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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NBC Series ‘California’ Will Trace Latino Family’s Roots In The Area Over 200 Years
A new NBC series will delve into the history of a Latino family in California, following their roots to before the area was even part of the United States.
Jennifer Lopez will reunite with director Gregory Nava, who gave the star her breakthrough role in “Selena” almost 20 years ago, to bring to life the limited series, Deadline.com reported this week.
The website added that the upcoming show will be titled “California” and follow the fictional Latino family’s “journey over 200 years in California from Spanish, to Mexican, to American rule.”…
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Hispanic YouTubers Are First To Benefit From Google Advertising Initiative
Hispanic is the new Preferred on YouTube. Last year, Google introduced Google Preferred, a system of targeting specific top tier channels that would jibe with advertisers’ intents of reaching maximum audiences. This year, it’s all about being selective — and first up is the Hispanic audiences…
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REPORT: Single Issue Syndrome: How Sunday Shows Undermine Hispanic Inclusion
Sunday shows in both English and Spanish treat Hispanics as a single-issue constituency focused on immigration, according to a Media Matters analysis that examined the shows’ discussions and guests from August 31 to December 28, 2014. While Latinos make up more than 17 percent of the U.S. population, the report found that only 7 percent of guests on English-language Sunday shows were Hispanic, of which 46 percent spoke specifically about immigration. The report also found that while the Spanish-language Sunday shows devoted great attention to immigration, they gave much less coverage to issues of similar importance to the Latino community. Confining Latinos’ perspectives to a single issue damages their ability to engage in discussions about the other equally important issues that affect them and the general electorate…
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Diversity Sells — But Hollywood Remains Overwhelmingly White, Male
If you want an accurate picture of ethnic and gender diversity in the United States, don’t look to Hollywood.
That’s the conclusion of the “2015 Hollywood Diversity Report” conducted by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA.
The report quantifies the striking — if not surprising — racial and gender imbalances in film and television, both behind and in front of the camera, by comparing the representation of minorities to their actual proportions of the population…
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Alt.Latino: Mixing Genres With Chicano Batman, Los Cenzontles
What happens when Mexican folk music meets Cajun Zydeco? NPR’s Rachel Martin talks to Felix Contreras and Jasmine Garsd of NPR Music’s Alt.Latino about some musical mash-ups…
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Chicano Art Exhibit Provides Signs Of New Life At Defunct Museo Alameda
For the first time, a pair of nationally known Chicano artists from South Texas are showing their work side-by-side in “Arte y Tradición de La Frontera: The U.S.-Mexico Borderlands in the Works of Santa Barraza and Carmen Lomas Garza,” on view through May 24 at Texas A&M University-San Antonio’s Educational & Cultural Arts Center in Market Square…
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Cockroach Dreams: Oscar Zeta Acosta, Legal Services, and the Great Society Coalition
Early in Oscar Zeta Acosta’s 1972 novel, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, his protagonist, Oscar Acosta, quits his job as a War on Poverty-funded Legal Services lawyer in East Oakland, California, dumping his law license in the wastepaper basket. His resignation precipitates his search for racial identity in Autobiography and eventual transformation into Buffalo Zeta Brown, the activist Chicano lawyer in Acosta’s sequel, The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973). (1) Oscar’s abrupt departure enacts a double rejection. First, he rejects the liberalism that led him to take on “the enemy our president [Lyndon Johnson] so clearly described in his first State of the Union address” (Autobiography 22). Instead, especially in Revolt, Oscar/ Brown adopts a militant Chicano/a Cultural Nationalism at odds with the politics of integrationist Mexican American leaders affiliated with the Democratic Party. (2) Second, he rejects the professional aspirations…
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‘Birdman’ Wins Best Picture At 87th Academy Awards, Alejandro González Iñárritu Wins Best Director
The results are in: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman” is the best picture winner of the 87th Academy Awards. The film starring Michael Keaton tells the story of a down-and-out actor looking to get back into the spotlight with a passion project. The film was produced by Alejandro González Iñárritu, John Lesher, Arnon Milchan and James W. Skotchdopole, who were on-hand to accept the award at the rushed conclusion of the Oscars telecast…
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El Movimiento Chicano in Colorado
On Saturday February, 7 the Colorado History Museum opened an exhibit of El Movimiento – The Chicano Movement in Colorado that attempts to offer a picture of over a decade of explosive activities that described the drive for social and political justice for Latinos. Among the founders of the exhibit is Ricardo LaFore who talks of it as immersing the visitor “in the urgency, passion and vitality of one of Colorado’s most important social movements as activists fought to end discrimination and to gain social and political power through education, culture and the arts.” …
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6 Ways ‘Jane the Virgin’ Is Destroying Latino Stereotypes
“This award is so much more than myself,” said Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez upon accepting her Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy series in January. “It represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.”
This sentiment is one with which the hit CW show’s devoted fan base wholeheartedly agrees. Despite the telenovela-inspired comedy’s unabashedly over-the-top premise, Rodriguez’s multidimensional Latina protagonist is part of a stellar cast that offers an arguably unprecedented portrayal of Latinos on network television. Jane the Virgin is a necessary breath of fresh air in a media landscape that has historically been unfriendly to women — especially women of color…
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Smithsonian embraces Fresno musician’s songs of Chicano movement
It’s ironic: Agustín Lira should have been born an American.
His mother, a U.S. citizen, was illegally deported in the 1930s. Lira was born in Mexico and came to California as an undocumented migrant farmworker before becoming an activist.
The Fresno man’s experiences fuel his work, using art to talk about inequality. Despite the struggles — picking crops from age 7, growing up in poverty, being homeless for a while — he is on the brink of releasing an album of his songs from the Chicano movement of the 1960s for that most quintessential of American institutions, the Smithsonian…
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Mexican American Drama
D Goodrich – Ethnic American Literature: An Encyclopedia for …, 2015 – books.google.com
The roots of Mexican American drama extend far beyond the physical borders and historical
formation of the United States. Theatrical performances by Mexican Americans have
occurred for as long as formerly Mexican territories have been part of the United States. …
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The Mexican Museum Hires Cayetana S. Gómez as President and Chief Executive Office
Gómez to oversee operations, capital campaign, cultural relations, and collections
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — January 27, 2015 — The Mexican Museum (Museum), the premier West Coast museum of Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, and Latino art, culture and heritage, announces that Cayetana S. Gómez has been hired as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Gómez will be responsible for overseeing business operations for the Museum’s current location at Fort Mason Center. She will also be implementing the business and strategic plans for the cultural component of the 706 Mission Street Residential and Mexican Museum project, which will serve as the Museum’s future home in the heart of the Yerba Buena Gardens Art District.
“We are extremely pleased to have Cayetana join our team,” said Andrew M. Kluger, Chairman of The Mexican Museum Board of Trustees. “Along with her unparalleled communication skills and a vast network of professional relationships throughout the United States and Mexico, she has also held significant leadership positions for some of Mexico’s…
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Al Madrigal’s New Special ‘Half Like Me’ Is What Latinos Have Been Waiting For
Al Madrigal goes on a journey of self-discovery… starting with how to pronounce his own name.
In his new one-hour special “Half Like Me,” premiering on Fusion on January 22, The Daily Show’s senior Latino correspondent travels across the U.S. to discover what it means to be half Mexican and half white.
“Being half has always been confusing,” Madrigal says in the preview for the special. “White people think you’re Mexican and Latinos give me shit about not being Latino enough.”…
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Chef Ray Garcia’s Broken Spanish Will Speak L.A.’s Mother Tongue: Mexican Cuisine –
The former Fig chef joins the city’s Alta California stars in the cocina as he takes over the former Rivera space
January 15, 2015 Bill Esparza Chefs and Restaurateurs, Dining
When Broken Spanish opens in the former Rivera space, chef Ray Garcia will boldly join the ranks of what I’ve been calling Alta California cuisine, a style of cooking from a group of Los Angeles-born pocho (Mexican-American) chefs rooted in the Latin cuisines of their youth, fine-dining experience in our California-cuisine kitchens, and the use of our abundant and diverse local products from L.A. farmers’ markets. Garcia is one of the most respected chefs in Los Angeles, known for his European-inspired cooking. But you could catch him at events where he’d prepare things like whole pig-head carnitas, and Garcia also had tacos and Mexican comfort dishes on the brunch menu at Fig, where he previously served as executive chef…
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Ruben Navarrette Jr.: TV’s skewed vision of Latinos
Through perseverance and hard work, Latinos have overcome a long history of discrimination and made it to the U.S. Senate, the Supreme court and the Cabinet. You’ll find them in the executive suites of Fortune 50 companies, leading championship sports teams, and heading the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations. They’ve even made it to outer space.
That was easy. Now for the last frontier: television.
Studies have been done on what some call the entertainment industry’s “brownout.” One recent examination of the problem — “The Latino Media Gap: A Report on the State of Latinos in U.S. Media,” which was released last year by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race — found that Latinos lag far behind whites and African-Americans in landing leading roles. When Latinos have appeared on television, it’s usually in one-dimensional, stereotypical and cookie-cutter roles: the housekeeper or hoodlum, the cop or soldier, the sexpot or illegal immigrant, the gardener or gang-banger…
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Golden Globes Winners 2015: Latinos Gina Rodriguez, Alejandro González Iñárritu Take Home A Prize, Who Else Won? [FULL LIST]
Action! Award Season has officially begun this year with the Golden Globes. On Sunday, January 11, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded the best of movies and television while Tina Fey and Amy Poehler brought they hilarious skits to the award show hosting it yet again. Helping the funny duo present winners with their prizes were Latin divas Salma Hayek and Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Gervais, Amy Adams, Adrien Brody, Anna Faris, Kevin Hart, Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Pratt, Channing Tatum, Lily Tomlin, Kristen Wiig, Owen Wilson and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Our new TV obsession, Latina Gina Rodríguez went home with a little statue. The “Jane The Virgin” star was nominated for the first time and gave a heartfelt speech when she was called on the stage to pick up her prize. As she fought back her tears of excitement, she thanked her family, cast mates, the network and everyone who believed in her, and added, “This award is so much more than myself, it represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.”…
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First Chicano film is added to the National Film Registry Entertainment FIlm & TV by Jonathan Muñoz – Jan 5, 2015
Along with classics such as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Saving Private Ryan,” a Chicano film has found its way the National Film Registry, making it the first one in U.S. history.
Through the National Film Preservation Act, the Librarian of Congress names twenty-five films deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant to the National Film Registry every year. The goal preserve them so that future generations will be able to see these as well. It’s what makes “Please Don’t Burry Me Alive!” so special, now that’s it forms a part of the registry…
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‘Sciences,’ ‘Girl,’ ‘Gueros’ up for Palm Springs Fest’s Cine Latino Award
MADRID – Argentina’s “Natural Sciences,” Mexico’s “Gueros” and Spain’s “Magical Girl” and are among a record 27 titles — including “Wild Tales” and “Libertador,” both shortlisted for a foreign-language film Oscar nomination — that compete for the Cine Latino Award at the 26th Palm Springs Intl. Film Festival.
Prize goes to the best movie from Latin America, Spain or Portugal at the fest, which kicks off today. Sponsored by Mexico’s Guadalajara Festival, its biggest film event, and the University of Guadalajara Foundation in USA, the Cine Latino Award is now in its third year.
The Cine Latino Award’s cash prize has been raised to $10,000, Raul Padilla, president of the University of Guadalajara Foundation in USA, announced Friday. This recognizes and strengthens the fast-building bridges between the U.S. and Mexican film communities, seen in the number of companies operating out of both the U.S. and Mexico and the burgeoning number of U.S.-Mexico co-productions, in which Mexico brings increasingly significant coin to the table…
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CONFESSIONS OF A MEXPATRIATE to Play Teatro Paraguas, 2/6-8
Teatro Paraguas presents Confessions of a Mexpatriate, an original one-man performance. …Mexpatriate depicts the misadventures of a man who embarks on a journey across Mexico in search of his life’s meaning, and in a discovery of what it truly means to be Mexican-American.
Mexpatriate takes the audience on the adventure of one heavily-American-media-saturated man, embarking on a passage across Mexico, in which he comes to embrace the beauty of the culture and what Mexico means to Mexican-Americans. A memory and a fantasy, scary and welcoming … these are just a few of the aspects of this comedic look at a soul-searching experience. Mexpatriate is portrayed by actor Mical Trejo and is directed by Ken Webster. Both Trejo and Webster are award-winning theater artists…
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