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Yosimar Reyes Highlight
Poetry is a weapon and a medicine.
About Yosimar
- I began journaling and writing poetry at age 16 to process my frustrations as an undocumented teen growing up in East San Jose, California.
- Even though I was too embarrassed to perform, one of my poems won second place in a poetry competition and I realized my voice had value.
- Going to community college changed my life—I met students with non-linear paths like mine and learned that lived experience is its own kind of education.
- While in college, I started giving talks at universities like UC Santa Cruz, speaking with authority on my lived experience.
- I rejected the narrative of the “struggling artist” and built a business model around my art that allowed me to care for my grandmother until she passed.
- I created an LLC to turn my poetry into a sustainable living, offering writing workshops, public speaking, and commissioned work.
- Becoming Santa Clara County’s Poet Laureate felt like poetic justice—now I get to represent a place that wasn’t built to celebrate people like me.
- I currently serve as the performing artist-in-residence at MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana).