9 Afro-Latinx Writers Reshaping the Poetry Landscape

Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Darrel Alejandro Holnes recently published his debut poetry collection, "Stepmotherland," where he dives deep into his roots, his search for identity, his coming of age, and his journey from Panama to the US.

Poetry has become a way for him to represent his culture and his community in landscapes like contemporary American poetry, where, he tells POPSUGAR, Black Panamanians or Panamanians mostly go unseen.

"I always write with the hope that my writing provides context for people who exist at intersections just like I do. Some people think that people like me 'check way too many boxes' on the census in their minds," he says. "They actively work to erase the complexity of people like me who are immigrant, Black, Latine, Afro-Indigenous, queer, multihyphenate artists. They're wrong; we are here." He hopes his poems serve as witness to the existence of intersectional peoples, and that it helps people feel seen and truly understood.