The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Salima Rivera was born in 1946 in Isabela, Puerto Rico and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She died of cancer in 2004. She was a poet, visual artist, activist, and organizer. Rivera was also an active member of the The Association of the Latino Brotherhood (ALBA). After the Division Street uprising of 1966, she and David Hernandez co-founded the literary workshops Los Otros Poetry Collective and El Taller. Rivera attended the schools Crane Technical and Richard Vocational and completed a year of coursework at Columbia College, where she trained as a graphic designer. She continued to work with different community organizations, such as Casa Aztlán, el Movimiento Artístico Chicano, and the Westtown Concerned Citizens Coalition. In 1985, she worked for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Her writing was published in numerous magazines and anthologies, such as Third World Woman, ECOS, Emergency Tacos, and Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex, and Revista Chicana-Riqueña. A posthumous collection of Rivera’s poetry, It’s Not About Dreams, edited by Juana Goergen, was published in 2014 by Erato Poesía.

Works Cited

“Salima Rivera”. Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, chicagoliteraryhof.org/inductees/profile/salima-rivera.

“Salima Rivera”. The Women’’s L Project, womenslproject.com/blogs/news/salima-rivera. 

“Salima Rivera.” Revista Chicano-Riqueña: Nosotros Anthology, vol. 5, no. 1, 1977, p. 129.

Zimmerman, Marc. “Poetas Puertorriqueños en Chicago”. Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 75, no. 229, 2009, revista-iberoamericana.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/Iberoamericana/article/viewFile/6623/6799.