Spoken word artist, author, performer Amena Brown
We’ve all been victim of our own perceptions and our own tired, cyclical, self-limiting behaviors and attitudes. At one time or another we’ve asked ourselves, how we might become better, what we need to do to earn, trust, or love. We wonder what’s “wrong” or we ask ourselves, “what if?” And inevitably we become our own accusers and our thoughts become barriers to our possibilities. Amena Brown would call that scenario a “broken record.”
Amena Brown grew up loving books and it was her love for books that drew her to writing. As a teenager she was interested in poetry and penned her poems quietly into a little notebook. Her mom, a single mother, insisted on openness in her household so when she discovered that little notebook she unapologetically commenced to reading it. She loved the words she uncovered and encouraged Amena to write more, going as far as entering one of the poems in a competition initially without Amena’s knowledge. The winner had to perform the winning poem in front of an audience. Amena only learned of the entry four days before the competition winners were announced. Of course she won. And then she read her piece in front of a crowd and that’s when Amena Brown fell in love with performing her words, and a true spoken word artist was born.
But Amena admits she never really expected to make a career of her writing.
“Not like this. I love writing poems so I figured I'd always write poems. Even if I end up working in another field someday I’ll still be writing poems. I'm always going to do that, but I never thought I would do it for a living. No. The way this turned out is very different than what I thought.”
As an artist her work has taken her places she never dreamed. And having energized and encouraged audiences from large arenas to coffee houses, it’s obvious, Amena’s words resonate. She’s gained new followers, fans and friends on an unexpected platform earned no doubt by her passion for being genuine and her willingness to live a raw faith. Whether her words are written or spoken, it’s the willingness to be vulnerable that seems refreshing and strikes a cord.
“I think being vulnerable, for me as an artist, is how the audience connects,--It's the one thing that we all share in our humanity…when you see someone else being vulnerable, even if it's in a different way, a different thing, or not your thing, your heart leans in because you know an element of what that feels like.”
Much of Amena’s writing and performance is focused around her devotion to her Christian faith, and while she says the Church encourages vulnerability it’s more of a safe vulnerability. She encourages the Church to be even more vulnerable in order to bring about more authenticity and healing.
“Sometimes that's hard because that (vulnerability) starts undoing the way we present ourselves to people: how we want people to think we are, how holy we are, those things. I find it's better for your faith to be in a space with other people who want you to be vulnerable.” After all she asks, “How can we heal and how can we truly walk with God if we can't open up those parts of our lives?”
Cover, Amena Brown’s How to Fix a Broken Record
"We all have something about the way God has made us that we've been taught or trained consciously and subconsciously not to love. As we learn to love ourselves and how God uniquely made us, we can better love other people and see them in reflections of the amazing image of God." – Excerpt, How to Fix a Broken Record, Amena Brown
And it’s vulnerability that has taken Amena’s career another step with the release of her newest project, “How to Fix a Broken Record: Thoughts on Vinyl Records, Awkward Relationships and Learning to Be Myself”.
I grew up as a kid in the '80s where I wasn't seeing that many images in the media of people who look like me in general, and definitely not of this hair, my natural hair. I felt, for a long time as many black women felt and black girls felt, that in order to be accepted in society I better straighten my hair to be accepted. When I went natural, (9 years ago this year), it was really a journey for me of learning to love this hair as it grows, letting it be curly, letting it be round whatever it is. For other people it may not be hair. I think all of us have a something like that, but for me it was totally my hair, and I think learning to love my hair teaches me to love myself too.
When she’s not writing or performing, Amena takes her message with her to other parts of the world, but also learns from others along the way.
She co-led a team called Women to Women in Rwanda. She was one of 11 black women from America who went there in partnership with Africa New Life.
“Africa New Life is an amazing Rwandan organization, and part of what they do is work with women in Rwanda, women in leadership, women in the villages getting vocational training. I wanted to take a trip that was not a “missions” trip in the worst way. For us to go there, particularly for us as black women from America, to meet our Rwandan brothers and sisters there and connect with them and sing with them and learn from them, I wanted it to be this learning exchange to say, ‘We come here hoping to share, but we are also here to learn from your brilliance."
And it’s those experiences that help shape Amena Brown’s story. Moreover, her story interwoven with the story of others no doubt shapes her artistry.
“There's power in story because it's something that we share. It's either the story makes me go, "Oh, my story's totally like that” or "I knew somebody like that." Or it makes me laugh or it makes me cry. I think those stories are so human and I think it's important for us to really see each other's humanity. I think story helps us do that.”
After all, Amena’s personal story, personal truth and humanity helped shape, “How to Fix a Broken Record”.
“I love vinyl. I love music so I started thinking about that and just thinking, when you're listening to a record and it starts to skip and how annoying that sound is, that we all have negative messages in our minds like that too, that keep us from love and from God and from our calling in life. How do we fix those? -- I mean, spoiler alert: We can't is what you'll find out. So I just took some different topics in that book: dating, and home, and loving yourself, and tried to think about my own broken records in those areas and hoping other people will see their broken records too.”
She’s hoping this project will help people become more comfortable with who God made them to be. It’s that sort of acceptance and balancing act between humility and confidence that no doubt has drawn so many to Amena’s message.
“In order to be truly humble, it is to be in your skin, to fully be in your own skin. And a part of being confident is going, "This is who I am, broken, flawed, good, bad, here in my skin. I'm just going to be present where I am. I think that is a big part of humility too.”
Amena Brown resides in Atlanta with her husband, DJ Opdiggy and I recently caught up with her at Catalyst Atlanta, a thriving leadership organization that draws thousands. There she was promoting How to Fix a Broken Record and encouraging leaders.
“Being a leader is not a solo job, it's not a, "I'm going to do this whole thing by myself." To be a good leader you have to be leading in community. That's your accountability, that's your groundedness, that's the place that reminds you are serving.”
When it comes to leading, loving, encouraging, and serving through authentic performance and artistry, Amena Brown doesn’t skip a beat.
Watch one of Amena’s favorite performances below.