"You think you're ready for this? féi hernandez is the American dream in the second before it blooms into nightmare--this intuitive poet's existence, their muscular root, bellows the questions many of us have spent lifetimes avoiding. And here, finally, is our reckoning--poems that backhand us with the restlessness of the actual world, a world in which a human being can be deemed illegal or have their body, or the way that body loves, under the blunt jurisdiction of the state. These undaunted stanzas do not exist to teach--it's much too late for that--they exist to devastate. Then you'll know if you were ready."

--Patricia Smith, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Incendiary Art and author of numerous works

"féi hernandez is a necessary poet whose voice contains both the tenderness of love and a searing scrutiny of the forces that shape love. In this innovative debut that examines the nationalistic impulses of citizenship against heteronormative functions of gender identity, hernandez adeptly dismantles the borders within and outside the body. This book demonstrates that there are multiple ways of coming out just as there are multiple ways of loving, of honoring the sacrifices of our parents, and reconstructing the myths of the past which inform our present. I was greatly moved by the candor with which hernandez unravels their desires, wants, and suffering. 'If this poem was a new body I'd sing every day; / if it weren't for the wounded deer I've become I'd run wild, ' hernandez writes. I am grateful for these poems' declarations of self-love, discovery, and for the songs that continue long after I've put the book down."

--Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Cenzontle & Children of the Land

"féi hernandez's first collection is a masterpiece of intersectionality, not only showing the bridges between identities but the necessary focal point of that project: understanding a fuller self that is available to the world. Unlike other poets who lose themselves in the writing of identity and feel at odds with their many parts, hernandez finds themself by imagining new worlds and deeper realities where all the pieces of a person are allowed to exist together. Through the journeys of origin, family, culture, race, language, magic, the working-poor, gender, sexuality, immigration, the hood, loss, and love hernandez's collection speaks to the new poetics of the 21st century, what I call 'poetics of the radical imagination.' Hood Criatura functions as both a dare and an invitation, asking readers to imagine more through being whole. An important, timely work from an emerging QTPOC voice that should be on every shelf."

--Meliza Bañales, Lambda Finalist 2016, author Life Is Wonderful, People Are Terrific