CV Junior Named County’s First-Ever Youth Poet Laureate

For Zoe Dorado, writing and performing poetry is more human and emotional than academic. The junior at Castro Valley High School was named the Inaugural Alameda County Youth Poet Laureate in August.

“Poetry is an outlet and I hope by spreading poetry and representing poetry that I can show how we need more feeling-based ways of learning.”

Dorado says she writes poetry with the intention of connecting the personal to the political. With her writing, she addresses colonialism and patriarchy through her own perspective and the experiences of her family and her community; all in the name of creating a space where she says they can feel loved, respected, and heard.

“I think about how you can connect with people and bring them into the poem,” Dorado says. “Sometimes we are not looking for the identical experience, we are looking for connections. In my poems, I am talking about my mother, grandmother, my sister. When you are surrounded by people and paying attention then you are able to write and make a connection with them.” 

As part of the application for the Alameda County Youth Poet contest, Zoe submitted three poems: “For Quiet Girl in the Band Room,” "Muling Pagsilang (Rebirth)" about her grandfather, and "When Nanay Comes Home from the Hospital” while reflecting on her mother, a nurse. Zoe then performed “We Breathe” to the judging panel, as well as performed it during the CVHS Back-to-School presentation.

Excerpt from the poem, "We Breathe," which Zoe says was inspired by her grandmother, Lola.

America my immunocompromised country

The way you cough out blood stain anatomy 

Pointing to each mouth body and look, look see where all leads.

How you were both the soil in my Lola's garden

The soil she sowed seeds in but also the dirt resting

Six feet under that buries black and brown bodies.

How you hold them in your roots 

The ones that wound themselves to the branches of arms and legs 

Until they decompose and become the foundation for what you grow.

When I say our histories are intertwined

What I mean is that we breathe the same air...

The day she heard she won the award; Zoe says started out rather badly.

“I had done really bad on a math test and was feeling down,” she recounts. “I then had to log onto this video meeting, and they start introducing the other finalists and then there was a pause… and then they announced my name.”

The Laureate title includes a year-long commitment to represent the Alameda County Youth Poet Laureate chapter perform and attend public and private events. The group is awarding Zoe $500 to do some good at a community organization of her choice.

Zoe’s passion for connecting the personal to the political has deep roots. She has worked as an intern for groups that advocate for Filipino rights, she volunteered for California Prop 15 and Measure QQ (allowing 16-year-olds the vote), and before the quarantine last year, she participated in prisoner literacy programs and held writing workshops at Sama Sama, an outdoor day camp in the East Bay that focuses on Filipino culture. Zoe has also performed her poetry for unions like SEIU United Healthcare Workers West.

Dorado credits the support of her 8th Grade English teacher Nasira Waters and Sophomore English teacher Elisa Frozena in her path to developing her poetic voice. The junior also says she was inspired by other poets like Olivia Gatwood (“We Find Each Other in the Details”), Ariana Brown, and the first National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, who performed at the 2021 Presidential Inauguration.

 “When Nanay Comes Home from the Hospital” is also a part of a collective of poetry films that have been coming out over the past few weeks by the Bigger Picture Project which is a collaboration between Youth Speaks and UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations. The project looks at COVID and COVID vaccines through the lens of the Black Panthers and the necessity of political and economic revolution in order to support the health and safety of our communities.

 Find out more on the Youth Speaks website: https://thebiggerpicture.youthspeaks.org/