Hood Educated (2019)

Hood Educated is Roxana Preciado’s honest and passionate poetry collection that reveals her struggles, pain, courage and healing process. It is a collection about loneliness, brokenness, hopelessness yet defying all odds to become much more than you thought was possible. The collection is powerful and emotive. It recounts the poet’s journey as an immigrant and survivor of sexual and emotional abuse. In The Irony of an Immigrant, Preciado opens up about being homeless as she spared no effort to further her education and attain her degree, despite having no place to live and no food to eat. In Mama, Mama, Preciado reveals her struggle to feel loved by her mother as a child. The poem explores their estranged relationship and the pain that arose as she sought her mother’s validation.

I was drawn to the collection because of Roxana Preciado’s candidness about all the painful struggles she has gone through from childhood to her teenage and adult years. Her openness about her abuse experiences will resonate with many readers who have been through similar circumstances and these will also serve as an inspiration of bravery. Roxana Preciado’s achievements show that it is possible to move forward from heart-breaking events and memories. The language used in the collection is direct, such as in the poem Negative Self-Talk (The Artist) where the poet states, “They hate me, Negative thoughts in my head.” This amplifies the impact of the words and effectively drives the messages in the collection. Hood Educated by Roxana Preciado is impactful and inspiring in many ways.

-Reviewed By Edith Wairimu for Readers’ Favorite

https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/hood-educated