Gabby Rivera, a queer Latina Marvel Comics writer, spoke at Texas State University as part of the university’s Justice Speaker Series. She is most well-known for her comic “America” which features the first-ever Latina lesbian superhero, and her lesbian coming-of-age novel “Juliet Takes a Breath.” Both works have received critical acclaim amongst the LGBTQIA community.
According to the University Star, Rivera’s lecture, titled “Queer LatinX Joy,” focused on “amplifying awareness of self through connecting with identifying components that are often stripped minority groups at a young age.”
During the presentation, Rivera talked about how much of her identity was stripped away while she was growing up. She lamented that her parents did not teach her about her Hispanic heritage and instead sought to integrate her into American culture.
“My grandparents experienced good ol’ American racism,” Rivera said. “Last name sounded funny, hair a little too curly, skin a little too brown, accents a little too thick.”
“The core aspects of who I am was something that I couldn’t share with my grandparents,” Rivera told the crowd. “I didn’t know how to talk to my grandpa about the politics of race and LGBTQIA in Spanish, especially when we’ve barely gotten past what he wants for breakfast.”
Monica Richerson, the president of the LGBTQIA campus organization, said she identified with Rivera because she is both Latin and a female cisgender panromantic asexual.
“My grandparents had to make those choices with me and my brother,” Richerson told the Star. “We don’t speak any Spanish and I am very pale-skinned, so it feels like we don’t belong in that community. I can count on one hand the number of conversations that I’ve had with my grandfather. It was nice to relate to someone about that disconnect and pain. I like that she’s using “America” to tell a different kind of Latina story.”
An organizer of the event, Skylar Walkes, who serves as the Associate Director of Disability Services, remarked, “Gabby brought form intersectionality in the most perfect way as a queer LatinX woman who shared some of her mental health struggles with the audience. There’s no doubt (she) adds to Texas State’s conversation. We are a multi-faceted complex individuals of a beautiful mosaic and it’s time we start talking about it nonstop.”
Mason McKie is currently a senior at Texas State University, studying political science with minors in geography and history.
