How social media paved the road to poetry for these Latina creatives

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Over the decade it took Silver Lake author Yesika Salgado to achieve social media popularity with her writing, the jacaranda trees outside her neighborhood haunt Café Tropical have been witness to the triumphs and challenges that made her the poet she is today.Dropping out of high school, working as a cashier at CVS and falling in and out of love inspired Salgado to write poems that she would share on Instagram, where she has amassed over 170,000 followers.“Up until 2016, I had to work service jobs,” said Salgado, 41.

“I worked as a cashier in a parking garage for like 10 years.I knew what it was like to be on your lunch break, eating your life, being tired, your feet sore, and scrolling on your phone just looking for something.

I wanted my work to be something that would find those people in the most accessible place: on their phones.”In doing so, Salgado joined a growing community of poets on social media — helping revive an art form which is being consumed at higher rates among U.S.young adults in recent years.Viral social media trends like “Instapoetry” and #poetrytok have allowed Latinos to not only access literature that resonates with them, but to feel empowered to become writers as well, said Patrícia Lino, an associate professor of poetry and visual arts at UCLA.A century ago, the democratization of poetry was only a dream.

Today, everyone can be a poet thanks to social media, Lino said.“The death of poetry has been declared many times throughout history, but it’s always transforming — and recently, it has transformed due to social media,” Lino said.With poetry no longer being confined to academic journals or classrooms, Latinos have been able to break through in the publishing industry, where they make up 7% of writers and authors, according to a 2022 report from the U.S.Government Accountability Office.“It’s surreal that my poems are in p...