4Poetry. African & African American Studies. Krysten Hill's HOW HER SPIRIT GOT OUT is a lively, urgent song. Answering the writers whose voices raised her, Hill calls on Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, and Zora Neale Hurston to help her navigate the complicated landscape of selfhood. Hill's speaker, wise and direct, open yet elusive, also sings for the women who brought her up: her aunt, her grandmother, and her mother. These spirits who've guided her life and taught her through example how black women persevere, have given her the means to bear witness to an age of racial violence. With intensity, audacity, and a darkly comic wit, Hill grapples with the question of how to fight a city that knows you're unarmed, rendering each poem as a weapon and a shield, and using both for self-defense.

Necessary and powerful...These poems are a middle finger tucked in the hip pocket of your favorite dress.--Jill McDonough

These poems exude at once vulnerability, rawness, and lucid beauty.--Danielle Legros Georges