to teach me to never let a man put his hands on me in that way. Right? It was wild! It’s like, what? What happened?

Helena de Groot: Right. Right. He was teaching you to be like, “Don’t ever be with a man that I used to be,” basically.

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: Like, “I know that kind of man. Don’t do that.”

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes. And there are other poems throughout Chrome Valley that speak very clearly to how he even learned this kind of violence, right? This is a man who, who had to be stolen away into the military because they tried to lynch him, because they wouldn’t, he wouldn’t let them lynch his dog. And the kind of anger that must seethe through the body. That then goes on to steal his parents to freedom in the middle of night. Yeah, of course, you walk through the world that kind of angry, and of course it spills out and it taints everything it touches. And I’m just very lucky that him and my grandmother were able to figure out what life can be, because I wouldn’t be here without their love.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. In this poem, in so many of the poems, even though the scenes that you write are very personal, very small, quote-unquote “small,” you know, you always tie them to like the larger issues in American society,

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: and the larger kind of like fault lines, and wounds. And so I want to do that here, too. Because, you know, what this poem really showed me was like, oh, you can write honestly about that duality, about like, this was a kind man, I have never seen anything but kindness. Here was a man, you know, what is it, slapping five and giving me sips of his sweet coffee to drink, you know?

Mahogany L. Browne: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: And at the same time, you know, yes, and. Right?

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Helena de Groot: Like, and he was violent. And, you know, he had split the lips, bruised the skin. And so, it made me think about the current state that we’re in right now in the country, right? Where, like, we so desperately need people to write about their own families. And I’m talking about white people, right? Who need to tell stories about honestly, what happened in their family, what their families did. And I think people get defensive, right? They’re like, “Yeah, but my grandfather is such a kind man.” Like, I’m sure. I’m sure that that is how you knew him.

Mahogany L. Browne: Right. Yes, and. They can both exist at the same time. Because the people who love me, they will call me on my thing. If you love me, you will tell the truth. The truth is, my grandfather was an amazing man. He built houses for folks who could not afford a carpenter. He built houses for people who did not have the tools, because that’s what he learned in the military. And, and while going around West Oakland, offering his services for almost free, if not free, he was abusive when he got home. Right. So like, yeah, both of those people exist in the same body.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: You know, I’ve been looking up a little bit about book banning, right. And you wrote books that are, you know, you have a book that is literally titled Woke, you know, like every Republican’s favorite word to hate and to, you know, to try and ban. And so I’m just wondering, like, you know, I want to know about censorship, you know, like, how does this affect you, you and your work in a public way? And how does it affect you, in private?

Mahogany L. Browne: In a public way, I’ve received death threats, I’ve been added to something called the Red Wave List. I’ve had people tag me in TikTok challenges where white parents hide Woke Baby book in bookstores, so that nobody will buy it, and then tag me. So that’s the public. And it makes me sad. It’s made me very sad. It made me like, okay, so, I won’t say all the places I’m performing, because the last time I did that, someone watched me via IG live—well, I thought via IG live. I was saying, “This is what the venue is, this is what we’re doing.” And then they start texting how they’re going to strangle me and noose me up and all this stuff. And then security has to be called, because I’m in an ensemble with other people. And they’re afraid. Like, it’s just—so yeah, they make living hard. But not impossible. And while it hurts my feelings, I recognize that it’s designed to distract me from the work. So, what did I do? I had to get an assistant, I had to get somebody who can help me with the online portion so that I can focus on the writing. Because if me writing a book called Woke Baby with a young Black baby on the cover, wnd the word “woke” is obviously nodding at, you know, social justice ideas, we’re talking about breaking glass ceilings, we’re talking about, you know, economic wealth for all, we’re talking about food desperation. And that not being the case anymore through the efforts of the Black Panther Party and the implementation of the Black Panther Party free food program. And we’re talking about speaking up for yourself in whatever way you need to as a young, Black or brown or marginalized voice. And how babies, they’re already revolutionaries, they refuse: I’m not being quiet, and when I want to eat, I want to eat, when I want to sleep, I want to sleep, if I don’t like you, leave me alone. Like, they are the ultimate at autonomy. I need you to help me when I need you, and I need you to shut up when I need you. Like, I love that. And so I wrote that.

Helena de Groot: That’s amazing! I have never thought of a baby as the original revolutionary.

Mahogany L. Browne: OG.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Mahogany L. Browne: Because they literally, they stand for nothing. There’s no coddling infuriation. You can’t coddle me if I’m infuriated, fix it. And then I won’t be infuriated. Stop killing people and calling it police work. And I’ll stop being mad. I won’t go outside and March anymore. Like,

Helena de Groot: Yeah. So how do you keep the revolutionary baby in yourself alive in the face of all the censorship and all the death threats and all that?

Mahogany L. Browne: You know, you have to lean on your community. And if your community can’t show up because they are also bogged down with negativity, you find the thing that you can control. And for me, what I could control is my intake. So, I am not on Twitter, right? There’s a certain way that I only get on Twitter now. It’s on my phone, I don’t do it on my laptop. Okay, boom. I make sure I only have my phone certain hours of the day. So there’s things that I’m putting into place just to make sure that I’m focused on my purpose, which is writing the story.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Writing the stories of the untold, writing the stories of the unimagined and writing the stories of the silenced. That’s all I’m here to do. I’m here to remind folks that I come from a long lineage of—I usually say like, freedom fighters, but my grandmothers were bosses. They were like, “Yes, we will fight for your freedom. But we also want to fight for your children to live well.” And they were safe space creators. They went without eating so that children could eat. And I don’t know what other kind of benevolence that is. Like, I don’t, I don’t know. It’s not charity, it feels more like um, mmm, it was, their happiness was intertwined with their children’s happiness. And if the world could like, realize that your goodness is attached to my goodness, and your freedom is attached to my freedom, and your sadness, even if I don’t have to worry about moving in a wheelchair, if you do, and you can’t give up this, that affects me because it has impacted you. And if it impacts you, it impacts me. Once we remove, again, those borders of individualism, then we will have collective wealth in our health, in our love lives, and in the ways in which we are able to live.

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

Helena de Groot: Mahogany Browne is the author of more than 10 poetry collections, including Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice, Woke Baby, Black Girl Magic, Chlorine Sky, Redbone, and her latest, Chrome Valley. She has received fellowships from the Arts for Justice Fund, Cave Canem, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, and Poets House. Browne is also the Executive Director of JustMedia, a media literacy initiative designed to support the groundwork of criminal justice leaders & community members. And she’s also the very first poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center in New York. To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Todd Sickafoose and Eric van der Westen. I’m Helena de Groot, and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)