Adrienne Maree Brown, often styled adrienne maree brown, is an American author, doula, women's rights activist and black feminist based in Detroit, Michigan. From 2006 to 2010, she was the executive director of the Ruckus Society. Much of her work as a writer is based around the writings of Octavia E. Butler. Her first book, Emergent Strategy, was published in 2017 to positive reviews. Her second book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, was published in 2019 and demonstrates how activists can tap into emotional and erotic desires to organize against oppression.
Career
Brown has worked extensively with numerous organizations on social justice. Following college, Brown worked with the Harm Reduction Coalition in Brooklyn, and started working as a social justice facilitator. She would go on to facilitate the Social Forum and work with social justice organizations in Detroit. Of her work in Detroit, brown wrote, "Our actions have to be towards the world we want. We need to be guerilla gardening and turning people's heat and water on. We need to be the guerillas putting up solar panels in the hood. That's what Detroit has taught me." Between 2006 and 2010, Brown served as the executive director of the Ruckus Society. She described the Society's work as prioritizing "directly impacted communities - folks who are impacted by economic and environmental injustice and are angry about their situation. We help them determine how to strategically take action, so they can reorient them- selves to the long-term vision of self- determination and sustainability." She was cofounder and director of the League of Young/Pissed Off Voters and has worked with the Arctic Indigenous Youth Alliance. In 2006, Brown served as a consultant with Detroit Summer, that critic Shelley Streeby describes as "a multiracial, intergenerational collective" that "worked to transform communities through youth leadership, creativity, and collective action", based out of the Boggs Center. From this Brown developed a strong relationship with Grace Lee Boggs, whom she counts as a mentor. Brown has worked with the as a host and facilitator. Brown previously contributed to Detroit-based newspaper The Michigan Citizen, and was a for Bitch magazine. She has published extensively on sex, healing, self-care, trauma, and science fiction. In 2010, she published the Octavia Butler Strategic Reader with Alexis Pauline Gumbs. In 2013, she received a Detroit Knight Arts Challenge Award to run a series of Octavia Butler-based science fiction writing workshops. In 2015, she collaborated with Walidah Imarisha and Sheree Renee Thomas to edit and release Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, a collection of 20 short stories and essays about social justice inspired by Butler. In 2018, Western Washington University assigned Octavia's Brood as "summer reading" material to incoming students. Her own writing style has been said to belong to the afrofuturism genre. Her first book, Emergent Strategy, was released in 2017 to critical acclaim. Critic Shelley Streeby, describes Brown's work as "luminous" in its "imagining the future of climate change, making different worlds through direct action and social movement-building, and creating transformative change through visionary speculative fiction...In her movement-building work brown emphasizes the importance of intersecting social justice struggles." Brown's most recent anthology, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good was released in February 2019. In April 2019, it appeared on The New York Times' Bestsellers List for Paperback Nonfiction, where it was number six.
Brown was born 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, as well as in Georgia, New York, and California. As mixed-race children, Brown and her sisters experienced racism in school. Brown attended Columbia University where she studied African American Studies, political science, and voice. She was at the university when Amadou Diallo was killed by police officers in 1999. She cites this time as being pivotal to the development of her political consciousness, especially regarding issues of policing and race. She identifies as bisexual and has recounted experiences with homophobia and sexual assault. She's been living in Detroit since 2009 where she moved to after being invited to consult with Detroit Summer in 2006 and also after dating Detroit-based rapper Invincible
