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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AP Exclusive: ‘Breaking Bad’ actor runs for Albuquerque seat
…ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Citing the growth of urban sprawl and a need for more Mexican-American elected officials, “Breaking Bad” actor Steven Michael Quezada said he is jumping in a heated race for county commissioner in Albuquerque, New Mexico…
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Opinion: America’s unlikeliest Latino
Now everybody wants to be Hispanic. Last week, in an exchange on Twitter, one of the country’s most xenophobic lawmakers made the bizarre suggestion that he is as Latino as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro. In response to a tweet paraphrasing Castro as warning that the “GOP could kiss the Latino vote goodbye,” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, tweeted, “What does Julián Castro know? Does he know that I am as Hispanic and Latino as he is?”…
How One Law Banning Ethnic Studies Led to Its Rise
The irony is that if Arizona lawmakers had never squashed one Mexican American studies class—in a single district in one city—Curtis Acosta would have no interest in duplicating that same class across the country. Certainly, California and Texas public schools would not be considering to offer the course in all its high schools. And Tony Diaz would never have become the book smuggler…
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Donald Trump’s false comments connecting Mexican immigrants and crime
Data on immigrants and crime are incomplete, but a range of studies show there is no evidence immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans. In fact, first-generation immigrants are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans. (The Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for restrictive immigration laws, has a detailed report showing the shortfalls of immigrant crime data.)…
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America redefining its identity for 21st century
WASHINGTON
As it marked another birthday, America is forging the outlines of a new century.
It’s moving with now remarkable speed to cast aside some of the traditions and mores that dominated American life for centuries. The Confederate flag is coming down, 150 years after the end of the Civil War and a half-century after it was raised in defiance of civil rights. Marriage is being redefined. Whites are fast becoming a minority. And after electing its first African-American president, the country is poised to elect a new leader from among a roster including a woman, two Cuban-Americans, and the scion of an old Yankee family married to a Mexican-American…
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Truth vs. perception of crime rates for immigrants
Incendiary comments made by Donald Trump and a random killing of a California woman have added fuel to national debate on the contributions of and concerns about undocumented immigrants. William Brangham speaks to Marielena Hincapié of the National Immigration Law Center, Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute and Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies…
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How Trump’s comments unleashed ‘Latino Spring’
There were no mass demonstrations in the streets, but Latino protesters amassed online. Their focus? The hurtful anti-Mexican comments made recently by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Latinos gathered in social media circles to condemn, plot and retaliate against Trump with such fervor in the past two weeks that they caused three multibillion dollar media companies to back away from him: Univision, NBC and Televisa…
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Latino Voters Are Crucial To the Environmental Movement; Studies Prove Most Consider Climate Change ‘Very’ Important
With around 54 million Latinos living in the United States these day, Latino voters are easily a major factor in determining the outcomes of elections. And this turns out to be good news for any environmentally-minded politicians out there.
A new study — which comes to us from Latino Decisions, a political opinion research group, and the nonprofit Hispanic Access Foundation — has revealed that 80 percent of Latino voters that participated in their “2014 Election Eve Poll” believed that it was “extremely” or “very” important for the federal government to take measures in order to reduce climate changing carbon pollution…
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Immigration News Today: Most US-Born, Foreign-Born Latinos and Millennials Support Pathway to Legal Status
While the two major political parties remain divided over providing undocumented immigrants a pathway to U.S. citizenship, a majority of Americans have made their preference known.
Overall American Sentiment:
With certain requirements required, most Americans, with 72 percent, said undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. should legally stay in the country. Based on Pew Research Center’s latest survey, when the 72 percent is broken down, 42 percent said they support immigrants’ right to apply for citizenship, while the remaining 26 percent prefer immigrants apply for permanent residency…
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Supreme Court could reshape voting districts, with big impact on Hispanics
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take up a Texas case that challenges the way nearly every U.S. voting district – from school boards to Congress – is drawn. The case, in essence, asks the court to specify what the word “person” means in its “one person, one vote” rule. The outcome of the case could have major impacts on Hispanic voting strength and representation from coast to coast…
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Yakima set to elect first Latino city council member
After decades of court wrangling, Yakima is all but assured to elect its first Latino city council member this November.
About 41 percent of the city’s population is Latino. But no candidate with a Hispanic last name has ever won election to Yakima City Council.
The city’s new districts, proposed by the ACLU, were ordered by federal Judge Thomas O. Rice earlier this year, a few months after he ruled that the city’s previous city-wide election system seemed to keep candidates from reaching office…
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Constructing Identities in Mexican American Political Organizations Choosing Issues, Taking Sides
The formation of a group identity has always been a major preoccupation of Mexican American political organizations, whether they seek to assimilate into the dominant Anglo society or to remain separate from it. Yet organizations that sought to represent a broad cross section of the Mexican American population, such as LULAC and the American G.I. Forum, have dwindled in membership and influence, while newer, more targeted political organizations are prospering—clearly suggesting that successful political organizing requires more than shared ethnicity and the experience of discrimination…
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Ramos: Hispanics Are No Longer ‘A Sleeping Giant’ In Elections
Friday on “The Alan Colmes Show,” Alan spoke with Univision and Fusion journalist Jorge Ramos about why the Latino vote could be the deciding factor in the 2016 election, and how much Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz will matter if they are on the ticket.
Ramos told Alan that in order for a Republican to win the White House, the nominee will have to get 33% of the Latino vote, something neither Mitt Romney or Sen. John McCain was able to do. He also said even though Latinos share many Republican values, they won’t vote for a party who “wants to deport their families.”
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Mayor Nelda Martinez, Woman of Distinction
Corpus Christi Mayor Nelda Martinez was honored by the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce at the 4th annual Women of Distinction Awards in Austin.
Mayor Martinez was one of 12 Latinas from across the state that was recognized for their professional accomplishments, community contributions, and leadership. “I am humbled and honored to receive this recognition from such a prestigious state organization as The Texas Association of Mexican American…
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Two Latino Activists Divided by Years, Joined By Their Cause
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — They sat on opposite ends of the room and didn’t know each other. One is considered the old guard, while the other is the fresh young face. One is Puerto Rican and Dominican, born in New York; the other is Mexican American, born in the U.S. but raised in Mexico. One works on the West Coast, the other the East Coast…
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Univision’s Jorge Ramos Joins Hannity In Misrepresenting The Latino Vote
Both Fox’s Sean Hannity and Univision host Jorge Ramos misrepresented the Latino vote by suggesting that if it weren’t for the issue of immigration, Hispanics would favor conservative candidates. But not only do Latino voters prioritize multiple issues in addition to immigration, on those issues they are far more likely to support progressive reforms than Ramos and Hannity suggested…
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New Book Suggests Political Models to Empower Latinos, Mexicanos
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A new book by UC Riverside political scientist Armando Navarro examines the current state of Latino and Mexicano politics in the United States, and outlines models for change that would alter U.S. boundaries and empower a population he contends is politically and economically powerless…
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Hillary Clinton appoints San Antonio attorney Jose H. Villareal as campaign treasurer
A day after Hillary Clinton announced her bid for president; her staff is beginning to shape up with the appointment of San Antonio attorney Jose H. Villarreal as treasurer for the prospective Democratic nominee’s campaign.
Villareal, a Mexican-American, is a close associate of both Hillary and Bill Clinton – serving as deputy campaign manager for Bill Clinton during his first run at president in 1992 and as a senior adviser to Clinton in 2008 when she ran against Barack Obama…
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Hot topic: ‘America’s Hispanics’
The linked issues of immigration and America’s growing Hispanic population have generated what has become a permanent public argument. Everybody in the country, it seems – especially in Arizona — has an opinion, and often a fierce one. So it might be worth hearing what the issue looks like from outside the U.S., especially from a viewpoint that prides itself on a rational, balanced approach to even the hottest of topics…
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2015: A Good year for Hispanics/Latinos
The man was an ordinary looking man, a working man by his looks and clothes. When asked in Spanish where he was from, he responded, “Tijuana.”
This was in New Hampshire, the other day. The man who asked the question in Spanish was former Florida governor Jeb Bush, almost-candidate for President, the responder a New Hampshire resident shaking Bush’s hand at a meet-and-greet-New Hampshire trip by Bush to try and do what his father and brother (Presidents 41 and 43) could not do, carry the important New Hampshire Presidential primary…
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