Lemonada Media

The Cost of Self-Love with Yesika Salgado

Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content


Roses are red, violets are blue, let me put you on someone whose palabras make you feel true. Yesika Salgado is a Salvadorian poet and the author of CorazónTesoro and Hermosa. Her work carries the kind of power that can change perspectives, break barriers, and make you feel like you aren’t alone in your struggles. Plus she’s relatable af (take that, Edgar Allen Poe). In this episode, we talk about her long, messy journey with self-love, speaking to the hearts of a new generation, and turning poems to paychecks. Plus, catfishing stories that led to her embracing her truest self.

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

You can keep up with Yesika @yesikastarr on Instagram.

Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Yesica Salgado, X Mayo, Yesika Salgado

X Mayo  00:05

Welcome back to The Dough, a podcast about the modern day Cupid’s you know, the ones who make a living by celebrating love year round, love is always in the air, or at least it should be okay, I guess what I’m trying to say is we don’t need a holiday or a huge reason to do something nice for ourselves. Every day is a good day to show yourself some love. I’m serious like, what if Cupid was just a call away? It went around deploying self love arrows. Who that man would be working? 24/7 365, okay, that’s why this week, I thought we’d give the spotlight to someone who’s had a long journey with self love and makes a living by sharing what it’s like to find love outside of traditional romance. Yesika Salgado is an LA based Salvadoran poet who writes tenderly about love and her body, known for her three poetry collections called Corazon de Soto en Elmoza. She went from dropping out of high school and quitting her job to being internationally recognized for her powerful palabras. She’s a two time National Poetry Slam finalist and recipient of the 2020 international Latino Book Award in poetry. Yessica is also a veteran of the country’s largest weekly running poetry venue, the poetry lounge. In short, pop poetry is incredibly personal, moving and real. Plus, my favorite thing about her is that no man is safe from getting put on blast. Yes, girl, the boys thought they were scared of ending up in a Taylor Swift song. Girl, I’d be more scared of seeing my name in a yes because I got a blow. Okay, she is truly a force out here, breaking literary boundaries and uplifting Latino voices. Yessica Bienvenida […]

 

Yesika Salgado  03:09

Hey, happy to be here.

 

X Mayo  03:11

Okay, so Yessica, I’m so grateful to be here with you today. We’ve had to reschedule this interview because of the LA wildfires, and it’s been crazy. I had to evacuate. It was so scary and nuts. And I’m born and raised in South Central and Inglewood, so never been over here in this way. I’m in the Hollywood area. So it’s crazy, because a lot of transplants were like, well, X, what do I do when I was like, girl, I don’t know. Like, I’m not from over here. I don’t do this either. We usually watch it and be like, damn, that’s crazy, any love and, you know, and in trying to figure out however we can assist, or whatever resources or to spread the news, but, girl, we don’t deal with that. Where I’m from, right? A little earthquake, a little shake and bake, but you know, that’s it. So I just want to know now, honestly, you know where we are now in LA, how are you doing?

 

Yesika Salgado  04:03

I’m doing good. I live in Silver Lake. So we were never like, immediately in danger. But he got closer than it ever has. You know, usually the virus happened all the way out in Calabasas, in, like, in the very like Woody areas way outside of, like, proper LA. And so the fact that, like, there was a point where, like, people on Franklin and Hollywood Boulevard were, like, seeing like, you might have to leave. And my sister texted me, she lives, she lives in East Hollywood, and she goes, if we get evacuated, where are we going to go? And then I said, well, we’re all gonna jump in one car and we’re gonna drive to we have an uncle on Riverside. I’m like, we’re going to Riverside. Like, everybody just meet at my uncle’s house, but the gridlock, right? Like, how all these people coming out, like, you won’t even be able to move with the volume of people that live in these areas. So it was really scary, and it was just awful to witness. I. Um, so many of our neighbors, you know, our city neighbors, go through something so horrible, and it was just really painful to see that happen for all of us. And you know, you you prepare yourself for earthquakes, but not for fires like that. It was.

 

X Mayo  05:17

Yeah, not a fire like that. You know, like we’ve seen fires and stuff in LA happening and over in that area, in Malibu and Pacific Palisades and stuff, but not to this extent, to where it was so grim, to where I was like fighting to keep my sanity every day, knowing the families in Altadena, because obviously, you know black people, we’ve been truly affected. Like, that’s one of the first places that, you know, allowed by people to own homes there. I know so many black people who I grew up with in life, in school, in church, that had homes over there, some people that just bought places. And it’s like, down to it’s just ash, you know? So, yeah, it was, it was crazy. I never had to evacuate. It got really close to me. I’m not that far from running and to walk outside. I started prepping that morning, because the sky was orange, and then it was just the smoke was so bad, and so I started packing that morning, and all my friends were like, you’re crazy. It’s not gonna get near you. Like, okay, X like, You need to calm the fuck down. I said, Okay, listen, if it doesn’t come all I have to do is unpack what’s the worst. Like, yes, well, let’s get into because we are talking about the fires. And I did read a beautiful piece that you wrote in the LA Times about your family’s relationship with Pacific Palisades, which obviously we touched on, was a community that was devastated by the fires, and your mother was a housekeeper there for 30 plus years. Can you talk about what you shared in that piece?

 

Yesika Salgado  06:52

Yeah, totally. My mother worked in Palisades my whole life. I grew up as a kid, taking the bus out, going to these folks homes. We’re still in touch with with now we’re in touch with all of them, but at the time, we were in touch with her latest with the one that she worked with the longest. They’ve always been very thoughtful, very considerate, very even thought. Long terms for my mom’s retirement to like which most housekeepers, most housekeepers don’t get that taken care of, you know, and, and it was a lot of that. And then now that my mother is she’s in chemo for breast cancer, she’s doing good. She’s doing, we’re taking it. We’re she we caught it early, so we’re taking it as it goes. But they’re all checking in. They’re all asking, how can they help? What can they do? If you know. So we have these relationships with these women, right? And their daughters too, whom my mom has been a part of their lives and and so seeing their homes burn was awful. Was so I didn’t realize it was going to hit us like this. And my mom kept remembering random things, and then at some point in the middle of the day, she we have a key holder by the door where we have random keys. I don’t even know, I don’t know why we have so many keys. We only have, like, two locks, but there’s all these keys there. But the set of keys has been hanging there for the longest, and it was her the last home. She worked in their keys, and she said, This is all I have left of that house.

 

X Mayo  08:22

And that’s, is,that?

 

Yesika Salgado  08:24

Miss Jay’s house? Yes.

 

X Mayo  08:25

Is that now Miss Chris? Is that where her you talked about your mother celebrating her citizenship in a house? Was that Miss.

 

Yesika Salgado  08:33

Miss J, they, they, um, so she was with them for the longest. And when it was they were having a Super Bowl party. And my mom had just become naturalized, and they asked her to go work, because she would go work during the parties to help a little bit extra and so, but they lied to her. They told her that they wanted her there for the party, and she had finished what she needed to do, and she was trying to come home, and they kept telling her to hold on, and then they pulled they brought out the cake, and so is Miss J, her two daughters, their husbands, their kids, and I think maybe some extended family. And they, they cut a cake for her citizenship. And then they, they’ve been so sweet, like they had their grandchildren were like in a muse in the Nutcracker. I remember my mother and I were invited. There was some other production happening for someone in the family. They sent us a car for us to go. And I think that we would have been a closer families when my mom had, you know, the language barrier. And also she felt she came from the old school traditions where, like, the quote, unquote help, which they never treated her like that, but her mind was like, the help doesn’t get involved with the people that you work with.

 

X Mayo  09:47

Yeah, and I would like to even argue that not even the help. It’s just like, your mama had boundaries. This is my job, well, yeah, like, yeah, it’s just like, it right? You know, because it’s just like, I I’ve done what your. Mother did like I was a nanny, and I used to clean houses with my grandmother, who’s black on my dad’s side, and so it’s so lovely to hear stories like this, to hear like how kind your mother was treated, because I think so many other stories like get highlighted and not saying that those stories aren’t worth being spoken about, or as for us to hear about, but it’s just so nice and heartwarming to hear about how well your mother was treated, how her citizenship was celebrated, how they had an undocumented, you know, immigrant, in their home, and still took care of her and paid her and to the point because there were so many cute pictures of you with the dog and you and your sisters like and your dad, may he rest in peace, who was in the pool and stuff. And I was just like, oh my god, it reminded me of one of my favorite movies by the Whoopi Goldberg, which made me want to act. Like all of her movies made me want to act. But that movie Karina, Karina, when she was the housekeeper and the little girl in her would play together, and the way that she taught her how to, like, blow on the on the light, to change it, and it made her magical, you know, like it just felt like that. Yeah, so I thought that that was really beautiful.

 

Yesika Salgado  11:17

And thank you. And I’m always happy to highlight that it’s not always. Sometimes it’s just good on his work with good, honest people, you know, and and it’s not always this big tragedy story that I think it took a lot of work for me to understand that there was a as I was starting to pursue my own career and be in spaces that are predominantly white spaces, I have felt myself being uncomfortable and being like in these in homes where I was just like my mother. We’ve only been in these homes because my mother’s been eating them. And then I realized that it was a meat thing, not anybody else putting it on me. And so I had to talk to my therapist about that for a long time, where I was just like, I feel like I come into these houses and I feel like I shouldn’t be in them, and and so. But my mother was never treated like that with the families, with most of the families she worked with, there was one, one or two rotten apples there, but we don’t need to talk about it.

 

X Mayo  12:09

Yeah, you’re gonna have those, but for the most part, yeah. So your, your parents are from El Salvador. I’m gonna after this call. So what did you, what did you learn from your parents about money?

 

Yesika Salgado  12:23

Oh, not a lot, if we’re being honest.

 

X Mayo  12:30

Yeah, I always say we’re taught make it, get it.

 

Yesika Salgado  12:33

Yes, make it, get it. But also you don’t get any of it until you make it yourself.

 

Yesika Salgado  13:52

Growing up, I didn’t have allowances or anything like that, and so money was a form of shame for me from a young age, because I never had any of it. So if I wanted to go out with my friends or do anything like that, it was the oldest of three. So if my mom gave me 20 bucks, she had to give it to both of my sisters too. And it was always that struggle. And we’re being honest, when I was a teenager, I would take money out of my dad’s pocket when he’d drink, and be like, justified with like, boys as far for drinking and, well, it’s complicated, but […]

 

X Mayo  14:30

Were helping him. You’re like, listen, he doesn’t need to drink more alcohol. He doesn’t need to drink more. What helps him to not drink more, not having money, so therefore, I’d like to call you a trailblazer.

 

Yesika Salgado  14:40

Yeah, you know, as a teen, that makes perfect sense for you and so and so I started working. I had my first job at 18, and I think managing my own money was really difficult for a long time, because I wasn’t making much of it. You know, I was working.

 

X Mayo  14:56

What was your first job?

 

Yesika Salgado  14:58

My first job was. At a park, at a parking lot, and but I was like a glorified security. I wasn’t really there for parking it was just to make sure the employees didn’t park there. And so I was, I worked there three days a week. I hated it. I had to walk a block just to go to a bathroom. And there was a papyrus I was we were servicing a papyrus, which is a paper goods store, and the manager asked if I was looking for a second job. And I said, I want another job, period. And so it was, get me out of here, save me now. She was a beautiful black woman who was just so radiant and and just amazing. And she was just like, All right, come downstairs. And she hired me on the spot. My dad was the one who had gotten me the job, so he took over my position, because his job would send him around, and she would bring my dad lunch. And was always so nice to my dad. He’s like, your nice sister, your dad is the nicest man. She would drive me home from Santa Monica. We work on on Montana, and 14 things or something like that would drive me home. She lived in Burbank. She goes, you’re just on the other side of the hill. I of the hill. And when she she got cancer, and when she got cancer, and that’s the job I left to because I was just like, oh, there’s no point for me to be here. And then I went on to work a bunch of service jobs. Eventually went back to parking, worked there. All of my 20s, got fired for $12 I yeah, I you know, you’re working for corporations. You’re like, I’m broke. You have all this money. I’m gonna take $12 for lunch. And it just so happened, loss prevention caught me, and I got fired from that, and then I ended up at CVS, and that’s where I was working with my career started where people would recognize me while I was working, and I was on the paging somebody front, and this guy comes to the front and goes, I knew it was you. I recognized your voice, and I was like, What? What is happening? And so and so maybe two years, like, two and a half years into CVS, I realized that I was already booking college gigs, and at the time, my rate was really low, but I was making in one college gig, what I would make it a month at CVS. So I was like, as long as I book one gig a month, I’m okay. And at the time, my mom worked full time still, so I wasn’t responsible for many other things than myself.

 

X Mayo  17:17

Yeah, and you were living with your mom?

 

Yesika Salgado  17:19

And I was living with my mom. I still live with my mom, only that. Now I’m the one that’s in chart. Now, I forced her to retire during the pandemic and and Well, now that she’s a chemo patient and all that, but I’ve been able to support her since 2021, full time, and with through my art, which is really great.

 

X Mayo  17:40

That’s amazing. Okay, so, Yesika, how did you become a writer? You know, creative pursuits aren’t easy for those of us who don’t have safety nets.

 

Yesika Salgado  17:48

I was born a writer. I don’t think that I ever had an option to be anything else. I started in first grade. I think I figured out what a poem was somehow, and I decided that that’s what I wanted to write and.

 

X Mayo  18:00

Was it like, Rose away von Cebu was a, like, phenomenal woman. Like, where were we? Where were you at in the spectrum?

 

Yesika Salgado  18:05

So it was like some poem about ducks that I remember.

 

X Mayo  18:08

Yeah, he was like, one took duck, three ducks, yes.

 

Yesika Salgado  18:12

But the first library, the first poetry book I ever checked out from a library, was Nikki Giovanni and period, yes, taste at an early age. You know what? I’m glad that. I’m glad that the people that I reach for because at the time, Latina writers were not were not that popular. So I’m glad that I gravitated towards black writers and not the counterpart, because I was able to see myself in ways that I didn’t even think that a different culture would be able to reflect me back to myself. I remember when I did find Maya Angelou. I read all of all of the series, because people don’t know. I know why, why cage board sings is part of a series. I ended up reading the whole series and and seeing myself in the way that Maya spoke about, feeling like she was too ugly to be loved. I felt that as a fat girl, and I saw that reflected back to me. And so, yeah, so I think I taught myself to write through what I read. And I wasn’t a good student because I didn’t care about anything that was not what I wanted to write about. And then high school got weird. I dropped out. Well, I got sent to a continuation school, and I and then I was too, I was too smart and too like chill, to be considered a troubled child. But I was, I love it.

 

X Mayo  19:29

I love you walk into continuation. Everybody got their guns in the air, and you’re walking and you’re like, Hi guys, and they’re like, okay, get her out of here. She has no business. Yeah, in here.

 

Yesica Salgado  19:39

Because I kind of fell through the cracks because I wasn’t I had parent and my dad would show up to any meeting that was in my high school. My dad would show up to any meeting. So they were like, Oh, you’re acting out just for attention. And I’m like, No, I got diagnosed bipolar in high school. My father is an alcoholic.

 

X Mayo  19:58

Did you pursue that diagnosis? He has to come.

 

Yesica Salgado  20:00

Yeah, not as a teenager, my parents chose not to, and as an adult, I revisited it. I’m still not medicated completely for my for my disorder, but I think I’m starting to come to the terms with it that I might, you know, I might use some help with that, but for most of the time, I’ve just coped. I learned to cope at a young age and and been managed to get getting back. But I think the pandemic taught me how much anxiety I lived with, and I hid. And I hid with being a workaholic, because that’s what I’ve been.

 

X Mayo  20:32

My God, well, I mean, from one from one oldest girl to the next.

 

Yesica Salgado  20:36

Yes girl.

 

X Mayo  20:39

From one project manager of the family, to the next girl, I see you with your bipolar disorder. Was that something that this the school immediately diagnosed you? Of was there, like an incident, to where they were like, Okay, let’s dig a little deeper and see if there’s any challenges, as is having.

 

Yesica Salgado  20:56

They dug a little deeper. So in middle school, in middle school, I was a liar as a kid, but it wasn’t at a malice. It was my lies were always rooted in the that I didn’t feel seen, or I didn’t feel the truth was enough to have attention with, and so I would embellish things, right? And I remember, or I didn’t know how to explain some things. And I was in middle school, and again, my father has had been an alcoholic my whole life and was abusive at times, and I always had a lot of anger and pain and was told that I wasn’t allowed to have it right to be a good girl. And a school teacher in middle school caught that and referred me to impact, which is like the group therapy for for kids that are dealing with different things, and I was in the group of young women with addict parents, and so I was in those groups all from middle school to high school. But in high school, I was given a therapist, a school therapist, and I would be taken out of a rotating class once a week to speak to my therapist, and that’s where she felt that there was something else going on, and she referred me to go to a clinic that my dad took me to. And at the clinic, I remember speaking to a gentleman. I remember just speaking to somebody for a long, long time and and then I also then remember my parents being brought into school to speak to my therapist, and her telling them that I she was diagnosing me with a manic depressive disorder, which is bipolar, bipolar two, which is what I’m what I’m diagnosed with, bipolar two disorder, and that she strongly suggested that we follow up with it, because I could use with me, I could use medication. And both my parents said, no, right, like it’s taboo. They’re immigrants. They don’t meds for that. What you know, like, my daughter isn’t crazy, my daughter, we’re just gonna pray. We’re just gonna pray about it.

 

X Mayo  22:49

Honay, yeah not enough information have been told to them about it, and they’re like, well, she’s smart, she’s brilliant, she’s walking and talking. Like, what do you mean? Like they have even, like, a vegetative state in order to be like, oh yeah, there’s, there’s a challenge here for my daughter yeah.

 

Yesica Salgado  23:06

And then I always dealt with extreme, well, I think in puberty, it was more pronounced, because hormonal and all the other things. I just remember sometimes being in my room at night and just feeling like I was at a hypomanic episode, and I didn’t know that that’s what was happening, and that’s the things that were going on. And and then my 20s came. My dad’s illness took my dad’s health took a turn for the worst. And so most of my 20s were consumed with either bracing myself or his passing and passing or grief. So it kind of, you know you forgot. You forget about yourself in that and and so when I came back into I kind of want to come back into myself, because I feel like I got lost for a few years there. I came back into myself around 2029, and then that’s when I was, we’re gonna, we’ll talk about this more if you want. But every time I say it, people’s eyes open wide. But when I used to catfish, right? So I was coming out of catfishing and all that tea, I told […]

 

X Mayo  24:02

Oh yes, oh, my God. Oh, we cannot, because you are talking to somebody who is of I have watched every single season. I watched every single episode. I’ve watched them multiple times. I’ve seen every catfish documentary. Okay, Yessica, we have to hear at least one story. Tell me the craziest catfish experience that you have when you capture someone.

 

Yesica Salgado  24:33

Oh, my God. So I had actively been catfishing from high school up until maybe I was 30 or something, or 29 that the years get blurry. But I, you know, fat girl feeling that nobody’s gonna love you, and so you’re like, navigating through the world like that. And I got the phone number to a party line in high school that somebody was passing around.

 

X Mayo  24:55

Oh, my God, the party line. Take me back. The 2012 take me back. If you from LA, you teally, know, take me to the soda pop.

 

Yesica Salgado  25:03

I was on the loop, and the loop.

 

X Mayo  25:08

Oh, my God, that’s the oh, okay, wow. Okay, so what was your name on there?

 

Yesica Salgado  25:14

So, God, I’ve there’s been so many versions of me in catfish mode, but yes, like a star is actually one of my catfish names that I kept. So I was, tiny at some point, because, you know, if I’m gonna, if I’m gonna pretend to be somebody else, I’m gonna go tiny, because that was the whole thing. So I was Tiny for a while.

 

X Mayo  25:33

Bitch. If I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go all the way, okay.

 

Yesica Salgado  25:36

But they ended up calling me Hollywood, because when they would ask me, where do you live? It was before Silver Lake was popping. So I never knew, like, nobody knew where Silver Lake was at. And so I would say Hollywood, because Hollywood is just right there, like server Lake is between Hollywood and Echo Park, right? And so Echo Park was in a desirable neighborhood at the time, so it was Hollywood. So then they just started calling me Hollywood. So that was my part of my name for years and years and years Hollywood. And then I from then on, I online. The Internet started. I’m 40, so my timeline is a little bit dated, but so this is pretty nice space, but there were forums, and I found hip hop, Oh girl, Black Planet. Come on. I wasn’t on Black Planet, but I was on hiphoppoetry.com which was a forum for poetry and rappers, and I started sharing my poetry on there under the name Yesika Star.

 

X Mayo  26:26

And then, what was your picture?

 

Yesica Salgado  26:27

I was my home. I was using my home girls pictures, which was like a petite, light skin, Latina, and just, like, just a cute girl, you know. I mean, I was cute too, but I didn’t believe it. But just a cute girl, like, like a thin girl, you know, and and so I would pretend to be her. Name is Beatrice, and I would pretend to be Beatrice Matthias name, yeah, Beatrice. Beatrice now knows that I used her and she told me when I, when I confessed to her, she goes, You should have told me. I would have helped you.

 

X Mayo  28:11

Okay, so what? What were the conversations like? Like, what were you getting from these experiences?

 

Yesica Salgado  28:16

I was looking for love. I was genuinely like, connecting with these men that, you know what I learned? I learned that everybody’s lonely and you’re willing to believe lies just to feel comforted. Because I was talking wild stuff, it was obvious that none of my not that I think back to some of the things it was, some of it was wild, but it was a lot of you know, military boys that were stationed far away from home. I remember I was talking to a guy in the Air Force for a little bit. He sent me a diamond necklace from sales that I didn’t even ask him for, because he was like, I want to send you flowers. I’m like, okay, nobody had ever sent me flowers. And then he sent me.

 

X Mayo  28:55

And this is they’ve never even seen you. So was this from the loop or from.

 

Yesica Salgado  29:00

[…] poetry.com

 

X Mayo  29:01

Okay, so they are seeing a picture, a very pixelated little picture. Oh yeah, absolutely okay. Girl, yeah. This is pretty much Yeah. We were, yeah. No, Black Planet, calm. It was just like, Girl, I can’t even barely see this, but they can see a framework. It was like, so blurred out that that that was enough for them to get hooked. Was there? What was the longest you ever catfished someone like the relationship that you kept going virtually?

 

Yesica Salgado  29:24

Oh, there was, I’ll tell you Julian’s story. So I ended up getting caught at hip hopportry.com I left, I confessed. I confessed, because it was never out of malice, right? So I confessed. I took the roasting and took the dragging and I left. And for a while I was trying not to catfish, but again, I still felt empty. I felt like, undesirable, yeah, because the thing is that when you are and also I wasn’t living in my body yet, I wasn’t like showing up. I was like, hiding. I would wear scarves and big cardigans and just like, like my wouldn’t even do my hair. I, you know, it was none of the way that. People have grown to know me now, but so I ended up finding these chat rooms on Android that were just for Android phones, and it was called Live Chat. And I was on there for a while, and my name was Eva Luna. And people don’t read because if they knew Eva Luna were, the origin of the name was a character by Isabela inde, who’s one of my favorite writers, and it’s a character that makes a living by telling stories. And so my catfish name was Eva Luna, and I was there for the longest, and I ended up meeting somebody named Julian. And I was a catfish, and we would talk for a long time. Julian was a Colombian boy from New York. So he was, like, he had that New York like.

 

X Mayo  30:35

Hell yeah. Like, it’ll get you girl. I did New York for eight years. The Dominican got me my second month, yes.

 

Yesica Salgado  30:42

Look, New York men are.

 

X Mayo  30:44

Baby, I love me. Give me a New York boy. I want a Brooklyn boy, a Queens boy, a Bronx boy, absolutely yes.

 

Yesica Salgado  30:53

But this boy and I always started talking, and we talked for years, and then he would always try to get me on camera, because then cameras were getting popular, and I always had, and I always had an excuse, right? I was always just like, I don’t have an I don’t have an iPhone, I don’t have face time. Then I did have an iPhone, and then it was just like, always excuses. And then around that is when I came into the like, what am I doing? Like, and then when I took myself to therapy, and I stopped catfishing, but I didn’t tell him, I just disappeared on him. And then he went.

 

X Mayo  31:21

A long head job been conversing?

 

Yesica Salgado  31:24

But it wasn’t like.

 

X Mayo  31:25

Three?

 

Yesica Salgado  31:25

like, maybe like three years, three, four years. But it wasn’t like steady when we would, like, go away and come back, yeah, but yeah, but because we really liked each other. Like, Have you ever talked to somebody and it when you hang up, your face hurts from smiling so much. That’s what we were to each other. We were just, when you get that text, that heart gets to beat it. So we were talking to each other for years. I decided to stop catfishing. I ghosted him. He came back to Julian. Julian the Columbia, yes, he came back around. And I was just like, this is messed up. I should tell him. And so I ended up, I ended up confessing to him. And he was like, can I see you? And I sent him pictures. We got on FaceTime. And then he goes, Can I be honest with you? He goes, I’m more attracted to this Jessica than ever. And then I was like, oh my god, I got tearing up. We never got my god [..] but we never got together. At the time,  I was still working like minimum paying jobs. I couldn’t take up and go to New York. And he, at the time, his legal situation wasn’t, he didn’t feel comfortable flying because, you know, our country is fucked up to people that are undocumented. And so it became, it became painful, because it was just like, because now there was nothing between us, but other than distance. And eventually he ended up.

 

X Mayo  32:44

He wanted you, Yesica.

 

Yesica Salgado  32:46

But eventually he got a girlfriend, and they’re off in the world now, and married, I think.

 

X Mayo  32:54

And okay, so is okay. So we have, is there a poem about this? Because we have to get into the poems. Because, yeah, your first viral poem on instill was about dating. Like, yes, I mentioned you’re a lover. Girl, same. I love love I love romance. I love it all. So you got your start on there. When did you start making money via social media for your poems?

 

Yesica Salgado  33:14

So social, I don’t, I don’t monetize my social media on purpose. I don’t, okay, I don’t ever want so and, you know, I post on Instagram, and I don’t get paid off of any of those things and on the other platforms, because there’s so many rules and so many, so much stuff that comes around that. And I just don’t my the bulk of my work, of my where I make my money is through my books or through my speaking engagements. And I feel like, yeah I have, like to have my I have my rates, and that allows me to do stuff for free or for fun somewhere else, right? And and so I started sharing my work on Instagram the way that I do, because I always thought that I in my high school dropout, I didn’t go to college. Everything I know about poetry is what I found on my own. And so now that we have these phones that were constantly scrolling how beautiful it is that somebody could be on the way home from work and all of a sudden find a poem that, like, turns the whole day around or makes I remember being the girl in the bathroom stall hiding from customers at CVS, miserable, yearning for so much more, or heartbroken, or whatever it is that I’m feeling, and finding a poem or something that just made me feel so validated and so seen in that moment. And so that’s always been what I’ve I’ve tried to approach my work online with, right? And so my first poem that when the kind of what started my career, my my career in a series, because I’ve been writing my whole life. I’ve been sharing it publicly. I’ve been going to poetry open mics for about 1617, years. But my career did not begin. I don’t think I can say it began to 10 years ago, 2015 when my poem, how not to make love to a fat girl went viral, and none of the stuff started clicking for me until I stepped into my body. Body, and I started writing about my fatness and my my relationship with it, and how I was really determined to learn to love myself and for being honest of how much I had hated myself in the past, and that resonated with people. And so that poem had not to make love to a fat girl, ended up on all the the blog, like Huffington Post, Buzzfeed up worthy all of those things. And then a couple more things kept happening, and more things kept happening and and then eventually I left CVS, and shortly after my first book came out, and just been out here. I’ve been, you know, I’ve been performing at the poetry lounge for 16, 17, years.

 

X Mayo  35:39

Oh, yeah, no, we could be here for an hour with all that you’ve achieved. And I just, I’m curious to know, from one artist to another, how has your view on money changed since being able to do what you love for a living? You know you’re able to take care of yourself and even have such an abundance to be able to take care of your mom. It’s beautiful.

 

Yesica Salgado  35:56

I’ve learned that if that financial stuff will come, it’ll fluctuate. You’re not always like, I had a year where I made in one month, what most people make in a year, in the salary, and I was just like, whoa. I made it like, what, I’ve got all these zeros in my bank account, like I remember, but it made me so anxious to have so much money. And I was just like, like, feeling like there was this huge responsibility. And then I’ve had here. I’ve had years where bookings are slow, budgets are cut. I mean, like this is what this year is feeling like for so many artists, and things slow down. And what I’ve learned now is to pace myself the life of an of a freelance which is what I am, of a freelance artist that is a gig worker, right? You, you have to plan 345, months ahead of time. It’s not just paycheck to paycheck. So it’s like, if I don’t have any income this month, that doesn’t mean that, but I have money this month, but that means I’m not gonna have money like one two months from now. So I gotta learn how to budget, how to navigate all those things, but my relationship with money has always been like, It comes and it goes. It comes and it goes, and when it’s here, I have to honor it. We always grow up thinking of it as scarcity, right, that there’s so little of it. But I’m like, no, I think those of us that have had to make $100 stretch for a month after paying your bills, we know, we know how to manage money better than people that have always had an abundance of it.

 

X Mayo  37:29

Before I let you go. I do want to know. Yessica, do you have advice for artists like you who are not Nepo babies about breaking into publishing? And do you recommend social media?

 

Yesica Salgado  37:40

I absolutely recommend social media. I think social media, I mean, I know that it gets difficult, and like these algorithms get are pain in the butt, but it’s still, it’s still the great equalizer. It still gives everybody starts off with the same tools, right, like an account in your phone or an account in your laptop. And I feel that please never focus on fame or the amount of followers or numbers, my advice for folks, young folks, or any folks at all, is to focus on being authentic. People want to feel that the connecting with somebody that’s being genuinely themselves. We’re all lonely people looking to connect with other people, to resonate, to find somebody that we resonate with, and once you tell your stories in a genuine, vulnerable way, and vulnerable doesn’t mean to tell us your deepest, darkest secrets. Vulnerable just means any people see behind like just a surface, and that’s what they want. And I’m speaking specifically to artists like, don’t consider yourself a brand. Brands are not humans. We’re people and be and like, My brand is that there’s no brand. My brand is that there’s chaos. And so like, I hashtag relatable, yes, yeah. Like, I post whatever I want, whenever I’ve wanted. And sure, like, respectability politics come in and folks expect something different from somebody that’s working with the LA Times, or like foundations, or all these other things like I have, but I say no. I said, No, when you get me, you know what you’re getting. And also I know that if they bring me in, my readers, my audience, my main goals, which is what I call my followers, are also welcomed in that space because other people like me, I was very lucky to be nurtured as an artist by the black community. And I’ve seen from being a part of that community that, like, I overuse the word community, but community is everything, oh yeah, community is everything, like, for artists that are starting out, build your platform based on community, but also pulling your community and make sure you have people in your community that are your checks and balances that will let you know when you’re not being your true self, but will also see you and want good for you and uplift you. Mentorship is really important, and if you can find folks that are willing to do so, that’s worth their weight in gold, and so I wouldn’t have the career that I have if it wasn’t for. My mentors, and if it wasn’t for for my community, both, you know, in my own Latinas and black folks. And I always say that, I always emphasize that, because people think that people of different ethnicities operate independently. And I’m like, No, we in LA, we are all interconnected. And I didn’t just pop up all of a sudden in Boyle Heights as a fully developed artist, I spent years learning from black men and women, from fems, you know, from seeing them and seeing how dope they are, and also learning and getting checked continuously about my privileges too, and I wouldn’t I call that my college years, and I’m always, eternally grateful for that.

 

X Mayo  40:42

Oh, my God, Yesika, that’s a beautiful note to end on, because black and brown, we get down. You know, I’m a product of that, and I know that there are a lot of situations that have happened within our history. In LA, we have a very difficult relationship the Latino and Black community. There’s a lot of unlearning Latinos have had to do, and it’s happening, and it’s still happening. And I look forward to the day where all of us can be united, but I would say especially for us as black people like go to where you’re celebrating, not tolerated. And there are more and more people like Jessica that I know, not just in my family, but in my community of Latinos that recognize their privilege, realize that we are stronger together and have unlearned a lot of the anti black racist rhetoric that they themselves have been taught, you know, so.

 

Yesica Salgado  41:35

Beautiful to hear you say that.

 

X Mayo  41:37

Yeah, and shout out to the Black and Brown Brothers and sisters that and non binary femmes that you know were like your community, you know, and helping you cultivate this beautiful art that you have and tell people where we can be following you on social media.

 

Yesica Salgado  41:50

Yes, you can find me on most platforms under @yesikastarr, Y, E, S, I, K, A, S, T, A, R, and now you know that was originally my catfish name. So you can find me on most platforms, on that or YesikaSalgado.com on my website.

 

X Mayo  42:07

Yes, oh, my God, it was a pleasure. Yesika, and I will be coming over for purposes later, thank you.

 

Yesica Salgado  42:12

Thank you.

 

X Mayo  42:14

Bye.

 

Yesica Salgado  42:14

Bye.

 

X Mayo  42:17

This episode was brought to you in part by catfish, the TV show. Yeah, I’m just fucking with y’all, just playing but MTV, y’all hit me up. I have some ideas for you. Okay, you do need a new co host? Okay? Yesika keeps it real y’all, and I love that about her. It’s clear to me she truly cares about her city, aka our city. I feel it in my bones. She’s writing love poems for her city, for the everyday girlies who just want love. Now, how can you hate on that? Yessica story stands out to me as the power of community. People saw and loved her work online, which gave her a platform to reach more people and eventually start making money. That’s not easy, but she had people who loved her and wanted to see her succeed. I hope that inspires you to keep putting your work out there, because someone needs to hear it and see it. Okay, I got a poem before we go. Roses are red, violets are blue. Make that check always come through. Okay, Maya Angelou, move over. Alright. Bye, y’all, bye.

 

CREDITS  43:31

The Dough is a Lemonada original. I’m your host X Mayo.  This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures.  This series is presented by the Margaret Casey Foundation. Our producers are Tiffany Bui, and Dani Matias. Kristen Lepore is our senior producer.  Mix and Sound Design by Bobby Woody. Original Music by Pat Mesiti Miller. Jackie Danziger is our Vice President of narrative content.  Executive Producers include me X Mayo, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer.  Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review.  You can follow me on IG  @80dollarsandasuitcase and Lemonada @lemonadamedia across all social platforms, follow The Dough wherever you get your podcast or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks so much for listening. See you next week, bye.

Spoil Your Inbox

Pods, news, special deals… oh my.

Subscribe to Lemonada Premium TODAY to access exclusive bonus content from your favorite Lemonada Media podcasts. Dismiss