Every Day is Magic: Ada Limón

In her 2015 collection, Bright Dead Things, a National Book Award finalist for poetry, Ada Limón writes of moving to Kentucky: “Confession: I did not want to live here.” It’s perhaps not a surprising sentiment coming from a coastally oriented person who was raised in Northern California, attended college in Seattle, and then spent over a decade in New York City.

 

But Limón and her husband, Lucas, have been in Lexington for seven years now and the effects of settling into this place are noticeable in her new book, The Carrying (Milkweed, Aug.). It’s a phenomenally lively and attentive collection replete with the trappings of living a little closer to nature. While Bright Dead Things is marked by a preponderance of light, such as images of fireflies and neon signs, The Carrying features numerous appearances by various trees, birds, and beetles. Limón also demonstrates a greater willingness to be explicit in naming colors, particularly green. “It’s crazy green, the whole book,” she says. “Lexington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived.” Similarly, where in Bright Dead Things, Limón tells a lot of stories and anecdotes, in The Carrying she is very present in her thoughts and experiences.

As it turns out, these shifts in focus have another, altogether unexpected source. While putting Bright Dead Things together, Limón was diagnosed with chronic vestibular neuronitis, which can cause bouts of vertigo. “If I’m really having vertigo, it’s pretty intense and I really have to focus,”
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Mexican American Proarchive : Annual Report on Mexican American Professionals

It is of utmost importance to discuss why Mexican Americans have trailed most minority groups in educational achievement. The Atlantic recently published a Feb. 8, 2017 article titled “The Myth of Immigrants’ Educational Attainment,” in which new research from sociologist Cynthia Feliciano, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, “found that the reason immigrant families appear so successful is not upward mobility, but the ability to work their way into the same class they occupied in their native country.”

This is an interesting new theory that shines the light on groups such as Cubans that excel far beyond all other Hispanic groups in educational attainment.

The good news is that in spite of many explanations to the inequality between the educational attainment of Mexican Americans and the larger population in the United Sates, numbers in this educational achievement gap keep rising.

News from the American Community Census is better than last year’s. Mexican American college enrollment in the US rose from 18.9% in 2015 to 19.3% in 2016, in spite of the total college enrollment falling from 27.8% in 2015 to 27.7% in 2016.

American Community Census
2015 – 2016 College Enrollment
2015
2016
Total Population
Mexican Americans
Total Population
Mexican Americans
27.8%
18.9%
27.7%
19.3%

Graduate or professional degrees are also up from 3.0% in 2015 to 3.2% in 2016; although for the total population they were a bit higher from 11.6% to 11.9%. The contrast is still significantly low for Mexican Americans in comparison to the general population.

Bachelor’s degrees among this population managed to eke out a small gain above the national number. The numbers for Mexican Americans were 7.8% in 2015 to 8.2% in 2016 and 19.0% and 19.3% for the total population, respectably.

Mexican Americans were also on the positive column when it came to associate’s degrees; moving from 22.1% in 2015 to 22.5% in 2016.

 
2015 – 2016 EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
2015
2016
Total Population
Mexican Americans
Total Population
Mexican Americans
Graduate or Professional Degree
11.6%
3.0%
11.9%
3.2%
Bachelor’s Degree 19.0% 7.80% 19.3% 8.2%
Associate’s Degree 29.0% 22.1% 29.0% 22.5%

The University of California reports a continued rise in underrepresented minorities with the rise of Chicano/Latino freshmen enrollment rising from 32.3% in 2016 to 33.2% in 2017.

Transfer numbers from community colleges also grew from 28.3% in 2016 to 29.7% in 2017 for Chicano/Latino students.

 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
2016
2017
Chicano/Latino of admitted California Freshmen
32.3%
33.2%
Chicano/Latino transferring from Community Colleges
28.3%
29.7%

Occupations, including those in management, business, science, and art, fared better for Mexican Americans. The number of Mexican Americans filling these occupations rose from 17.5% in 2015 to 18.4% in 2016.

 
2015 – 2016 OCCUPATIONS
2015
2016
Mexican Americans
Mexican Americans
Management, Business, Science, & Art Occupations
17.5%
18.4%

Industrial employment for Mexican Americans showed a slight improvement even above the gain by the general population. Mexican Americans moved from 10.2% in 2015 to 10.4% in 2016. The total population rose from 11.3% in 2015 to 11.4% in 2016.

 
2015 – 2016 INDUSTRY
2015
2016
Total Population
Mexican Americans
Total Population
Mexican Americans
Professional, Scientific, Management, Administrative, & Waste Management Services, Occupations
11.3%
10.2%
11.4%
10.4%

Lastly, an example of one of the lowest showings in educational attainment came from Hudspeth County, Texas, which includes metropolitan El Paso.

The demographic data of this county as reported by the American Community Survey shows that Hispanics comprise 77.6% of the population and white (alone) is 18.9%.

The educational attainment for white (alone) is 24.5% for bachelor’s degrees and 3.2% for Hispanics. It is an example of the hard work to be done by the educational community of that county.

Professional, Scientific, Management, Administrative, & Waste Management Services, Occupations
White
Hispanics
Total Population
Educational Attainment
Total Population
Educational Attainment
18.9%
24.5%
77.6%
3.2%

It has been a good year for Mexican American professionals; hopefully this will continue in spite of the current political climate.


  

Poem
“…And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while…”

T.S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Mexican American Proarchive Annual Report for 2022

The American Community Survey is an annual survey administered by the federal government to help local officials and community leaders and businesses understand the changes that take place in their communities. It includes percentages of our population’s graduate school attainment and the employment of Mexican Americans in various occupations.  These important factors influence the allocation of federal resources. Mexican American Proarchives uses the data provided by the American Community Survey to better understand how Mexican Americans compare to the general population.

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