From becoming the United States Poet Laureate to advocating for body-positivity and LQBTQIA+, these five Hispanic/Latinx poets have been using their talents in order to make waves in the United States. Let’s take a look at them and their most popular collections.
Ada Limón
Ada Limón is Mexican-American and was named the United States’ 24th Poet Laureate. As she has stated, “Poetry is elemental, necessary, and deeply human,” so it is no surprise then that her poetry focuses on taking big ideas and condensing them down into little moments. Her sixth book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, concentrates on the interconnectedness between people and things; through glimpses of the pandemic, Limón explores loss and grief as well as what it means to see ourselves in others.
Elizabeth Acevedo
Many may know Elizabeth Acevedo from her best-selling book The Poet X about a young girl living in Harlem who discovers slam poetry. In 2022, she was awarded the title of Young People’s Poet Laureate for her devotion to creating exceptional poetry aimed towards young readers. Her work in poetry includes her most famous spoken-word poem “Inheritance” —which is now published with illustrations in Inheritance: A Visual Poem—that depicts the poet’s complicated feelings towards and acceptance of her Black hair and Afro-Latinidad identity.
Rodney Gomez
Rodney Gomez, who was poet laureate of the state of Texas between 2020-2021, focuses his writing on the relationship between nature and man-made structures and the effects these structures have on the borderlands. Much of Gomez’s work, such as his Geographic Tongue, experiments with visual poetry–a style of poetry developed from concrete poetry and uses intermedia characteristics.
féi hernandez
féi hernandez is a Mexican-born and California-raised immigrant whose poetry focuses on identity as an immigrant as well as a trans, non-binary person. Their debut collection of poetry, Hood Criatura, takes a close look at the idea of the “American dream” and explores how this idea applies to those in the Hispanic/Latinx community and LGBTQIA+ community. Their poem and film “Our Lungs Your Wings” was commissioned by The Broad for our World AIDS Day 2021 commemoration.
Yesika Salgado
Winner of the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book for her collection Hermosa, Yesika Salgado is a Salvadoran poet who writes about her culture, her family, and her “fat, brown body.” Hermosa, specifically, explores the relationship between one’s present and past self through the lens of grief from losing a family member. Salgado is a big proponent of using social media to her advantage as she began her career as a poet in the unconventional spaces of Instagram rather than in academic poetry journals.
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