I am a Poet & Author of When We Make It.

When We Make It is based on my life growing up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at the height of the “war on drugs” and as gentrification accelerated. Like Sarai, I am a first-generation U.S. born Puerto Rican. My family also navigated mental illness, houselessness, and food insecurity, and lived significantly below the poverty line. Making it was often both as simple and as complicated as hoping the pantry box included a really good name-brand cereal, or having heat in the dead of winter. I wrote this book as a way to acknowledge these truths and to honor those who’ve experienced the same. Some of the poems in When We Make It touch upon sexual assault, abuse, mental illness, miscarriage and pregnancy. And so, there may be poems that hit close to home, poems where you might want to pause and take a break after reading to process. Please take the time you need.