National Poetry Month is here! And today we are celebrating five Latina poets who are using their writing to explore themes of Latina identity and culture, advocating for their communities, and critiquing harmful stereotypes.
These poets are speaking their truths in a world that often wishes to silence diverse voices and marginalized identities. Let us all amplify their voices and also enjoy some incredible writing by Latina poets.
Melania-Luisa Marte
View this post on Instagram
Melania Luisa Marte is a writer, poet, and speaker from New York living in the Dominican Republic. Her poetry explores topics including her Caribbean roots, intersectionality, and self-love. She gained fame with viral poem “Afro-Latina” and her work has also been featured by Ain’t I Latina, Mitu, The Root, Teen Vogue, Facebook, Telemundo, Remezcla, and People En Español.
Melania’s chapbook “Plantains and our Becoming” focuses on the Black diaspora, nature, love, and rest.
Yesika Salgado
View this post on Instagram
Yesika Salgado is a Los Angeles based Salvadoran poet and two time National Poetry Slam finalist and the recipient of the 2020 International Latino Book Award in Poetry. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Teen Vogue, Univision, Spotify, CNN and many more networks and publications.
As an internationally recognized body-positive activist her work explores the topics of body image, self-love, culture, her city and her family.
Yesika is the author of the best-sellers Corazón, Tesoro, and Hermosa.
Natalie Diaz
View this post on Instagram
Natalie Diaz is a Pulitzer Prize winning, Mojave American poet, language activist, and educator. Her work weaves together her Latina and Indigenous identity in a “constellation” of work that explores themes of identity, love, culture, joy, grief, injustice, and violence.
She is the author of the poetry collections Postcolonial Love Poem (2020), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; and When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012).
Ariana Brown
View this post on Instagram
Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet from the Southside of San Antonio, Texas, now based in Houston, Texas. She is a 2014 national collegiate poetry slam champion and has been writing, performing, and teaching poetry for over ten years. Her in her work and poetry collections We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020) she investigates themes such as queer Black personhood in Mexican American spaces, Black relationality and girlhood, loneliness, and care.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva
View this post on Instagram
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a “Guatelombian” (Guatemalan-Colombian) American poet and screenwriter living in Brooklyn. Her debut book Peluda (Button Poetry 2017) explores the intersections of Latina identity, feminism, hair removal and what it means to belong. Her most recent book, Dreaming of You is a novel-in-verse explores themes of Latinidad, womanhood, obsession, and disillusionment.
Melissa initially gained fame with her viral poem, “My Spanish,” exploring her experiences as a non-Spanish speaking Latina.
When she’s not writing, she also co-hosts the podcast Say More with Olivia Gatwood Who Is a Massive Bitch, where they dissect the world through a poetic lens.
You might be interested: 10 Books by Latinx authors to read this summer
