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As the boisterous crowd began to quiet down and the jazz music heard outside the PCC gymnasium grew louder on Thursday, March 21, author Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez prefaced to the packed room by saying she was not looking to lecture or sugarcoat her words, which included more than a few instances of cursing.

“I think it’s important to remind people that cussing doesn’t make someone dumb, that you could be highly successful and still cuss all the time and as much as you want,” said Mojica Rodríguez. “I think it surprises students because you don’t have your professors just cussing all the time, right? But I’m not your professor.”

Born in Nicaragua and raised in Miami, Mojica Rodríguez first garnered a following online through her Latina Rebels platform in 2013. From there, she wrote two books on growing up Latinx through a feminist lens, with her most recent book “Tías and Primas” out later this September. Above all else, she describes herself as a storyteller whose upbringing as a first-generation student and immigrant shapes the material she writes about.

Organized by PCC’s Puente club, which aims to help build bridges for Latinx students navigating higher learning, the event was devoted to covering generational trauma and a host of other issues ranging from colorism to toxic masculinity. However, Mojica Rodríguez’s time speaking was far more personal, creating a safe space of relieved glances at the experiences described and laughs whenever she would slip into Spanish.

In between talking points, Mojica Rodríguez read excerpts from her 2021 book “For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts.” The jazz and guitar ensemble playing outside could have easily been a distraction to serious subject matter such as United States intervention in Latin America. Instead, it made for a unique quasi-open mic experience, with the roaring music adding weight when Mojica Rodríguez called out colorism in Latinx communities.

“Our colorism is anti-black and anti-indigenous,” Mojica Rodríguez said. “So if you look indigenous or if you’re closer to looking black or being black in our community, that’s at the bottom tier of what we think of beauty standards, what we think of as smart, who we think comes from a good family.”

Whenever Mojica Rodríguez briefly deviated from book excerpts to avoid coming off like a professor lecturing their class—there were subtle yet audible reactions from the primarily Latinx group. One recount of her childhood garnered awkward laughs in the class, in which she described an instance when she, at first, successfully bleached her arm hairs, only for everything to burn once she stepped into the sun.

Mojica Rodríguez also spoke at length about her struggle with imposter syndrome, which she connected to institutional barriers set up against Latinx students early on in their education. After her first book debuted to acclaim and high numbers, she wanted a $150,000 advance for her follow-up, double the entry-level amount she received for her first book. Her agents attempted to talk her out of it, claiming she would be lucky if she got the same amount again.

“[Imposter syndrome] feels like, ‘Don’t do it. Shut the fuck up, you’re doing too much.’ I felt it creeping, and I was like, ‘No, act like a white man,’” said Mojica Rodríguez. “I was like, ‘No, that’s the number I want. And add 50k more after the first year of publishing.’ And so the publisher took about 10 seconds to agree.”

While she took questions, many students were emotional when sharing their struggles with their Latinx identities and growing up in a country where the line between being too ethnic for white people and too white for people of the same ethnicity seems increasingly narrow. After sympathizing with their search for answers, she offered comfort in confronting what systematic oppression has done to generations of Latinx people living in the U.S.

“Once you hear the thing that you’ve always had your finger on. Like, ‘This is fucked up. Why am I cooking while my brother’s watching TV?’ And then someone tells you, ‘Oh, that’s, like, toxic masculinity.’ You’re like, well, I’m gonna scream it to the mountain tops. I’m gonna tell everybody about it,” said Mojica Rodríguez. “It may make it so that people don’t want to be around me. It may make it so that I burn bridges and I don’t get jobs. It may make it a lot more complicated for me to be a person in the world. But I’m gonna say it anyway.”

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