Hispanic Star: Sylvia Rivera

By Claudia Romo Edelman, J. Gia Loving and Cheyne Gallarde

Read about Sylvia Rivera, who is among the most groundbreaking, iconic Hispanic and Latinx heroes who have shaped our culture and the world in Hispanic Star: Sylvia Rivera, co-written with J. Gia Loving, from Claudia Romo Edelman's gripping Hispanic Star biography series for young readers.

Meet Stonewall uprising veteran Sylvia Rivera—once just a kid from New York City. A transgender Latina, Sylvia became an influential gay liberation and transgender rights activist who fought especially for transgender people of color. In the 1970s, Sylvia and Marsha P. Johnson founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group devoted to providing services and advocacy for homeless LGBTQ+ people. Nearly two decades after her passing, Sylvia and her legacy continue to have an impact on the LGBTQ+ rights movement and remain an inspiration for marginalized queer people everywhere.

Hispanic Star proudly celebrates Hispanic and Latinx heroes who have made remarkable contributions to American culture and have been undeniable forces in shaping its future. If you can see it, you can be it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781250828170

Claudia Romo Edelman

Claudia Romo Edelman is the Founder of the We Are All Human Foundation. Claudia has worked for 25 years with internationally recognized institutions including the United Nations, UNICEF, the Global Fund and the World Economic Forum. She has a track record in launching global campaigns, and she’s a master of agenda setting. She has been in the driver’s seat of some of the most successful global campaigns in the last decade including: the launch of the SDG’s, Product (RED), the creation of the SDG Lions and rebranding of the UN Refugee Agency.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

SHE’S A GIRL

By the midpoint of the twentieth century, the United States had already experienced the booms and busts of its growing global power.

The Great Depression during the 1930s sent the world into an economic crisis and left people in a cloud of uncertainty. While families scraped by to survive, political leaders in Europe were focused on the Second World War, which had begun after the German invasion of Poland in 1939. The United States entered the war following the Japanese bombing of the American naval station, Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu in 1941. The demand for wartime soldiers and materials created jobs for Americans and profit for the economy. Not only did World War II pull the United States out of economic depression, it encouraged Americans to believe their financial security was determined by the country’s ability to conquer outside enemies.

By the mid-1940s, the United States and Allied nations, such as Great Britain, declared victory in the World War. Shortly after, the United Nations was established with fifty-one nations committing to maintaining peace, while the Allied nations established themselves as permanent members of the newly created UN Security Council. But global tensions soon reemerged as the United States and Soviet Union became superpower rivals in a standoff known as the Cold War that lasted throughout most of the second half of the century.

Within the United States, divisions among Americans also deepened. Many groups of marginalized people banded together to demand change and equality. Women campaigned early in the century for their right to vote. After World War II, they demanded to be included in political discussions that previously only men were welcomed into. Black people and other people of color also spent decades in local communities organizing toward racial justice and the dream of equality for all.

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Sylvia Lee Rivera was born into a family that deeply understood the impacts of a divided world. Throughout the first few years of her life, learning how to make do with little would need to become second nature.

Sylvia was born on July 2, 1951, at 2:30 a.m. in New York City. Her mother, twenty-two-year-old Carmen Mendoza, birthed Sylvia in the back of a taxicab outside the old Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. Born with her feet first, Sylvia’s grandmother would tease and joke that she had been born ready to hit the streets. As Sylvia grew older, she laughed about her grandmother’s omen but never denied it.

Living in the US with familial roots in Latin America meant the Rivera and Mendoza families had to build their livelihoods from very little. Like other migrant families, they had to adapt to life in the states. Often, newly arrived migrants could not rely on American state protection or support without also risking further family separation. Nevertheless, they persisted.

Sylvia’s parents were young and needed to learn how to sustain a family. Jose Rivera, Sylvia’s father, came from a Puerto Rican family. Her mother, Carmen, was raised by a Venezuelan migrant single mother, whom the neighborhood referred to as