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HoodWitch
This riveting debut from poet Faylita Hicks is a reclamation of power for black women and nonbinary people whose bodies have become the very weapons used against them. HoodWitch tells the story of a young person who discovers that they are “something that can & will survive / a whole century of hunt.” Through a series of poems based on childhood photographs, Hicks invokes the spirits of mothers and daughters, sex workers and widows, to conjure an alternative to their own early deaths and the deaths of those whom they have already lost.
In this collection about resilience, Hicks speaks about giving her child up for adoption, mourning the death of her fiancé, and embracing the nonbinary femme body—persevering in the face of medical malpractice, domestic abuse, and police violence. The poems find people transformed, “remade out of smoke & iron” into cyborgs and wolves, machines and witches—beings capable of seeking justice in a world that refuses them the option.
Exploring the intersections of Christianity, modern mysticism, and Afrofuturism in a sometimes urban, sometimes natural setting, Hicks finds a place where “everyone everywhere is hands in the air,” where “you know they gonna push & pull it together. / Just like they learned to.” It is a place of natural magick—where someone like Hicks can have more than one name: where they can be both dead and alive, both a mortal and a god.
In this collection about resilience, Hicks speaks about giving her child up for adoption, mourning the death of her fiancé, and embracing the nonbinary femme body—persevering in the face of medical malpractice, domestic abuse, and police violence. The poems find people transformed, “remade out of smoke & iron” into cyborgs and wolves, machines and witches—beings capable of seeking justice in a world that refuses them the option.
Exploring the intersections of Christianity, modern mysticism, and Afrofuturism in a sometimes urban, sometimes natural setting, Hicks finds a place where “everyone everywhere is hands in the air,” where “you know they gonna push & pull it together. / Just like they learned to.” It is a place of natural magick—where someone like Hicks can have more than one name: where they can be both dead and alive, both a mortal and a god.
112 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 2019
11 people are currently reading
616 people want to read
About the author
Faylita Hicks
4 books24 followersFaylita Hicks (pronouns: she/her/they) is a queer black writer, mobile photographer, and performance artist.
The author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in Slate, Huffington Post, Texas Observer, POETRY magazine, Color Bloq, The Rumpus, Foundry, Prairie Schooner, Kweli Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Tahoma Literary Review,The Austin American-Statesman, Glass Poetry Press, Lunch Ticket, Matador Review, and others.
She is the managing editor of Borderlands:Texas Poetry Review, an organizer with social justice group Mano Amiga, a 2019 Lambda Literary Writing Retreat Fellow for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, and a 2019 Jack Jones Literary Arts “Culture, Too” Gender/Sexuality Fellow. She served as a mentor for 2019 L.A. Review of Books Publishing Workshop and was a finalist for Palette Poetry’s 2019 Spotlight Award, the 2018 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, and the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Annual Poetry Prize. She received Catapult's Inaugural 2019 Black History Month Workshop Scholarship, participated in the 2018 Open Mouth Readings Retreat, and the 2018 Speakeasy Nonfiction Workshop. She was recognized and presented as a State Poet at the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival. In June 2019, she released ONYX, her spoken word companion EP for her debut poetry collection.
The Founder/Creative Director of Arrondi Creative Productions, Hicks is an artist on the roster for hip-hop collective Grid Squid Entertainment. In 2017, she was awarded the San Marcos Arts Commission Grant for her monthly event series, SMTX Ripple Market, which provided performance and exhibit opportunities to women, POC, and those identified as LGBTQ-IA over the course of 36+ local and regional events.
The 2009 Grand Slam Champion of the Austin Poetry Slam, she was a member of the 2008 Neo Soul Poetry Slam Team and won several individual regional competitions. Her visual art has been exhibited in the Texas State University Gallery of the Common Experience, Insomnia Gallery in Houston, Dahlia’s Gallery in San Marcos, Patio Dolcetto in San Marcos, and featured in Five:2:One print magazine.
She received her MFA in creative writing from Sierra Nevada College’s low-residency program and lives in San Marcos, Texas. She is currently at work on a memoir.
The author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in Slate, Huffington Post, Texas Observer, POETRY magazine, Color Bloq, The Rumpus, Foundry, Prairie Schooner, Kweli Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Tahoma Literary Review,The Austin American-Statesman, Glass Poetry Press, Lunch Ticket, Matador Review, and others.
She is the managing editor of Borderlands:Texas Poetry Review, an organizer with social justice group Mano Amiga, a 2019 Lambda Literary Writing Retreat Fellow for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, and a 2019 Jack Jones Literary Arts “Culture, Too” Gender/Sexuality Fellow. She served as a mentor for 2019 L.A. Review of Books Publishing Workshop and was a finalist for Palette Poetry’s 2019 Spotlight Award, the 2018 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, and the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Annual Poetry Prize. She received Catapult's Inaugural 2019 Black History Month Workshop Scholarship, participated in the 2018 Open Mouth Readings Retreat, and the 2018 Speakeasy Nonfiction Workshop. She was recognized and presented as a State Poet at the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival. In June 2019, she released ONYX, her spoken word companion EP for her debut poetry collection.
The Founder/Creative Director of Arrondi Creative Productions, Hicks is an artist on the roster for hip-hop collective Grid Squid Entertainment. In 2017, she was awarded the San Marcos Arts Commission Grant for her monthly event series, SMTX Ripple Market, which provided performance and exhibit opportunities to women, POC, and those identified as LGBTQ-IA over the course of 36+ local and regional events.
The 2009 Grand Slam Champion of the Austin Poetry Slam, she was a member of the 2008 Neo Soul Poetry Slam Team and won several individual regional competitions. Her visual art has been exhibited in the Texas State University Gallery of the Common Experience, Insomnia Gallery in Houston, Dahlia’s Gallery in San Marcos, Patio Dolcetto in San Marcos, and featured in Five:2:One print magazine.
She received her MFA in creative writing from Sierra Nevada College’s low-residency program and lives in San Marcos, Texas. She is currently at work on a memoir.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 12, 2020
These poems blend the witchy with the devastatingly real. I loved them so much I took one into my students to teach them.
May 4, 2022
Faylita Hicks is a mother, a daughter, a queer Afro-Latinx nonbinary pan femme, an activist, a spoken word artist, a poet, and a formerly incarcerated person. She was arrested for a civil misdemeanor while studying for her Masters in Fine Arts at Sierra Nevada University. Hicks realized that, with all her education, she could barely navigate her way through the US penal system. How could a person with a high school education do the same?
In her debut poetry collection HoodWitch, Hicks rages against individual predators, a society gamed to privilege the few, a system that eats black and latinx women alive. Her mission is to write poetry that is accessible to every person. To "translate policy into poetry."
To read the full review, please visit my website for Book of Spells.
In her debut poetry collection HoodWitch, Hicks rages against individual predators, a society gamed to privilege the few, a system that eats black and latinx women alive. Her mission is to write poetry that is accessible to every person. To "translate policy into poetry."
... we are still wondering how we always manage to end up alone & face down in a pool of gasoline. we have got to love ourselves out here. us restless daughters stone the silence—our black bodies hang from the stars like hot oil under blemished sun, shimmy when everyone else is asleep. dig into ourselves. dig under—blocks & blocks of black bodies—or fresh water. under the side street. groan for our broken pipes. our stolen gardens. look for where it all went wrong. dig the ruined parts out. reach inside ourselves because somebody—somebody—has got to fix the goddamned plumbing here.
To read the full review, please visit my website for Book of Spells.
July 12, 2020
I reviewed this book for RHINO poetry. Here's the start:
At the center of HoodWitch, the confident, crackling debut from Faylita Hicks, is “Gawd,” whose very name reveals Hicks’s interest in re-creation and self-determination. Hicks, who uses both “she” and “they” pronouns, draws on Haitian Vodou, witchcraft, and life experience to create a Gawd who specifically serves black women, at times referred to by the more inclusive “blxck” and “womxn.” Drawing on private traumas—birth and death, sex and assault—as well as on public traumas—Eric Garner’s death, the abuse of black girls by R. Kelly—Hicks’s collection lays bare wounds and the cauterizing fire.
https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/hoodw...
At the center of HoodWitch, the confident, crackling debut from Faylita Hicks, is “Gawd,” whose very name reveals Hicks’s interest in re-creation and self-determination. Hicks, who uses both “she” and “they” pronouns, draws on Haitian Vodou, witchcraft, and life experience to create a Gawd who specifically serves black women, at times referred to by the more inclusive “blxck” and “womxn.” Drawing on private traumas—birth and death, sex and assault—as well as on public traumas—Eric Garner’s death, the abuse of black girls by R. Kelly—Hicks’s collection lays bare wounds and the cauterizing fire.
https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/hoodw...
June 3, 2020
Texas poets have officially arrived this year! I was blown away with Faylita's lyrical words, hashtag that takes up the entire page, these pages will give you a well-placed punch blow in the gut. A queer black author who is up and coming. I can't wait to read more of her work, especially when it comes to black and brown bodies being incarcerated. Her voice is needed and necessary at this time. I highly recommend you read HoodWitch.
October 9, 2020
This poetry collection hits with force, a tornado of reclamation by Poet and Memoirist Faylita Hicks. HoodWitch is more than overcoming or simply surviving—it is alchemy – rebuilding and rising. Hicks speaks to all who have endured, re-made, and persevered. Her words cast magick into a world desperately in need of miracles.
August 2, 2020
Hoodwitch is like a slow burn spell. There are chants. There are ingredients. There is intent. Hicks takes us through the densest part of the forest - death, pain, loss - and, having slain a history of trauma, brings us out the other side wearing a pelt of resiliency.
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August 8, 2020
Faylita's pen is sharp and poignant. With every poem they bring you into their lineage of craft magic while also speaking of justice for black womxn and children.
December 13, 2020
Well, this hits you with full fucking force. And only in the very best way. Very powerful voice here and some dazzling poetic technique too. Felt nice reading this. Tough and brilliant.
January 26, 2021
Spectacular collection of deeply personal, mystical and political poems. Superb
February 12, 2021
Fascinating and visceral collection.
June 3, 2024
Collections like this remind me why I am a poet.
October 16, 2025
Even though I'm not the target audience, I admire how Hicks opens the door and provides space to sit with the words and listen.
December 15, 2025
Beautiful and complex. A holy grail for every black girl.
June 22, 2020
This brilliant collection of poems focuses on the violence done against black womxn/non-binary folks and centers the way these traumas play out through their bodies. The lyrical poems cover topics from rape and sexual assault to the cultural appropriation of the Kardashians. I highly recommend everyone check out Faylita Hicks work.
May 25, 2023
Faylita Hicks's HoodWitch brims with myth and magic, with vivid wounds and a “riot of fists.” In the glittering, but blood-stained, tapestry of this book, Hicks weaves coral snakes, Kardashians, the serial killer Samuel Little, kerosene, and “the roux-scented woods of New Orleans” into an unforgettable and unsettling piece of art. These corporeal poems are “born of electric heat and black pepper” and are thick will wolves, “brooms and weapons,” as HoodWitch coils language into venom and antidote, praise and hex.
Sectioned into three rites--water, flesh, and smoke--these rites serve as records of loss and endurance. And, though these poems flame with grief and fury, Hicks, after documenting the violence inflicted upon women's bodies, redresses trauma, as in the piece “Photo of a Girl,1988: Cyborg” which closes with a powerful statement of resilience:
The world of HoodWitch swirls with eulogies and elegies, salutations and hallelujahs, conjurings and curses; and, amidst this whirling, we come to understand that, ultimately, these are poems of survival, resistance, witness, and guidance dedicated “to those / above /and below / ground.”
Sectioned into three rites--water, flesh, and smoke--these rites serve as records of loss and endurance. And, though these poems flame with grief and fury, Hicks, after documenting the violence inflicted upon women's bodies, redresses trauma, as in the piece “Photo of a Girl,1988: Cyborg” which closes with a powerful statement of resilience:
And I know what I am and will always be—
something that can and will survive a
whole century of hunt.
The world of HoodWitch swirls with eulogies and elegies, salutations and hallelujahs, conjurings and curses; and, amidst this whirling, we come to understand that, ultimately, these are poems of survival, resistance, witness, and guidance dedicated “to those / above /and below / ground.”
December 26, 2022
Faylita Hicks is undoubtedly, incredibly talented. This manuscript--which is rather lengthy for a modern poetry manuscript--is incredibly tight. I have confidence that Hicks' career will only continue to grow. Seriously, everything about this: the word choice is incredibly tight; Hicks experiments with form and does so with such an intentional, masterful way (I love the way the author incorporates binary code;) the return to specific images and themes, gently, throughout. This collection is incredibly polished and visceral. The author writes at the end that they saw their own authenticity in the haunting cover art: I sensed the author's authenticity in these pages.
One poem, in particular, touched me so incredibly deeply. Lazarus--
"Magnetic how the hours rope around my wrist now
a constant ring around me it is you extending eternally"
yesYESYES!
One poem, in particular, touched me so incredibly deeply. Lazarus--
"Magnetic how the hours rope around my wrist now
a constant ring around me it is you extending eternally"
yesYESYES!
June 17, 2020
After reading so many big chapter books I really wanted to sit back and enjoy some poetry, but I really wanted fresh poetry, which can be tricky. A lot of modern poets I read I tend to get lost in their poems, which make it hard to enjoy the figurative language. But let me tell you this, Faylita Hicks writes some damn good poetry. She has a way of hooking each stanza to the next that makes you not want to stop. There is such power in her voice as well as a foreboding feeling that gives you goosebumps. Her truths in this book are so bare and raw and they hit your heart. I do believe the one I connected with the most was titled sandboxes. It hit a very personal note with me and the anxiety I carry. If you have the time and want some good down to earth verse, pick this one up.
October 24, 2020
This is an amazing book, the poetry is beautiful, liberating, and healing. It both carries its history and is absolutely embodied in the challenges, meetings and luminal spaces of today. This is the book I carried with me when stuck in painful spaces, to remind myself of a future I love. A future this book is writing, drawing, chanting, writing into being.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews