By Astrid
FROM: LA Taco

Alma Rosa Rivera is a bespeckled, Mexican American poet, mom, and wife who says she doesn’t like to “water down” her brownness. From the hot deserts in Santa Clarita to heavy smog and neon signs in Koreatown, Alma is representing brownness in all its glory.

“I consider myself strongly Chicana but sometimes I think we get lost in the word,” she tells me. “I’m Mexican because my parents are from Mexico.”

Rivera’s poems and experiences paint political portraits of beauty and tragedy that Latinx individuals face when standing between the fence of many different worlds. She says, “A lot of people have this assumption that people who are brown and political are from East L.A. and we’re not all from there.”

Before poetry and politics, Alma was raised in a Mexican, Catholic household in Santa Clarita. In 2011, she moved to Koreatown at the age of 20, where she grew into herself as an aspiring poet. Alma began performing spoken word poetry at a community space in Boyle Heights called La Conxa, and has been unstoppable ever since.

Her work has been featured on various platforms including Mitú, Luna Magazine, Frijolera Press, and Latina Magazine, where she writes for the Marias, the lowriders, and the lonjas we fear after a good enchilada de queso. Read Rest of Article Here