We Are Owed.

​We Are Owed. is the debut poetry collection of Ariana Brown, exploring Black relationality in Mexican and Mexican American spaces. Through poems about the author’s childhood in Texas and a trip to Mexico as an adult, Brown interrogates the accepted origin stories of Mexican identity. We Are Owed. asks the reader to develop a Black consciousness by rejecting U.S., Chicano, and Mexican nationalism and confronting anti-Black erasure and empire-building.

As Brown searches for other Black kin in the same spaces through which she moves, her experiences of Blackness are placed in conversation with the histories of formerly enslaved Africans in Texas and Mexico. Esteban Dorantes, Gaspar Yanga, and the author’s Black family members and friends populate the book as a protective and guiding force, building the “we” evoked in the title and linking Brown to all other African-descended peoples living in what Saidiya Hartman calls “the afterlife of slavery.”

​Released July 29th, 2021

Foreword by Alan Pelaez Lopez
Cover art by Desiree Vaniecia

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Teacher's Guide

Interested in teaching We Are Owed. in your classroom? For discussion questions, recommended readings and pairings, and activities, download the free We Are Owed. Teacher's Guide.

Official Interview

Press

Bitter Brown Femmes, Episode 54 // Featuring Ariana Brown
Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify  |  Audioboom

LitHub, "Letter to Yanga, from Six-Year-Old Ariana"

LIT Fridays at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center
Reading & Interview hosted by Jessica Lanay

New Books Network  |  Interview with Ariana Brown
Facilitated by Jonathan Cortez

De Colores Radio, Episode 81: "Divest from Latinidad" // Featuring Ariana Brown
Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify  |  Stitcher

Tour & Booking

Ariana Brown is available for *virtual* events for the duration of the pandemic. For more information about Ariana's services and how to book her, please click here.