Adrienne Maree Brown

In the tradition of Octavia Butler, radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want.Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.

Cancel culture addresses real harm...and sometimes causes more. It’s time to think this through.“Cancel” or “call-out” culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous "Harper’s Letter,” signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to address harm and take down powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, call outs are seen by some as having gone too far. But what is “too far” when you’re talking about imbalances of power and patterns of harm? And what happens when people in social justice movements direct their righteous anger inward at one another?In We Will Not Cancel Us, movement mediator Adrienne Maree Brown reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible paths beyond this impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes even from from its targets. However, Brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, if it doesn’t, how do we seek accountability and redress for harm in ways that reflect our values?

A tale of what happens when we can no longer ignore what has been lost in this world.Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function. Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it. In anguish, she follows in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit’s history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts the model off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.

New York Times–bestselling author adrienne maree brown transcends binary thinking about "accountability" and shares dignified, holistic ways for individuals and communities to address harmful and destructive patterns.This selection of prescient, compassionate essays explores patterns we engage in that are rooted in limited thinking. Through a lens of “loving correction” rather than mere critique, author adrienne maree brown helps us reimagine how to hold ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities accountable by setting clear boundaries, engaging in reflection, and nurturing honest relationships.Loving Corrections is divided into two sections, with the first portion featuring new essays including “A Word for White People” and “Relinquishing the Patriarchy” and writing on topics like moving from fragility to fortitude, disability, and navigating critique within activist communities. The second section expands and updates pieces from brown's popular monthly column “Murmurations” in YES! Magazine that explore accountability—within oneself and community—with depth, inventiveness, and empathy.Along with allowing us more authentic access to ourselves and to each other, the “corrections” in the book’s title are intended to explore and break identity-based patterns including white supremacy, fragility, patriarchy, and ableism. brown also offers practical guidance on how to apologize and be accountable from our nuanced positions of power, history, and resources.Building on her previous work—especially Holding Change and We Will Not Cancel Us—brown reminds us how much we need each "It is only through relationship that we learn how to be, understand our impact on others and explore small shifts that may yield remarkable collective change."

Before she was an NYT bestselling author, adrienne was known for her work as a facilitator, mediator, and teacher. She still travels the country helping organizations, especially Black organizations, clarify their goals, articulate their values, and negotiate conflicts. This work is based on her theory of Emergent Strategy and often takes the shape of multi-day workshops called "Emergent Strategy Immersions." In adrienne's verson, facilitation and mediation aren't simply tools for organizations, they are life skills that we all must practice, and through which the goals and values of organizations will align with those of the individuals within them. This is to say that this is not just a book for nonprofits. Her core audience has been requesting a book on applying Emergent Strategy to facilitation and mediation work for a long time. This book will serve as a textbook for the many workshops adrienne gives each year and a primer for everyone else. The book is a deeper dive into practicing Emergent Strategy in real time, drawing from the lessons of her facilitation work, and a year and a half of experiments with immersing people into emergent strategy community through her Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. The book will be intriguingly structured, with the introduction (or Heart) in the middle and the front and back halves of the book devoted to Facilitation and Mediation respectively. Beyond that, it borders on a choose-your-own-adventure book in that the lessons are brief and to the point, highly practical, and you can move through the book in a number of ways to meet your needs. Adrienne's approach is rooted in a Black feminist worldview. These days, the world is hungry to hear more about that worldview and to take leadership and learn best practices from it.

The search for hope and community in death and desolation. The pandemic of Syndrome H-8 continues to ravage the city of Detroit and everyone in Dune's life. In Maroons, she must learn what community and connection mean in the lonely wake of a fatal virus. Emerging from grief to follow the subtle path of small pleasures through an abandoned urban landscape, she begins finding other unlikely survivors with little in common but the will to live. This second installment of the Grievers trilogy is a tale of survival, of moving beyond seemingly insurmountable devastation toward, if not hope itself, then the road to hope.

Fables and Spells, a gathering of adrienne maree brown’s short stories and poems, is a vibrant selection of visionary works, both previously published and brand new. Included here is her most beloved story, “The River,” as well as the two sequel tales of her Water Trio. The remaining fourteen tales and nineteen poems explore moments of beauty, conflict, and transformation that weave deep, radical lessons into the folds of the fantastical. Reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans lead to surprising biological changes. An found audio fragment from the year 2067 shows the triumph over competition and death by those who understand that “our roots are intertwined.” Her “spells” play on the edge of poetry with directives, chants, and world-bending efforts to engage the present towards a different future.adrienne maree brown sometimes calls herself a fiction writer temporarily writing nonfiction, a poet trying to change the world. Fables and Spells brings fans of her work—and all lovers of speculative fiction and poetry—brilliant, new visions of change and possibility.

Community ideals and magic clash in this follow-up to Grievers and Maroons by adrienne maree brown.Ancestors is the powerful conclusion to adrienne maree brown's Grievers trilogy—a story of how life blooms amid tragedy and hate. In the wake of a mysterious pandemic known as Syndrome H-8, the survivors of a ravaged and isolated Detroit are building a future inside the network of deserted skyscrapers that define the city’s skyline. Dune’s magic keeps a lush green wall encircling the community, and while some settle inside its safety, others grow desperate to get out, fueling the tension between shelter and confinement. As Dune’s power blossoms and her connection to the spirits of the departed deepens, she must learn how to balance the needs of her people, both living and dead.

Discover the unforgettable and transformational experience of journaling your way into your most authentic self. This journal will help you claim permission to live your purpose. Based on the bestselling philosophies of radical self-love, emergent strategy, and pleasure activism, this journal gives you permission to love yourself deeply as you are. Journaling to these prompts will help you surrender to your body’s needs instead of forcing yourself into cramped disciplines. It will encourage you to become awed by the natural beauty of your divine self instead of being rampantly self-critical. It will aid you in embracing your shadows and accepting responsibility for your impact all while liberating you to just be. This structured journal, from the cohost of the Emergent Strategy podcast and the New York Times–bestselling author of The Body is Not an Apology, provides six key practices, with prompts for each practice that center on curiosity, surrender, grace, and satisfaction.

La cancel culture e la pratica del call out sono argomenti all’ordine del giorno. Nate come strumenti al servizio di soggettività marginalizzate per rispondere al danno e alla violenza subiti in situazioni caratterizzate da un forte squilibrio di potere, sono oggi nel mirino degli avversari dei movimenti sociali radicali, rientrando tra i punti più problematici della cultura politica odierna. L’intervento critico di Adrienne Maree Brown si inserisce nella tradizione del femminismo nero, queer e anticarcerario, mostrando un’alternativa praticabile alla denuncia degli eccessi del politicamente corretto. Un’alternativa che non guarda nostalgicamente a un passato immaginato come più spontaneo, ma a un futuro compiutamente abolizionista e politicamente desiderabile. Con uno scritto del Laboratorio Smaschieramenti. Postfazione di Malkia Devich Cyril.

La cancelación surgió originalmente como una herramienta de los grupos oprimidos para enfrentar las injusticias. Hoy, este recurso ha dado pie a un frenesí que nos arrastra hacia el castigo y el punitivismo. En un mundo plagado de violencia, la cancelación erosiona aún más nuestras comunidades y dificulta la organización colectiva. Nos aleja de la sanación y de la resolución de conflictos.En este libro, adrienne maree brown replantea desde los cuidados comunitarios y la justicia transformativa unadiscusión cooptada por sectores conservadores. La autora, con una experiencia de décadas en la mediación comunitaria, toma una perspectiva antirracista, queer y feminista para responder a preguntas ¿podemos enfrentar el daño más allá del castigo? ¿Cómo rendir cuentas de nuestros propios actos y exigir a los demás responsabilidad y justicia? ¿Qué implica comprometerse con una lucha con principios que nos acerque al mundo en el que queremos vivir? Este es un libro que aboga por desterrar el punitivismo de las luchas emancipatorias, por honrar la complejidad humana y social sin abandonar la exigencia de justicia, y por construir movimientos sociales saludables y gozosos.