adrienne maree brown

Adrienne Maree Brown, often styled adrienne maree brown (born September 6, 1978), is an American writer, activist and facilitator. From 2006 to 2010, she was executive director of the Ruckus Society. She also co-founded and directed the United States League of Young Voters. Brown describes her thought as postnationalism, and others have described it as Black feminism or womanism. She also supports, among others, the Black Lives Matter and prison abolition movements.

Much of her work as a writer is based on the writings of science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler. Her first book, Emergent Strategy, was published in 2017. Other books include Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, published in 2019, and We Will Not Cancel Us, published in 2020. Brown also runs podcasts and has released a music project. Additionally, she works as a doula.

Life and activism Early life Brown was born on September 6, 1978, in El Paso, Texas, to a mixed-race couple who met at Clemson University in South Carolina. She is the eldest of three children. Her father was in the military and she spent much of her childhood abroad in Germany (see United States military deployments), as well as in Georgia, New York, and California. As mixed-race children, Brown and her sisters experienced racism in school.

Activism in Detroit and onwards From 2006, brown worked with social justice organizations in Detroit. From this, brown developed a strong relationship with Grace Lee Boggs, whom she counts as a mentor. Brown was a major figure within the Allied Media Conference as a host and facilitator. Between 2006 and 2010, brown also worked as the executive director of the Ruckus Society.

Brown has supported Democratic candidates in presidential elections, encouraging her readers to vote for Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Brown describes her thought as postnationalism. Others have described it as Black feminism or womanism. In her book We Will Not Cancel Us, she expresses support for the prison abolition movement.

Works Journalism Brown is currently a contributor to YES!, a magazine focused on solutions journalism. Brown previously contributed to Detroit-based newspaper The Michigan Citizen and was a sex columnist for Bitch magazine.

Books and contributions to books Brown has published extensively on sex, and science fiction. Much of her work as a writer is based on the writings of science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler. Her own writing style has been said to belong to the Afrofuturism genre.

Her first book, Emergent Strategy, which examines sustainable social change, was released in 2017 by AK Press to critical acclaim. Brown defines emergence as "the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions" and describes emergent strategy as a "life-code" which is effective both in organizing and personal life.

Emergent Strategy has given way to a series of books published by AK Press on sustainable transformative justice, including the November 2020 release We Will Not Cancel Us And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice and Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, released May 2021. The 2020 book We Will Not Cancel Us considers questions of harm, accountability, and transformative justice, speaking primarily to an audience of activists and others organizing around prison abolition.

First, brown asks that we listen to others who have wronged us, using "why?" as a framework. She says that it is gratuitous to categorize such people as "shady, evil, or psychotic". According to her "the percentage of psychopaths in the world is just not high enough to justify the ease with which we assign that condition to others". By asking "why?", brown says that we are humanizing those who have harmed us. By posing this question we may understand that grief, abuse, trauma, mental illness, difference, socialization, childhood, scarcity, and loneliness explain peoples’ actions.

Second, brown proposes that we ask ourselves "what can/we learn from this?" when we have been harmed by others. According to brown, "If the only thing [we] can learn from a situation is that some humans do bad things, it’s a waste of [our] precious time – [we] already know that". Therefore, we must ask ourselves "What can this situation teach me about how to improve our society?". In this respect, brown uses the example of the Bill Cosby sexual assault cases. Had we believed the first woman who came forward and told her story about Cosby, potentially forty other rapes could have been prevented. Thus, brown stresses the need to identify perpetrators of harms, to prevent them from re-offending, and "ensure they experience interventions that transform them".

Third, brown suggests that we ask ourselves "how can my real-time actions contribute to transforming this situation (versus making it worse)?" In real-time, there is space for silence, reflection, growth, and resting, which is absent on social media. Brown suggests trying to get mediation support, thinking of the community, and seeking justice, to address conflict.

Brown's anthology Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good was released in February 2019, According to Catherine Lizette Gonzalez, on the news site ColorLines, the book "demonstrates how activists can tap into emotional and erotic desires to organize against oppression". The book appeared in April 2019 on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback nonfiction, where it reached number six.

Fiction In September 2021, brown published the novella Grievers, her first long-form work of fiction. It eventually became a trilogy: Grievers (2021) Maroons (2023) Ancestors (2025)

Music On March 25, 2021, brown released an EP titled The Sabbatical Suite. It consists of five songs written on sabbatical in 2020, over beats by her musician friend J-Mythos. She has called it "a small odd intimate music project". She also provided background vocals on the 2023 album Javelin by Sufjan Stevens.

Podcasts Alongside her sister Autumn Brown, brown runs the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, which seeks to learn "from the apocalypse with grace, rigor and curiosity" and was in its 5th season as of 2021. In June 2020, brown and Toshi Reagon began hosting the podcast Octavia's Parables, which gives an in-depth dive into Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. On June 23, 2022, brown appeared on On Being with Krista Tippett on an episode called "We are in a time of new suns".

Work as a doula Brown also works as a doula. She identifies as a "radical doula", because she sees it as part of her activism.