Hope Beyond Galaxies: A Conversation with shantell hinton hill about Black girl magic & other elixirs
i learned how to vanish
into thin air
when i was little.
a witch taught me—
made me do it
because she couldn’t stand
the sight of me.
“Black girl magic”
As a woman with vision, shantell hinton hill is a voice that conjures renovation and hope. She is a pastor, social justice advocate, and writer who makes her home in Arkansas. To speak with shantell is to encounter a professional yet powerful passion for positive change. She actively engages and encourages her community (and audiences beyond) through her social media platforms.
Black girl magic & other elixirs, shantell’s debut poetry chapbook, is and now available for preorder (click here for wholesale prices). The poetry chapbook delivers a dynamic message that uplifts and empowers Black girls, Black women, and all those in this world impeded by systems that still default to oppression. Within, shantell speaks to the strength garnered from her experiences and the faith she has in herself, her community, and those devoted to seeking a better way for this world.
Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow author and interviewer, met with shantell over Zoom to discuss the development of her poetic voice and the power of music and spirituality that spark the magic found in her collection.
Who are some women writers who have influenced you?
First and foremost, I need to name the writers who inspire me who have passed on. Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler are my absolute all-time favorites. They both have been so formative to who I am as a person and my literary tastes. I would add bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston who have inspired and shaped me as well. Lucille Clifton is a powerful poet I admire who informs some of my own work as a poet. I also appreciate and enjoy the world-building found in N.K. Jemisin’s writing. I tend to lean toward Black women authors, Black feminist authors. They have spoken to my soul for a very long time, and I am excited to lean into the lineage of who they are as writers and as people.
Many of your poems touch on the invisibility of the power-less, be that a child, a female, a person of color. How did you step out and develop your own voice? What inspired you to start writing?
Once I started to understand that the White gaze was really just a figment of the imagination of people who do not want to see Black girls, Black women, Black people be in power, I started to release myself from really feeling like I was powerless. I realized that my truth and my experiences were powerful, and it was necessary to speak them out loud and have that agency. I could not allow anyone to try to speak for me. That is something that propelled me to put pen to paper and start this collection. I wanted other people, particularly other Black girls and women, to understand the power that happens when we just speak our truth and do so boldly.
Some people believe that religion and women’s rights are like oil and water, they do not mix. Can you speak to the intersection of faith and feminism in your work?
I love that you asked this question. For me faith and feminism are absolutely connected. I proclaim a Christian faith and have since I was about the age of five. When I think about Jesus and his ministry, women were the hallmarks of that ministry. Not just in the miracles he performed but at his resurrection. Who were the first people to proclaim that he had risen? It was women. There are so many ways that you can read biblical text that make you think that women should remain silent in the church, that they have no business being in a place of authority, and that women’s rights would not be important. However, if you allow yourself to approach the biblical text with a feminist lens, one that really asks how a Black woman would experience this in our present-day context, you can see that there are many ways that Jesus was always looking out for women. Whether it was the woman who was “caught in adultery,” or the woman with the issue of blood, or the woman who was trying to seek healing for her daughter, he absolutely surrounded himself with women and wanted to include their gifts in his ministry. I really feel like there is room for faith and feminism to coexist and that religion and women’s rights don’t have to be oil and water. You just have to have a willingness to be in community with people who are different than you.
God be
keeping us
like auntie ‘nem.
and God
stay freeing us
like that sistafriend.
so, as for me—
i’ma call God
what God is.
“God, our mother-auntie-sistafriend”
The power of song is prominent in your work, some of which creates its own kind of music on the page. Can you expand on why song has been important for you personally and in your writing journey?
I think songs and music are so powerful because they can be portals to different times and dimensions. I can remember the first time I heard Whitney Houston’s albums riding in my mother’s car, in her 1992 Honda Accord, and I can just envision the details so vividly—the sounds, the smells, everything about that time in my life—simply from hearing that Whitney song, “I’m Every Woman.” Songs have a unique ability to connect us to not just different times and space but to different people. Even people who don’t speak English as their native language can enjoy Whitney or Chaka Khan or Aretha Franklin because there is something about the way the music speaks to the soul. In the same way that the music I grew up listening to spoke to my soul and edified my soul, I was trying to capture that in some of my poetry and in my stories. Whether you grew up as a Black girl or not, there is something in this story, in what the poem is telling you that connects with your soul. Hopefully you can listen to the music, and it can enhance that message even more.
There are many strong themes covered in small packages in your collection including several pieces where opposing ideas meet or converse, one example being the intersection of oppression within one’s own community and the support found there. Can you speak to the importance of acknowledging this dichotomy and how it has played out in your experience?
We must speak to those dichotomies because I feel that a lot of times, we stay silent about the ugly parts that we are experiencing. We feel that somehow, we are betraying our people, our community, our family, ourselves when we speak to those realities. But I do feel like the beauty of intergenerational dialogue, which is something that I hope you can really get a sense for in [Black girl magic & other elixirs], is that there is nothing wrong with critiquing and constructively building upon ways to get better. I think that we in the younger generation don’t want to stay silent about the things that we were told were shameful or that we should never speak about publicly. We want to see those things changed and I believe that there is power, there is so much power, in pulling down the strongholds of silence and speaking to what has happened to us. This allows for room for healing. That is a big reason why the oppression continues to persist and exist, because we haven’t talked about it, and we have not healed from it. How can you heal from something until you start to name the harm? I believe that speaking about both the oppression we feel in our communities and the amazing opportunities for support really just gives us a way to experience the fullness of our humanity, to experience healing, and also look toward to what a better and brighter future can look like.
“starshine and clay” is a powerful poem. Why did this phrase speak to you, and can you expand on how “Won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton inspired your own poem?
“Won’t you celebrate with me” is a poem I read almost daily. I feel like as a woman of color, as a Black woman who lives in the South, every day something is really trying to make me second guess myself. Something that wants to make me feel like I am not enough, or that I am too much, or too angry, or too something, while simultaneously making me feel like I am not enough something. It is very hard to live in this reality sometimes. This poem reminds me that there is nothing in this world that can stop me from having what belongs to me. There is nothing in this world that can keep me from what the creator has destined for me. Just reading her poem where it says “what did I see to be except myself” and she talks about “this bridge between starshine and clay.” That part, that bridge, inspired [my] poem, with that image I take a step further into my own personal experience. I have a daughter now who is 18 months. While I am fearful about some of the things that are happening right now in our world, like with reproductive rights and all sorts of things that are not going well, I still have so much hope that she is going to be among the leaders and the warriors and the voices of the next generation who will say, “No more.” The generation who will not allow for these kinds of things to keep happening. I may not get to see some of the freedoms that she will see in her lifetime for myself and so I really wanted to write that poem just as a head nod, as a thank you to Lucille, and also kind of like a future-casting for what I hope will be true for my daughter one day.
starshine is not afraid of darkness
and clay is not afraid of contortion
that’s why we know them well.
“starshine and clay”
I also wanted to talk about “get out the galaxy, Black girl.” I love its placement before “starshine and clay,” and I would love to hear more about its inspiration and its form.
I am a huge Afrofuturism and science fiction nerd. I love N.K. Jemisin, I love Black Panther, Wakanda, I love The Woman King (although it is not Afrofuturist but more like an alternate view of history). There is something about imagining new worlds and getting beyond what sometimes we get stuck in here on earth. I wrote this poem as a play on words, like a joke, but also an encouragement for us to think futuristically. It is a call to realize that what we experience here in the United States doesn’t have to be this way, honestly. It really doesn’t. If thinking about what an otherworldly experience would look like for you helps you imagine what changes need to be made here in this present time, then that is what I hope this poem can do for you.
What is Black girl magic? Can you define the concept for your reader and how it shaped the collection?
Black girl magic is so much more than words on a paper, and I don’t even know if I can do it justice by trying to articulate it with a definition. I will try to describe it in ways that readers in my audience may understand it better. Black girl magic is the way that you see young Black girls Double Dutching between two jump ropes as if they are just having a conversation. They make it look easy. Black girl magic is the ways that you see a young Black woman or teenager have a bit of sass; there’s an essence to her that you can’t describe that you know is absolutely a part of her Blackness. Black girl magic is the way we can look at somebody and that other person, particularly if it is another Black person or Black woman, knows exactly what we are saying. It is a way of being and a way of existing that invites others to be fully who they are. It also gives us space and agency to just be fabulous in every single way possible. I think Black girl magic defies stereotypes and defies subjugation and logic. A lot of times people like to make it seem like it is something that can be bottled up, but it cannot be coopted. It is cultivated within us and within this communal experience we are all having as Black people, particularly in America right now. I can see it already in my daughter and she is only 18 months. She has a little attitude, and I am like, “Yes, girl.” Even though I want her to do what I want her to do, she has her own ideas about how things should be already. It’s like, “Ok, alright, I’ll give you that.” It’s just this pureness of spirit that cannot be squashed. In its best form it gives people permission to be their best selves.
Has writing (this collection and in general) shaped your outlook as a parent, a mother, and vice versa?
Yes. It has been a mirror for me because that idea of being seen and not heard has been so ingrained in me that there are times where I have to catch myself from being so heavy-handed with my daughter. First of all, she is too young to fully understand. Secondly, I am super clear along with my husband that we do not want to break her spirit in the ways that, unfortunately, older generations did with us. Whether it was making us be silent, or giving whoopings all the time when we don’t know why we are getting whoopings, or just all the superstitions and the ways of being that we were brought up in, we are really careful to not do that with her. I do think that writing this collection allowed me to be way more conscious about how we are building her agency and how we are asking ourselves hard question about our willingness to say “I am sorry” for things. Or how early we want to share with her the truth about gender and racial oppression. What are the things we want her to know and what are the things that we want to keep her safe and protected from as long as we possibly can? The collection has absolutely been a mirror for me as a new mom and hopefully it is something we can have a conversation about when she is old enough to understand the contents.
What advice do you have for other women writers?
I recently watched a movie on Netflix called The Luckiest Girl Alive. It was such a good movie. Mila Kunis’ character is a writer and at the end of the film she is having a conversation with her editor. He tells her the least she can do in her writing is to be honest. Don’t think about how they want to read it. Don’t think about what they want to say. What you have to do is be completely honest with every single part of it and give the people that. It resonated with me so much and it actually is how I approached the collection. It was just bare, it was raw, it was vulnerable and uncomfortable in some of the poems, but it was honest. I give that advice to other women writers: just be honest. We have had enough people writing for us, creating characters that do not explore our fullness and the range of our identities, and we have had enough of men telling us who and how we should be. I want to encourage women to write and write honestly.
because we
know the sky
ain’t all there is
to see here.
so we’ll just
keep on walking
with our own secret
headed to another galaxy.
full
of worlds
where we are
already free.
“get out the galaxy, Black girl”
Tell us about your vision for the cover?
It was really important to me that the cover be representative of the nostalgia and nuances of Black girlhood in the ‘90s. The roller skates, cassette tape, and perfume all communicate a certain essence of “being” that one can feel, smell, and hear. Likewise, the pictures of my younger self and my present-day self represent much of my journey of becoming and self-possession—signifying the power in reclaiming the little girls that live inside of us while empowering the women we have fought tooth and nail to belong to ourselves.
How did you connect with Yellow Arrow and what did the process of submitting your work feel like to you?
My publishing journey has been long and filled with rejections. I’ve written so many manuscripts across varying genres and have not found a home nor an agent. I thought I’d take a break from the grind and try something new, so I began writing a few poems. When I realized how much I loved it and that there was a noticeable theme tracing girlhood to womanhood, I decided to research opportunities to publish the collection that would honor my voice and the fullness of the collection. I came across Yellow Arrow and was encouraged by the mission and vision of the organization. And I have not been disappointed by the publishing process with them at all . . . working with Yellow Arrow (after being selected) has been one of the most pleasant and supportive experiences I’ve ever had as it related to my writing. They truly do prioritize women’s voices and provide a care-filled approach to walking alongside writers. I am forever grateful for this experience.
We currently have open submissions for chapbooks we would like to publish in 2024. Do you have any advice for the women-identifying authors submitting their chapbooks?
Just be yourself, write your truth, and do it even if it’s scary. I found that vulnerability in my writing was both freeing and debilitating, but it became so beautiful to see the finished product. Trust your instincts. There is a still, small voice inside you that will guide your pen and give you power, if you let it.
Do you have any new projects or current projects you are working on that you would also like to share with Yellow Arrow readers?
I am in the middle of writing a proposal for a book called Love Auntie: Parables and Prayers for Abundant Whole Being. It is a nonfiction book for people of faith who want to explore decolonizing their spirituality and cultivate new disciplines for a faith that shifts and really wants to be more inclusive and open-minded to people. That is my next project, and I am hopeful a publisher will pick it up soon.
You can find more about shantell hinton hill and her work for radical good at shantelhhill.com and can preorder your copy of Black girl magic & other elixirs from Yellow Arrow Publishing. Thank you, shantell and Melissa, for sharing your conversation.
****
Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.