Another look at the extraordinary Elizabeth Acevedo

By Rachel Amaru, Co-founder of Good Trouble For Kids

We posted a complex poem of Elizabeth Acevedo’s on our Instagram feed a couple months ago that poet and editor Kevin Young included in the Library of America Anthology’s African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. In this article, Acevedo describes the poems in her book Beastgirl and Other Origin Myths as “contemplations on Caribbean womanhood.” Acevedo’s identity as a Dominican-American author clearly shines in The Poet X, which while certainly a verse novel, is also a collection of stand-alone poetry. Below, for example, is a video of Acevedo performing the poem “Name.”

During this time of the plague, The Decameron Project, a youth organization, hosted multiple writers, including Elizabeth Acevedo. You can read more about her story and also watch a video of The Decameron Project event with her. It truly is “a luminary conversation on race and writing, activism and fiction, creativity — and how young writers can change the world.” This is definitely for teens and adults!

Poetry Slam & the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

Elizabeth Acevedo is also a National Slam Poetry Champion. Check out this powerful performance of her poem, “Hair.” According to this NYT article, Acevedo was 15 when she performed for the first time at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Acevedo describes the cafe as “this space that, yes, was in conversation with hip-hop. Yes, was in conversation with the beat poets. But was also in conversation with something that was inherently Puerto Rican, inherently Caribbean, inherently Latinx.”

See also this interview with Elizabeth Acevedo in “By the Book” in April 4, 2021, New York Times Book Review.

Originally published at https://goodtroubleforkids.substack.com.