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,”
Read More…
Phoenix seeks input on building Latino arts and cultural center
A cultural center showcasing Latino communities may be Phoenix’s next major investment in city art institutions.
Some Phoenix leaders and organizations have for years pushed for a space to highlight the artistic contributions of Latinos through a designated facility, without a designated funding source or plan. Now, the city is considering if nearly $1.4 million in bond funding could launch the project.
There’s no precise vision, location or business model — yet. A consultant approved by the City Council last year is investigating how such a center would function.
The institution would aim to hold exhibitions and programs that focus on cultural education and celebration. Early outreach to artists and an advisory board for the proposal point to interest in a multipurpose space that could include visual and performing arts as well as classroom and event space, said Evonne Gallardo, the California-based consultant working on the project…
Link to article
Chomsky gives an historical look at immigration and social justice
DULUTH
Our national quarrel over immigration that was reignited during Donald Trump’s campaign is actually older than this nation. Yet, there has been little substantive debate since his inauguration as the dictates two weeks into his administration showed.
His first dictate could not stand up to the rule of law or the Constitution. So he tried again March 6 with a little softer approach that still offended a majority of Americans, judges, and state attorneys’ general.
The nation would have been better served if President Trump would have waited a day and had sat quietly in the College of St. Scholastica’s Mitchell Auditorium March 7 prior to his second dictate. He would have gotten an historical and social justice perspective on immigration from guest lecturer Aviva Chomsky that would have served us better.
Chomsky did not, however, lay the blame on Trump for where he had arrived on the immigration question
“It’s not like we had a generous immigration policy that Trump was trying to displace,” Chomsky told a gathering of over 100 people.
She said we need to radically change the way we see our history otherwise we end up with incorrect assumptions that permeate the way we think.
And so we end up with the mess that is our national quarrel on immigration.
Chomsky is a professor of history and coordinator of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. She was born into a family of scholars who included her father, linguist Noam Chomsky. She worked for the United Farm Workers in 1976 and 1977, an experience that sparked her interest in migrant workers, labor history, and the effect of global economic forces on individuals…
Link to article
International Friendships:The Interpersonal Basis of a World Wide Community
A GARCIA – International Friendships: The Interpersonal Basis of a …, 2016
… American migrants is greater in the United States, in recent years, some publications shed further
information about Latin Americans in Canada … In 2013, approximately 11.6 million Mexican
immigrants lived in the United States, compared to 2.2 million in 1980, representing…
Link to book preview
English graduate student wins Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship
Cesar Soto wants to know how the spark of political revolution can transform religious concepts of community and inclusion.
To better understand the issue, he’s turning to the literature of England, Ireland, and Mexico in the late 1700s and early 1800s.César Soto wants to know how the spark of political revolution can transform religious concepts of community and inclusion.
Soto, a Ph.D. candidate in Notre Dame’s Department of English, has been awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for 2016-17 to support his project.
The fellowships recognize graduate students who have demonstrated superior academic achievement, show promise as future scholars and teachers at a college or university level, and are prepared to use diversity as a resource to enrich the education of all students…
Link to article
Obama White House Touts Latino Gains in Income, Education, Health
by SUZANNE GAMBOA
WASHINGTON, DC — The White House on Wednesday touted gains Hispanics have made in education, income and health insurance during President Barack Obama’s time in office.
In a report released to mark the closing days of Hispanic Heritage Month, which ends Saturday, the White House issued a four-page brief from its Council on Economic Advisers on the Hispanics’ economic progress in the Obama years.
Obama marked the close of Hispanic Heritage month with remarks at a White House reception Wednesday afternoon. Hispanic Heritage Month began Sept. 15 and closes on Saturday.
“Over the last eight years we have made a lot of progress, together for all Americans and nowhere have you been able to see more vividly the progress than in the Hispanic American community,” Obama said at the event…
Link to article
Annual New Mexico Hispanic Fiesta Draws Native American Ire
It’s a week-long event that draws together generations of northern New Mexico Hispanic residents, some who can trace their roots to the 1600s.
For centuries, northern New Mexico Hispanic residents have held an elaborate festival in Santa Fe to honor Spanish conquistador Don Diego De Vargas, who reclaimed the city following an American Indian revolt. There is music, dancing, a parade and the reenactment of De Vargas’s “peaceful reoccupation” of what is now New Mexico’s capital…
Link to article
Chicano Movement for Beginners
M Montoya – 2016 – books.google.com
As the heyday of the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s to early 70s fades further into
history and as more and more of its important figures pass on, so too does knowledge of its
significance. Thus, The Chicano Movement For Beginners is an important attempt to stave …
Link to book preview
Eva Longoria’s powerful speech: ‘My family didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us’
Eva Longoria took the podium at the Democratic National Convention with a powerful speech about her family’s immigrant past.
The actress was among the various speakers at Monday night’s opening night in Philadelphia. She spoke about her personal experience as a Mexican-American living in the U.S.
“I’m from a small town in South Texas, and if you know your history, Texas used to be part of Mexico,” Longoria, 41, said. “I’m ninth-generation American. My family never crossed the border, the border crossed us.”…
Link to article
HOW DO HISTORY AND RELIGION AFFECT THE READING HABITS AND PRACTICES OF LATINO STUDENTS?
DL Moguel – the Social Studies, 2016
… Paz argued that Mexican Catholicism, a combination of Spanish and indigenous traditions, had
different approaches than European Protestantism toward freedom of … By surveying over 35
thousand Americans over the age of 18, the 2014 Survey has found the following (Pew …
Link to article
Community Home, and Identity
TL Turnipseed – 2016 – books.google.com
Community, home, and identity are concepts that have concerned scholars in a variety of
fields for some time. Legal scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and
economists, among others, have studied the impacts of home and community on one’s …
Link to book preview
“I AM Latino in America” Tour stops in Dallas
DALLAS — SMU’s Cox Latino Leadership Initiative and the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau hosted the “I Am Latino in America” tour Tuesday at the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium.
The “I Am Latino in America” tour, hosted by award-winning journalist, Soledad O’Brien, kicked off in 2015 and returned in February 2016, adding Dallas to the cities it would visit.DALLAS — SMU’s Cox Latino Leadership Initiative and the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau hosted the “I Am Latino in America” tour Tuesday at the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium…
Link to article
Reading Tejano History
CE Orozco – American Book Review, 2016
… Texas Mexican Americans and Postwar Civil Rights Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez University of
Texas Press www.utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books Pages; Print, $24.95. … The story about
the hiring of Mexican Americans in civil service jobs was unknown. …
Link to review
RAZA RISING: Chicanos in North Texas
Mexican Americans–Texas–Social
conditions. | Mexican Americans–Texas–Fort Worth–Social conditions. …
Link to book preview
Food in the Gilded Age: What ordinary Americans ate
Mexican American Diets,Las Cruces, Spring 1896 … Fall through Early Spring, 1901–1903 Typical Winter–Spring Diet,
Tuskegee, 1895–1896 Typical Winter Diet, Poor African Americans, Philadelphia and …
Link to book preview
THE MEXICAN AMERICAN VIETNAM WAR SERVICEMAN : THE MISSING AMERICAN
TM Jimenez – 2015
… By providing information in the area of American identity, race relations, the draft and volunteerism
as well as the sacrifice of Mexican American lives at the time of the Vietnam War, this study hopes
to initiate the inclusion of Mexican Americans in the war’s general history. …
Link to thesis
Writing the Good Life: Mexican American Literature and the Environment
PS Ybarra – 2016
… Writing 3 1 epistemological hierarchy and the environment: erasure of Mexican American
Knowledge in … The professionals at the New Mexico State Archives answered questions before
I … I have met so many colleagues at conferences and through professional organizations …
Link to book preview
The Collision of Cultural Memories on the Texas_Mexico Border
GW Gómez – How Myth Became History: Texas Exceptionalism in …, 2016
… Texan memory carries traces of the coun-terdiscursive practices voiced in the nineteenth-and
early twentieth-century corrido,“a Mexican folk ballad that celebrates the resistance of Mexican
Amer-ican everyman against the oppression of Anglo Americans”(Sorensen 112). …
Link to book preview
Latina Lives in Milwaukee
T Delgadillo – 2015 – books.google.com
102 days ago – … people of many different backgrounds and experiences but that there are many
forms of achievement—personal, professional, communal—large … local troupe, whether it involved
actors posing as French and Mexican or actual Mexican or Mexican American performers …
Link to book preview
Both Mexico and the US Are to Blame for Ruthless Drug Lords Like El Chapo
Sean Penn, actor and activist, has made a name for himself as something of a renegade journalist, pursuing interviews with controversial figures such as Cuban leader Raul Castro, the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, and most recently Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Penn’s interview with El Chapo is perhaps his most provocative, for the narcotics trafficker has been America’s most wanted man since the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. While the interview, printed in Rolling Stone, is certainly intriguing, it is important to remember how much of a point of contention the war on drugs has become for the United States and its southern neighbor. Since the 1960s, relations between the U.S. and Mexico have grown increasingly strained due to not only the growing presence of drug cartels in Mexico, but the seemingly endless flow of firearms south and the insatiable American appetite for marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. As the U.S. and Mexico negotiate the extradition of the world’s most powerful drug trafficker from his home base in Sinaloa state to a correctional facility somewhere north of the border, distrust between the two countries remains palpable, particularly after El Chapo’s previous escapes from two out of Mexico’s three maximum security prisons…
Link to article
Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Immigrant Mexicans, and the California Farmworker Movement
LA Flores – 2016 – books.google.com
Known as “The Salad Bowl of the World,” California’s Salinas Valley became an agricultural
empire due to the toil of diverse farmworkers, including Latinos. A sweeping critical history of
how Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants organized for their rights in the decades …
Link to book preview
