Last Friday, I watched a widely circulated video of one then two, maintenance workers in Philadelphia carrying out an order to remove an exhibition on slavery at the city’s Independence National Historical Park. This visual reminded me of the powerful words from this month’s interview guest, Henry Hicks IV, an American writer and organiser with deep South roots. In our conversation, he asserted, “You can certainly target access to stories, but you can’t ever legislate away a story’s ability to exist in the world.”
Our dialogue speaks to the importance of storytelling and literary craft to feed our civic imagination as we confront the current administration’s war on intellectual curiosity, freedom of speech, and the multicultural reality of our country. I am proud to share excerpts from our conversation below. The full version is available here, on Substack and Spotify.
Klarke Stricklen (Narratives of Repair): Henry, how do you dream of repair?
Henry Hicks IV (Interviewee): It’s a great question. So, I have been thinking a lot lately about repair. [Repair] is something that’s dependent on civic imagination. In the US specifically, we’re living in a uniquely complicated time when it comes to civic imagination. We’re living in a time where the world around us is telling us that all of the dreams that we’ve envisioned about a more equitable, more just, future may not be possible or might be further away than we had hoped. We’ve seen the Trump administration dismantle institutions that deliver aid, we’ve seen the administration go after policies regarding equity and access—and even before this administration, we are coming out of an administration that told us that we cannot expect our government to intervene [in] genocide as we watch it happen before our eyes.
But all of that being said, and despite the difficulty of this moment, I actually think that we are uniquely positioned to continue advancing the notion of repair. What the Trump administration has shown us, perhaps inadvertently, is that these structures can be reshaped and reimagined quite easily. We absolutely can abolish ICE. If the Trump administration can go after the budget of all of these different federal agencies, including the Department of Education, we absolutely can think about reallocating funding from police at the municipal level. We absolutely can think about our military budget and the idea of reallocating those funds towards addressing the root causes of crime, poverty, lack of access to healthcare, education, so many things. [...] As I’m thinking about repair, I’m thinking about the ways that this moment can be one of potential, actually.
Klarke Stricklen (Narratives of Repair): You know, I love your thinking on that. I really want to go back to two things that you said. So, the first thing I really want to ask [is] that you go a little bit deeper into what civic imagination means. What does it look like for us, especially in this moment? Then, second, I definitely want to go back to this idea of politicians calling for repair. When you said that at the top of my mind, I’m thinking about the article that Secretary Buttigieg wrote, probably a couple of weeks before the end of the year. So, I am hoping to go into that and to think about how this kind of language of repair, which has originated in resolving the harms of the past, may be utilized after this moment in a way that may not actually acknowledge those harms or put those harms to the forefront. I’m also thinking about our 250th birthday and thinking about the seriousness we need to take when we utilize this kind of language of repair, especially when we’re thinking about how we will recognize our origin story. What will our actions look like in response to that recognition of this kind of narrative, and what does that mean for a lot of our politicians and activists at this time?
Henry Hicks IV (Interviewee): I want to start with your question about civic imagination. The way that I think about civic imagination is this: what’s the kind of world that we want to live in? How is that world different from the world that we live in today? And what do we need to do in order to bring about this world of our imagination? On the Left in particular, we talk a lot about dreams and imagination—because those are things that guide us. I think that we actually sometimes can get a bit lost in just how broad that language can be. When I say imagination, I’m thinking about things that I would argue actually are quite tangible. For example, I’m thinking about a society in which everybody does have the right to vote. We call ourselves a democracy, but we can talk about the range of laws that enable voter suppression —in particular, folks convicted of felonies in the US do not have access to the ballot. That’s one thing that’s very, very specific, when I think about civic imagination. I think about actualizing the label that we like to use: democracy. I’m thinking about things like healthcare. I’m thinking about things like, what does it mean to feel safe in your community? What are the structures and institutions that we fund and enable that advance safety? How are those different from the institutions that we fund and enable that advance policing and surveillance? We’re in a moment where we can really think about what we want the next 250 years to look like.
Klarke Stricklen (Narratives of Repair): I think as we’re talking about all of these different questions that accompany this kind of dream of repair, and my first instinct is to grab my pen and paper and just start scribbling away. So, you and I are both in the same kind of writing group. We’re writing together, thinking together, thinking about some of these different concepts on different levels sometimes, too. So, I think that some of those same questions have shaped a practice of repair within my writing. So, I am curious if you have been influenced by this idea of redress within your writing and how it’s kind of shaped your craft and thinking.
Henry Hicks IV (Interviewee): Yeah, I love this question. I have always written. . . I was with my grandparents over the holidays. Every single time I see them, they like to tell this story about how when I was little, as soon as I learned how to write, I was drawing little pictures and writing little stories to go with them. My grandparents and my parents like to call themselves my first readers, because it was always me running out of my room and giving them whatever sheets I’d just scribbled on, my little, I don’t know, five-sentence stories when I was little. Thinking a bit about how redress has influenced my approach to writing, because I absolutely think that it has, I’ve always written, but the idea of writing with purpose and writing with intention is something that came to me when I was probably in my teen years. It actually makes me think—this may be a little silly, [but] it makes me think a lot about the books that I enjoyed reading at that time when I was 12, 13, [and] 14. I’m thinking a lot about The Hunger Games. I’m thinking a lot about Divergent, The Maze Runner, all of those YA dystopian books that were so big when we were younger. I took to them immediately. I think part of that has to do with the fact that I [was] reading these books about young people beginning to recognize the injustice in their society and stepping into the fight against that injustice, at the same time that I was beginning to really understand the contours of the world around me. While writing began as a hobby--I always loved the imagination of it--it very quickly became the only avenue that made sense to me for processing the brutality that I saw in the news, the contradictions in our narratives, and the urgency of resistance and repair. From there, it became the central way that I thought about practicing that resistance as well.
Klarke Stricklen (Narratives of Repair): I’m thinking about us both being from the South, and especially with this idea of, you know, banned books. The idea that a lot of young adults who are coming up won’t have those moments where they can publicly go to those books, maybe in their school library or even sometimes at their public library. To have that moment to say, now, “I’m reading something in this book that kind of assists me in understand[ing] injustice.” Perhaps, they’re kind of just relying on the people around them to be able to fill in those gaps given this kind of restriction in being able to access these important stories and words. So, I’m wondering, as someone who is inspired by many of these authors and books that are now banned in our public-school systems, are there any words that you have for young readers, or just young people right now, who are trying to make sense of the world.
Henry Hicks IV (Interviewee): That is something that I think about often. I look at the list of the top banned books in the country right now, and so many of them are books that were pivotal for me when I was coming up. It feels mind-boggling to think about kids today not having the same kind of access to those books. But what gives me hope is keeping in mind the fact that people will always tell these kinds of stories. You can certainly target access to stories, but you can’t ever legislate away a story’s ability to exist in the world. I’m thinking about my upbringing, as somebody who did have access to these books in different libraries, but who had non-traditional spaces where I found stories that [held] a lot of meaning to me when I was coming up. I’m thinking about the...work of my grandparents, actually, in Dalton, which I know you’re familiar with. Dalton is a small town in North Georgia that is represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, but is a city where my family has always been, going back to the period of enslavement. It’s a city where [the] interpersonal legacy of slavery is clear and obvious, right? It’s the kind of place where my grandfather walking down the street can point at a family and say, “This family’s ancestors at one point owned this other family’s ancestors.” It’s the kind of place where I can go back, and I can look at newspaper clippings from lynchings in Whitfield County, and I recognize the last names in these stories because it’s the kind of town where families have stayed there. So, that legacy feels really, really, clear, but it’s also the kind of community . . . where stories have an added value. . . We have inherited the stories that have been passed down to us. And I think those stories are a good reminder that despite the gaslighting that you might hear in the world around whether or not this history is relevant today or whether or not these legacies are tangibly felt. These stories remind us that no, they actually are very, very real and that this work really does remain urgent.
Klarke Stricklen (Narratives of Repair): I think that takes us to the end of our conversation. I’m wondering if you can leave us with a few words about how you’ll be continuing your storytelling practice but also thinking about civic imagination. Do you have any advice for people looking to embark on the same kind of pathways?
Henry Hicks IV (Interviewee): Yeah, Octavia Butler said, “you’ve got to make your own worlds. You have to write yourself in.” I’ve been thinking a lot about that as something to guide my practice moving forward. The stories that we tell today help determine the future that we live in tomorrow. I’m also thinking about—going back to The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which is a book that I think should be required reading—Coates describing the work of writing as the work of haunting. You want to tell stories that are going to stick with your audience. I have done a bit of work organizing on campaigns and doing community engagement work. It feels very, very similar. I think [organizing] goes hand in hand, actually, with this work of writing. Broadly, it’sabout the work of narrative and persuasion. So, as people are thinking about how they want to realize the dream of repair and the work that they want to do moving forward in this new year, I would encourage people to be that haunting—to think about what kind of world they would like to live in, and do everything that they can to make that dream present.
We’re seeing this in so many ways right now. You have communities that are rising up against ICE and are really actualizing this vision of what a safe community can look like in a world where you don’t have federal agents abducting people off the street. Those are things that start off as visions. They’re things that become tangible through verbalizing, through writing, through organizing. They are things that become our reality by people continuing to tell those stories and continuing to be moved to action.
To listen to our full interview with Henry Hicks IV, check out our audio recording at the top of the article or listen on Spotify. As always, thank you for listening to the Narratives of Repair Interview series. Be sure to drop a line in the comments section to let us know what you’re thinking.
To learn more about Henry Hicks IV, visit his website and follow his Substack for upcoming projects.
A very interesting take from a creative and thoughtful host
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