LA's Yesika Salgado Talks to the Los Angeles Times

The LA Times talks to poet Yesika Salgado, whose 2017 debut, Corazón, "ranked as the No. 3 bestseller on Amazon’s Hispanic American subcategory." But Salgado found success unconventionally. "Her Instagram audience of more than 62,000 followers (as of now) is about 90% women and 10% men, according to her Instagram analytics. Her poetry struck a chord with millennial Latinas she describes as 'the hoops, lipstick kind of girl' who are usually in college and looking for someone who reminds them of their 'homegirls and tías,'" writes Vera Castaneda. More:

It was ... the heyday of AOL and MSN chatrooms. Salgado’s go-to guilty pleasure and escape from reality was catfishing (creating false online identities). It started with calling party hotlines and moved on to the Live Chat app on her Android phone with the screen name Eva Luna, a reference to an Isabel Allende character skilled in storytelling.

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Although she would eventually be a National Poetry Slam finalist twice, 2015 was a turning point. Salgado didn’t make a slam team that year and needed to figure out her next step. A friend invited her to perform at La Concha, a community space ran by the Ovarian Psycos Bicycle Brigade in Boyle Heights.

“There was a moment when the audience recognized me. It was almost like a ‘we’ve been waiting for you’ moment,” Salgado says.

The audience of about 40 knew her from a YouTube video performance of the poem “Brown Girl.” She was invited to perform at a series of local events. It led her to create the Latina feminist poetry collective Chingona Fire with poet Angela Aguirre. They held open mics giving preference to women of color.

She quit her job at CVS in 2016 to be a full-time artist, after selling more than 2,000 copies of her poetry zine “Woes” and being offered college venue gigs. The timing was unfortunate since schools were out of session. By the next year, she was broke and wrote another zine, “Sentimental Boss Bitch,” selling about 500 copies online.