Redbook Mango, a poet, rapper, and Street Sense vendor, was found dead in October after loved ones reported her missing in May 2023. She was 44.
Those close to Mango remember her as generous, intelligent, and a talented writer — a “force of nature” who wanted everyone around her to feel seen, heard, and loved.
“She would come into a space and just pull everyone toward her,” said Thomas Ratliff, Street Sense’s director of vendor employment.
Mango was born Chandra Brown on April 21, 1980, in El Paso, Texas, according to a family obituary. She lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for a few years during her childhood, but spent the majority of her time in D.C.
Mango’s care for others and passion for writing started young. She was the “perfect child” growing up, Sheila Brown, Mango’s mother, said. She made straight A’s in school and strived to “be the best” at everything she did. Her mother remembers that even at a young age, Mango used poetry as a way to “write her way through whatever she was going through.” She was known to carry around four or five notebooks stuffed with her writing.
“The first time she went through something I gave her a notebook, a pen, and a Bible, and in three days she was alright,” Brown said. “She could always express herself through her writing because she had an articulate vocabulary and her wording and rhymes would always capture.”
After graduating high school, Mango worked in D.C. government and served as a preschool Sunday school teacher at Smith Grove AME Zion Church. She spent some time in North Carolina, but again returned to D.C. Mango joined Street Sense in December 2021, publishing 35 poems, frequenting writing workshops, and spreading her “magnetic energy” to vendors, staff, and volunteers.
Ratliff often thinks back to the first time Mango shared a poem she had written and memorized with Street Sense’s writer’s group, describing her delivery as a rap that held the attention of everyone in the room. During her time at Street Sense, Mango performed long poems from memory at several workshops, in the office with vendors, and at a poetry slam.
“She stood up in the middle of what I think was a workshop, gets up on top of a table that is not meant for standing and just starts going through this amazing piece of poetry, just from memory, that she had written,” Ratliff said, recalling one of the first times she performed her work at Street Sense.
A photo of Redbook Mango in the Street Sense office. Photo courtesy of Thomas Ratliff
In a poem Mango published a few months after joining Street Sense, “What does writer’s group mean to me?,” she wrote “Writers group has come to be, an excellent outlet for my therapy.”
Mango frequently spoke with Brown about publishing her poetry, but told her mom she often lost her writing when she moved to new places. Brown said many of the pieces Mango wrote for Street Sense “have nothing on the work” she sadly doesn’t have access to now.
Mango filled rooms not just with poetry, but with laughter, Ratliff said, giving “a piece of herself” to everyone at Street Sense. Mango had a “passion for people,” Brown said, and dedicated her time to helping people experiencing homelessness. Mango always wanted to “better people” and looked for ways to understand those around her, often showing her love by laughing and joking with people, Brown said.
“She would give herself when she didn’t have anything to give,” Brown said.
In a poem titled “Homeless entertainer,” Mango opened with “You are not alone — It’s many of us who do not have a home.” She wrote that “life is a journey,” and “God put us here, we just have to wait.” Some of Mango’s poems reference herself and people close to her experiencing homelessness and struggling with housing.
Mango is survived by three children who are “as intelligent as her,” Brown said. “When she was being a mother, she was always a great mother,” Brown said of her daughter. She said while life circumstances unfortunately “grabbed her attention,” her desire to be loved and ensure everyone around her felt cared for never faltered. “She only ever wanted to love and wanted someone to love her, that was her whole thing,” Brown said.
Mango mentioned her children in several pieces for Street Sense, including a poem titled “A good daughter/child,” where she wrote “Now nobody is perfect, but my daughter is.”
Mango was missing for a year and a half before D.C. police found her body encased in concrete in a refrigerator by an apartment building in Northeast D.C. in October. The D.C. medical examiner has not determined the cause of her death, according to NBC4 Washington.
Mango was “one of God’s angels,” Brown told Street Sense. Mango turned to and thanked God in many of her poems, including “Listen, Lord,” and “Faith.”
In the last poem she published for Street Sense, titled “Thank you staff,” Mango thanked God for the day, noted “life is too short,” and said she missed several people including her son and mom. She ended the poem with words that now resonate with many of the people who loved her: “Realization is missing you all the time.”
