Sana Sana
After ten years of performing her spoken word poetry, Ariana Brown gathers her favorite poems to return to in her chapbook Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). With a tender and critical voice, she explores Black girlhood, the possibilities of queerness, finding your people, and trying to survive capitalism. All are explored as acts of different kinds of love—for self, for lovers, for family, for community. Brown’s collection refuses singularity, insisting on the specificity of her own life and studies. As she writes toward her own healing, Brown asks readers to participate in the ceremony by serving as witnesses. Sana Sana, colita de rana, si no sana hoy, sana en la mañana. Cover art by Ari Brielle.
BUY THE BOOKPraise for Sana Sana
“Brown’s collection, Sana Sana, is simultaneously revelatory and familiar; like its title, the poems within aim their gaze towards healing but not healing in a conciliatory way; here Brown looks to heal by swishing a finger through the wound and holding the blood up to the light. Which is to say, Brown's writing is for the ache, for the scab, for the scar, and the ghost pain, 'It takes love to name the damage /on one’s own body.' And this is a collection about naming, about forgiving, about the music of memory and the invention of self and history in order to survive.”
Elizabeth Acevedo, author of The Poet X
“The virtue that I have long admired in the poems of Ariana Brown is the warmth that is directed upon the audience. And these poems know and identify their audience with gentleness and gratitude, even—or especially—when the audience is the self. Even death links its fingers with praise, even dislocation is met with a crawl back to some familiar affection. I am thankful to once again be witness to these poems that welcome and make space for the people who most need it. And for how Ariana Brown sets a lens on the world that is critical, but always caring.”
Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance
Press for Sana Sana
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Interview with Ariana Brown for Adroit Journal
Review of Sana Sana in The Hellebore Press
Watch the accompanying video for a reading by Ariana Brown and interview conducted by Dr. Alan Pelaez Lopez to celebrate Sana Sana's launch.
