Conjuring the Ghost: A Call and Response to Haints

Abstract

This article discusses haunting as a condition and strategy for Black women in their lived and literary experiences. I use the haint as a key figure for understanding Black women's liminal state as both the ones haunted and the thing haunting and focus on one of the haint's primary manifestations: the hag. Throughout the essay I unpack maligning myths of this specter and center the works of Phillis Wheatley and Lucille Clifton to refigure the hag as a spiritual and ancestral presence.