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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Agent of Change, Adela Sloss Vento by Cynthia E. Orozco
“… Sister Irma, a professional Spanish-language translator ix … me with historical
research, identifying contacts and thereby suggesting her support of young
Chicana professionals..
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Their U.S. roots date back centuries, but these Latinos still wonder if it’s enough to belong
By Esmeralda Bermudez, Paloma Esquivel
Aug. 16, 2019
“It’s a tricky thing, what makes up an American.
There are Latinos whose families have been on this land since long before the Statue of Liberty greeted newcomers from New York Harbor, before the Civil War and the Declaration of Independence.
In the days since the El Paso massacre, many have found themselves reflecting, wrestling with their place in society and asking questions about how their heritage, their language and their skin color has shaped them and the way other Americans perceive them…”
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A New Home
“…The UC Santa Barbara Library and La Casa de la Raza have reached a new accord that signals another milestone in the preservation of local community history.
At a public reception July 11 at La Casa de la Raza, representatives from the library and from La Casa signed an agreement that will ensure the historical records of this community-based organization will be archived, preserved and made accessible in the library’s Special Research Collections.
Approximately 50 community residents, elected officials and represent…”
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New Jobs Report Shows Record Unemployment Lows for Hispanics, Women May 3rd, 2019
“…At 4.2% the Hispanic unemployment rate is the lowest it has ever been, and at 3.1% the adult women unemployment rate reached its lowest since 1953…”
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Pre-med students overwhelmingly want greater diversity, study shows
“…Pre-medical students support greater diversity in the medical profession, according to a recent national survey.
The survey, which was published April 15 by Kaplan Test Prep, found that 80% of pre-medical students said the medical profession needs to better reflect the demographics of the general patient population.
Representation of minority groups in medical schools has not mirrored that of the patient population, said Petros Minasi, director of pre-health programs at Kaplan.
About 4% of active physicians in the United States are black and another 4% are Hispanic, while black and Hispanic patients each make up 13% of the patient population, Minasi said…”
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Latinos’ Incomes Higher Than Before Great Recession, but U.S.-Born Latinos Yet to Recover
“…Overall gain is driven by rise in share of higher-income immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more years… U.S.-born Latinos have yet to recover financially from the Great Recession.The Great Recession of 2007-09 triggered a lengthy period of decline in the incomes of American workers. Since hitting a trough stretching from 2012 to 2014, their financial fortunes appear to be on the mend – in 2017, a decade after the recession began, the median personal income of American workers stood 3% higher than in 2007…”
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A Central American Marshall Plan Won’t Work
“Since late January, thousands of would-be asylum applicants have been held up just outside of the U.S. border with Mexico, where they have been forced to wait their turn to speak to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The growing humanitarian situation—camps for migrants are overcrowded, unhygienic, and dangerous—has renewed focus on Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s call for a Central American Marshall Plan, through which $30 billion would be channeled toward regional development in an effort to ease migration pressures. López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has set a goal of funding the plan by May, and U.S. President Donald Trump, eager to halt immigration to the United States, agreed to participate to the tune of $5.8 billion…”
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Doctor on Video Screen Told a Man He Was Near Death, Leaving Relatives Aghast
“Julia Jacobs
A doctor on a video conference explained to Ernest Quintana that he did not have long to live. Mr. Quintana’s family members criticized the use of telemedicine in that circumstance.
Catherine Quintana’s father had been in and out of a hospital for weeks, and the family understood that his time was running out
Her 78-year-old father, Ernest Quintana, had lung disease and was struggling to breathe on his own. On March 3, he was admitted to a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Fremont, Calif., for the third time in 15 days, Ms. Quintana said. He had his wife of nearly six decades and other members of his family at his side…”
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Standardized tests pose issues but inequalities go deeper, say students, faculty
“Eliminating standardized testing from the college admissions process may not make the process more fair for students from historically underrepresented socioeconomic classes, UCLA students and faculty said.
Beyond the Score, a student organization, held a town hall Feb. 20 to discuss the drawbacks of using standardized testing in college admissions. Members of the organization are campaigning to remove standardized testing as an admissions factor because they believe it selects against certain groups of applicants based on their socioeconomic status.
Patricia Gandara, a professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and co-director of The Civil Rights Project, said standardized test scores are strongly and positively correlated with the test-takers’ socioeconomic status.
“If you come from a high-income family, you have a much greater chance of scoring well on these than you do if you come from a low-income family,” Gandara said. “And that is socially unjust.”..”
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Baker Tilly Appoints Mexico Market Leader
“CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mar 5, 2019–Leading advisory, tax and assurance firm Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP (Baker Tilly) welcomes Angel Ramirez to its international services practice as Mexico market leader. In his role, Ramirez will strengthen Baker Tilly’s market-leading expansion solutions for clients, specifically in the area of U.S.-Mexico business growth, operations and trade regulations.
Most recently, Ramirez was Midwest market director for ProMexico – the Mexican government’s trade and investment agency. Following recent news by the Mexican government that all of ProMexico’s foreign offices are expected to close, and operations to fully cease by early 2019, Ramirez’s addition to the Baker Tilly team is both welcome and timely.
Ramirez’s experience includes working in the automotive sector and supply chain and production planning for large consumer product companies in the U.S. and Mexico…”
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Designs on the Future
“It would be hard to find someone more prepared for a job than Silvia Perea. An architect by training — she earned a Ph.D. from the Polytechnic University of Madrid — she has spent the past 11 years as a curator of exhibitions around the world. Before that she was a university professor and edited architectural magazines. Today she is the new curator of UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, which holds the largest collection of architectural drawings in North America…”
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Latino homeless population found to be at disadvantage in outreach programs
“A UCLA researcher found Latino homeless individuals in Los Angeles are less likely to receive support due to cultural and language barriers.
Melissa Chinchilla, a Latino policy and politics initiative researcher, published a study on the Latino homeless population in LA on Feb. 12 using 2017 data provided by the LA Homeless Services Authority and interviews she conducted with researchers and providers of homeless services and resources. Latino people make up 35 percent of LA County’s homeless population, according to LAHSA data.
Chinchilla said she found Latinos are undercounted in the LAHSA homeless count because they are more likely to live in nontraditional homeless spaces, such as converted garages and households with multiple unrelated families, and less likely than other racial groups to use public services. She added that little research has been done on Latino homelessness…”
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Border agents held 2 US citizens for speaking Spanish in public, suit says
“…When a Border Patrol agent asked two Spanish-speaking women — one of them former California resident — for identification in a Montana convenience store, and later held them for 40 minutes, they asked why he was doing it.
His answer, recorded on video: Speaking Spanish “is very unheard-of up here.”
The incident was humiliating, traumatic, and a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equality, the women, both native-born U.S. citizens, said in a lawsuit filed Thursday in a Montana federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union against the agent and his employer, U.S. Customs and Border Protection…”
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Author of UCLA common book discusses experience as border patrol agent
“…The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border” was chosen as UCLA’s 2018-2019 common book in July. In months prior, thousands of immigrant children had been separated from their parents at the United States-Mexico border.
The campus-wide committee responsible for the selection had no idea that months later, just before the launch of campus programming for the common book, the federal government would shut down for over a month over funding for a proposed border wall.
The memoir details author Francisco Cantú’s experience as a U.S. Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012. In the book, he said he reflects on his time as a part of a system that has normalized violence. This past week, UCLA hosted two events with Cantú – a book talk Tuesday and a panel Wednesday, featuring members from the legal community and UCLA faculty to discuss immigration. The discussions sought to connect Cantú’s work with the ongoing developments in immigration, said La’Tonya Rease Miles, director of UCLA First Year Experience.
“We hope that the book increases peoples’ awareness of the border and humanizes that experience, I would say in a way that perhaps our media is not right now,” Miles said. “That really was the goal there, recognizing that not everyone really knows what that experience was like.”
Cantú said he initially joined border patrol because he believed he could observe and change the system from the inside or use the insight for a future career in law or politics. Instead, he found himself deeply affected by the way in which he internalized the workings of the system, and felt the need to write about his experience to help him process the experience. Cantú felt the need to push back on the idea that one can step into institutions that have normalized violence and emerge unscathed, he said..”
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Hispanic Identity Fades Across Generations as Immigrant Connections Fall Away
“…As a result of high intermarriage rates, some of today’s Latinos have parents or grandparents of mixed heritage, with that share higher among later generations. According to the surveys, 18% of immigrants say that they have a non-Latino parent or grandparent in their family, a share that rises to 29% among the second generation and 65% among the third or higher generation, according to the Pew Research Center survey of self-identified Latino adults. And for those who say they have Latino ancestry but do not identify as Latino, fully 96% say they have some non-Latino heritage in their…”
“a href=”http://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/12/20/hispanic-identity-fades-across-generations-as-immigrant-connections-fall-away/” target=”_blank”>Link to article
The Hummingbird as Warrior: Evolution of a Fierce and Furious Beak
“…If you want to know what makes hummingbirds tick, it’s best to avoid most poetry about them.
Bird-beam of the summer day,
— Whither on your sunny way?
Whither? Probably off to have a bloodcurdling fight, that’s whither.
John Vance Cheney wrote that verse, but let’s not point fingers. He has plenty of poetic company, all seduced by the color, beauty and teeny tininess of the hummingbird but failed to notice the ferocity burning in its rapidly beating heart.
The Aztecs weren’t fooled. Their god of war, Huitzilopochtli, was a hummingbird. The Aztecs loved war, and they loved the beauty of the birds as well. It seems they didn’t find any contradiction in the marriage of beauty and bloodthirsty aggression…”
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California’s attorney general gave a scathing Spanish-language rebuttal to Trump’s speech
“…That’s how California Attorney General Xavier Becerra described the State of the Union Tuesday during the Democrats’ Spanish-language rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s speech.
California’s top law enforcement officer gave a scathing review of the Trump administration during his 20-minute rebuttal, accusing the president of infecting the White House with “criminality, collusion, and obstruction of justice.”
“There are dark clouds following Donald Trump around,” Becerra said in his speech, which aired during a prime-time slot on the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo.
He also blasted the president’s immigration policies…”
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94 percent of Latinos who voted in ’18 plan to continue voting By Rafael Bernal
“…A large majority of polled young Hispanic voters who participated in last November’s elections plan to continue voting, according to a newly released poll by Voto Latino and Change Research.
According to the poll, released exclusively to The Hill, 94 percent of 18-to-35-year-old 2018 Hispanic voters who responded said they will vote in 2020 and beyond…”
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Authors consider own backgrounds in portrayals of refugee and immigrant experiences
“…In the early 1990s, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen read a book about the Mexican-American border he found timely: “Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border,” by Luís Alberto Urrea. Twenty years later, the two authors will join forces to discuss refugees and immigrants.
The two hail from drastically different cultural backgrounds – Nguyen is a refugee from Vietnam while Urrea, who grew up in Tijuana, has an American mother and Mexican father. Their conversation Thursday in Royce Hall will detail both their personal histories and the influences behind their writing. They are both known for writing about these topics, from Urrea’s “Into the Beautiful North” and Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer;” they also know each other, as they first met when they were finalists for the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Their desire to humanize the immigrant and refugee experiences grounds both writers, though the contrasting pathways that preceded their works lead to different writing styles, Urrea said.
“We both have a serious intent and we are always representing (immigrants and refugees),” Urrea said. “It’s important for us to make a stand for our people, particularly in this environment now.”
Urrea saw the arts as a way of understanding where he fit in. His background made him feel isolated at times from both Latinos and Americans, he said, so he pursued poetry, songwriting, drawing and theater. During his senior year of college, his father died violently in Mexico. Urrea didn’t have any way to process it other than writing about it, he said. His bilingual skills and firsthand understanding of the American-Mexican border gave him an opportunity to share new stories of immigrants…”
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Hawaii’s Growing Latino Population
“…In 2017, one in every 10 Hawaii residents was Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While this number may seem small, it doesn’t provide the full picture of the rapid growth of Hawaii’s Latino population.
Standing at an estimated 159,737 in 2018, the Hawaii Latino population has increased over 80 percent since 2000. The bulk of the growth of the individuals of Hispanic or Latino origin took place between 2010 and 2018 as the increase over the 2000-2010 period was “just” 37.79 percent.
But wait, there’s more. That is, more Latinos in Hawaii.
According to data from a recent study, Hawaii’s Hispanic population is poised to reach 186,611 or 12.29 percent of the projected total Hawaii population in 2023. That’s a projected 16.88 percent growth in Hawaii’s Latino population from 2018 to 2023 compared to a much smaller 0.79 percent increase for the total Hawaii population…”
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