Today we’d like to introduce you to Destiny Rivera-Gomez.
Hi Destiny, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I am the daughter of Hector Rivera and Cecilia Gomez, the youngest of nine. But I was raised by a woman named Diana, who took me in at 11 months and raised me as her own. My mother has passed away from an overdose and my father was deported shortly after for his undocumented status. I grew up in the City of Pomona, where I continue to live and organize in. I am the Arts and Culture Organizer for a non-profit known as Gente Organizada/People Organized. We are a immigrant and youth led and centered organization for social justice work in our community. I joined the organization when I was 17 years old after hearing their youth organizers, known as the Pomona Students Union, address the school district board on the lack of funding for vulnerable youth in schools. They advocated for students with special needs, English learners. foster youth, at-risk youth and low-income youth in need of additional support in schools. I was in awe of their knowledge, their unity and their courage as young leaders in my own community. After they had finished their public comment, I approached them as they were exiting the building and asked how I could learn more about their group and the work they were leading. They then invited me to their Sunday meetings and I continued to organize with them since then. I have worked as an organizer in campaigns for the removal of Pomona police officers on high school campuses and advocating for the reallocation of funds to support youth resources in schools and across our city. During the pandemic Gente Organizada was my support group, a community who checked in on me and my family. During my time at Scripps College, Gente Organizada was also my safe haven when I felt challenged or isolated at school. The culture school had affected me in my early years and I was able to rely on my support system to overcome my own imposter syndrome and the frustration I had developed throughout my college studies of the Chicano and Latino relations in the United States. I had decided to pursue Chicano/Latino studies because of the new perspective the literature and research provided me with. I began to critically analyze and challenge my previous notions about the systems around me. Like the education system, law enforcement, government authority, US intervention across the world and religious institutions, to name a few. Along with Chicano/Latino studies, I pursed a double major in Dance with a varied focus in modern dance and an array of cultural performance dances like Flamenco, Hip Hop and Belly Dancing. Throughout my whole life I have had a passion for dancing. With little to no training until my college years, dancing was second nature to me. It is my preferred method of expression, release, past-time and socializing. It is also my preferred method of storytelling, to put messages into movement. For the audience to capture the emotion embodied through movement between dancers or within a dancer. Even now as I write, and reflect on my first choreographed piece performed on a stage I think of the impact it had on the audience and how it continues to have weight in todays climate. My dance thesis, was a love letter to children of immigrants who struggled to find themselves while war was being waged on their tongues, their food, their looks and their parents. I wanted to name the battles we were all facing so that I could hold space for folks learning to love, forgive and accept themselves. I wanted to hold assimilation accountable for the wounds it has left in first-gen children and the relationships between us and our parents so we may find a way towards healing. Creating that piece was challenging, and watching it tore me to pieces, which allowed me to piece myself back together with a sense of grace to understand myself more and to heal my generational wounds. I want to continue to make art that heals. Art that represents the unseen stories of my community. Art that names our lived experiences so we can nurture the pain. Today, I am engulfed in organizing, I have lost my way with dance. My community continues to be attacked by the federal government on a number of fronts. But as I regroup I am making my way back to my preferred language of expression.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not at all, I was a target for bullies growing up and often arrived home crying because of the treatment I would receive at school. Since elementary I was an outgoing and confident kid with a love for the arts. Dancing, acting, singing, and so on, but a lot of kids did not appreciate my very direct approach in school. I experienced severe name calling, embarrassment and other forms of harassments until I was in high school. I think what helped me survive was distracting myself with extra curriculars. I had always been heavily involved in the arts, leadership and volunteer work.
Entering college on the other hand, I had started to internalize a lot self doubt and inadequacy. I felt ill prepared for college and as a dancer I felt like an imposter. I was in rooms with pre professional dancers who trained in performed in companies since they were children. I often felt undeserving of pieces I was casted in. Much of the time I never complained or gave my opinion because I worried someone would point out that I wasn’t skilled enough to understand or be taken seriously. Even to this day I struggle with my own confidence in studio classes. I am hesitant to engage with friends who are leading professional dance careers and I doubt pursuing my own creative projects like leading movement classes or choreographing pieces for fun or for production.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I primarily specialize in folk dance and contemporary movement. I am an active practitioner of Danza Azteca Mexica, a ceremonial dance practice from central Mexico, I am training in contemporary dance, and lastly, I am remerging myself in a series of Latin american social dances like salsa, bachata, Huapango, zapeteado and latin hustle. Bridging my dance work with film, healing practices and socio-poltical messaging. My dance work exists in artivism where I create for the people and not for commercial purposes. I’m known for tying my art practice into my lived experiences and the lived experiences of my community(ies). I look to my parents, my siblings, tias, tios, vecinos, abuelos, friends, and colleagues as inspiration for my work.
In relation to my work, the last piece of work I completed was a short film called Somos y Mas. It was my first attempt at a short film with movement and acting. The film speaks on the importance of ancestral remembrance, incorporating just and dignified ethnic studies courses in classrooms and honoring the feelings that come with reconnecting. My challenge with this film and moving forward with similar projects is creating art work that transforms academic jargon related to politicized identities, and lived experiences to be digestible for the everyday person. I want my art to meet people where they are at and not lose them because of translation.
One of the art works I am most proud of is the first iteration of my senior dance thesis. I created a piece called Braiding Borders, a story about a mother and daughter confronting life in a new country. Where the american dream can turn into a nightmare of rejection, assimilation, loss of self and as a parent, not knowing how to help your child in a system that doesn’t want you to understand. This piece was complex and heavy. I was so insecure about putting it on stage and being misunderstood. The day of dress rehearsal after setting music and lightening ques, I witnessed my piece performed thoroughly for the first time, I sobbed. I was gutted by the beauty and rawness of my piece. To see bits and parts of my life, my parent’s life, my abuelas life, the life of my community back home on a stage. It was overwhleming. While I sobbed I felt embarrassed to be seen by my peers, scared for them to know how much my piece meant to me and what impact it had on me. I was scared to not be validated. But when my piece faced the eyes of the public and my peers, I was met with teary eyes, sobs and unexpected hugs. I was pulled aside by an audience member that my piece moved them to call their mom and tell her she loved her. My piece made first gen kids feel seen, heard and validated. A year after I graduated, I found out from an undergrad friend that she was friends with that two young latinas that came to see the dance show my piece was showcased in and that after seeing my piece it confirmed for them that Scripps College is where they wanted to attend. That they could confidently attend a PWI they felt would honor their upbringing and diverse background. Taking up space is scary but its the work I want to continue to create.
At the moment I work as the first Arts and Culture Organizer for a non-profit organization in the City of Pomona called Gente Organizada, and I am a program coordinator for the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. I am learning what it means to activate people to engage in socio poltical movements through their own voice and within their capacity, which manifests differently for everyone. In my work as an organizer, I am faced with finding what speaks to intergenerational spaces, spaces of just young people, spaces of parents, spaces of young adults and spaces of our elders. While art may be a universal language amongst them, the differences in age, culture, and values requires me to be more introspective about what concerns them, what speaks to them and how they can organize.
How do you define success?
Loaded question! I haven’t quite quantified what success means to me or looks like because depending on the chapter of my life it looks different in those moments. There were moments when landing a paying job defined success for me right after graduating undergrad, then it was landing an arts fellowship that validated me as an artist and right now its being able to call myself an arts and culture organizer.
Putting labels aside, success for me would be that there will never come a time where I stop creating, dancing, dreaming and telling stories. If I can live the rest of my life never deprived of the ability to create, I would have reached success. Creativity and expression is essential to my lively hood that without the outlet to create I am certain I would plummet into a deep depression, feeling uncomfortable in my own body and mind.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: bffr_destiny
Image Credits
Corina Silverstein for the first three pics,
Enrique Villa
Christian Lopez
