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 Americans’ many routes to finding their own national identities
“…Alfredo Corchado is messing with my head, forcing me to think hard about something I had neatly packed away: What it means to be Mexican American. What are friends for if not to turn your world upside down?
As a reporter — currently for the Dallas Morning News, and earlier at the El Paso Herald-Post and the Wall Street Journal — Corchado has always been a good storyteller. But when he began writing books, he had to learn to tell his own story. He has become good at that, too…”
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Humanity’s Genes Reveal Its Tangled History
…”Reality, it turns out, is more complex and interesting than scientists ever imagined.
In the early 19th century, Jean-Fraconnçois Champollion used the Rosetta Stone to begin the process of deciphering the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. We already knew Egypt through the Bible and the histories of the Greeks, but even Herodotus wrote 2,000 years after the beginning of the Old Kingdom. With the translation of hieroglyphics, the legend of Egypt came to life. What had been cloudy became clear.
In Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard’s Medical School and the Broad Institute, introduces us to the 21st-century Rosetta Stone: ancient DNA, which will do more for our understanding of prehistory than radiocarbon dating did. Where the latter allowed archaeologists to create a timeline based on the material objects they excavated, DNA sequencing allows scholars to explore the genetics of the people who created those material cultures. We may never see the face of Agamemnon, but we already have the DNA of the warlords of Mycenaean Greece, and in the future we could reconstruct their features from genes alone…”
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Mexico’s Indigenous teachers fight to preserve ancient cultures in math class
When Totonacú children in Mexico learn to count, they learn the numbers to count animals – one-two-three pigs, one-two-three chickens. Then they learn the numbers for counting wool. And earthen furrows. Those are different. And the numbers for grapes, and other things that grow in clusters? Different. And for round things? And long, straight things? Yep, different.
The Totonacú language has 71 different systems of counting, each for counting different things. Totonacú children have no trouble learning all 71, says Fanny Cruz Garcia, a Mixteco professor of culture and language at the Intercultural University of Puebla who is working with Indigenous teachers in Veracruz. But when those kids get to school, and they encounter the numbers in Spanish – uno, dos, tres, no matter what you’re counting – well, that seems alien. Then they start to learn math, with…
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Question of race not simple for Mexican Americans, author says
Those are assumptions drawn from the experience of European Americans, but they don’t match with the experience of Latinos, particularly those of Mexican origin in Texas, according to Dowling, the author of the new book “Mexican Americans and the Question of Race” (University of Texas Press).
For most European Americans, marking “white” likely means they experience little discrimination based on their racial background, Dowling said. For a Mexican American, it’s often a response to discrimination. “It’s for them a way of saying, ‘I belong, I’m an American citizen, and I want to be recognized as such,’ ” she said.
Her case in point: the border counties of southern Texas. Most are more than 80 percent Latino, and more than 80 percent of those Latinos marked “white” on the 2010 census…
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VIDEO: 5 Oakland police officers of Mexican heritage recognized for outstanding service in the community
OAKLAND (KRON) — Five police officers of Mexican heritage were recognized Thursday for their outstanding service in the community.
The ceremony took place at the consulate general office of Mexico in San Francisco.
The five officers were chosen by their peers in the Oakland Police Department.
The consulate general says this is the first time Mexican officers from the Bay Area received honorary recognition from his office…
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Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century
CA Sanchez, RE Sanchez – 2017
… into English. We were also acutely aware that since this anthology was meant to
represent Mexican philosophy, the decision about what and whom to include should
not be left entirely to two Mexican-Americans. The project …
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How this grassroots environmental justice hero is leading his hometown resistance
The activist mark! Lopez didn’t attend his first march for environmental justice on foot. He was pushed in a stroller. A winner of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots “heroes”, Lopez has agitated alongside his family since childhood.In the late 1980s, when he was growing up in East Los Angeles, Lopez’s grandparents and others took down a proposed state prison, a toxic waste incinerator, and a pipeline planned to run near a school. The 32-year-old Lopez stepped up to help lead the battle against the Exide battery smelter — a factory just outside East L.A.’s borders that for decades spewed noxious chemicals, like lead and arsenic, into neighboring communities that are mostly inhabited by people of color. Activists in the area fought the company for years — citing public health concerns related to lead contamination, such as impaired neurological development in children and increased violence in exposed communities — and the plant officially closed in 2015. Cleanup, however, for which the state set aside $176.6 million, has barely gotten underway and has already hit roadblocks…
Raciolinguistics” How Language Shapes our Ideas about Race
AF Ball – 2016
… Gordon, University of Arizona 3. From Mock Spanish to Inverted Spanglish: Language Ideologies
and the Racialization of Mexican and Puerto … University of South Carolina 5.“Suddenly Faced
with a Chinese Village”: The Linguistic Racialization of Asian Americans 97 adrienne …
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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 …
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Mexican Business Culture in Trade Books
CM Coria-Sánchez – Mexican Business Culture: Essays on Tradition, Ethics, …, 2016
… Although this study is quite biased by making generalizations such as “It is because Mex- icans
and Mexican Americans tend to be poor and not well educated that they are fatal- istic,” the
analysis shows that “when social class is controlled, Mexicans are not more fatalistic than …
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8 Latino business founders breaking down barriers
Making their million-dollar mark
Latino-founded businesses are booming, yet less than 2 percent of Latino entrepreneurs ever make it past the $1 million revenue mark, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of the 1.4 million Latino-owned companies in the United States, the average has $156,000 in annual sales, revealed a study from the Latin Business Action Network (LBAN)…
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Why so few Latino-owned businesses get venture capital funding
In the world of venture capital, Latino-owned businesses are rarer than billion dollar unicorns.
Only about 1% of all Latino-owned businesses created between 2007 and 2012 in the U.S. received venture capital or angel investments, according to a report by the Stanford Graduate School of Business that surveyed roughly 1,800 businesses.
One big reason: Very few Latino-owned firms are even walking through the doors of venture capital firms to begin with…
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5 Reasons Brands Should Use Facebook Instant Articles To Engage With U.S. Hispanics
Last month, Facebook announced that on April 12, they will be “opening up the Instant Articles program to all publishers—of any size, anywhere in the world.” Yes, this means that brands can now leverage Facebook Instant Articles to engage with consumers.
Facebook created Instant Articles to optimize the experience for users who click from Facebook to a third-party publisher’s website on their mobile devices. For brands, Instant Articles not only optimize page load times, but can be leveraged to create more immersive experiences that are integrated with the all-important Facebook news feed…
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5 Latinos Forging New Ground and Breaking Barriers
We’re all familiar with prominent Latinos who have broken barriers to become national and international household names – from Rita Moreno and Gloria Estefan to JLo and Pitbull. Or think Sonia Sotomayor or Pulitzer prize-winner Junot Díaz.
Here’s a small list of Latinos who are breaking barriers in their professions and leaving their mark as they shake things up. They range from ranging from multi-millionaire techies to VJs and Vine stars. They’re in different stages of their trajectories, and they’re all fascinating…
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Community Voices: Latinas working to empower each other
When it comes to Latinas, it seems that all eyes are not only placed on women such as Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez or Sofia Vergara. Throughout the entire country, the number of Hispanic women is growing and so are organizations and companies that focus on the growth of Latinas…
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Jessica Alba’s father is Mexican American. She is an actress and founder of The Honest Company
Jessica Alba is a Golden Globe-nominated actress whose career includes roles in films such as “Fantastic Four” and “Little Fockers,” as well as television series like “Dark Ang Jessica Alba | Founder
Jessicel,” “The Office” and “Entourage.”
The California native comes from modest beginnings, and never lost her zeal to share her good fortune with others. She is actively involved with with charities such as Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, ONE, Habitat for Humanity, Project HOME and more…
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THE INTERSECTION OF AGRICULTURE, LATINAS/OS, AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE LAND GRANT SYSTEM: A MIXED METHODS STUDY
SL Archibeque-Engle – 2016
… The life span of a Mexican farm laborer is 56- he lived to be 38.” Gloria Anzaldúa in
Borderlands La Frontera, p. 112 … They went to bed as Spanish speaking Mexican citizens
and woke up as Spanish speaking American citizens (or at least …
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Racial and ethnic differences in leaving and returning to the parental home: The role of life course transitions, socioeconomic resources, and family connectivity
L Lei, S South – Demographic Research, 2016
… Using the answers to the question of whether a respondent has Spanish, Hispanic,
or Latino background, we divide the respondents into three groups: non-Hispanics,
Mexicans (including Mexican Americans) and other Hispanics. …
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IDENTIDAD RASGADO Y LA LENGUA PERDIDA : THE IMPACT OF A TRADITIONAL LITERARY CANON ON LATINO PERCEPTIONS OF IDENTITY
A Hernandez – 2015
… Web. 8 Dec. 2015. Urrieta, Luis. “Identity Production in Figured Worlds: How Some Mexican
Americans Become Chicana/O Activist Educators.” Urban Review 39.2 (2007): 117- 144.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Dec. 2015…
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Job Opportunities for Latinos — Marketing Specialist
Information is the key to success these days especially in business. Most companies, entrepreneurs and organization are even willing to spend millions just to gather important details they can use to know more and understand their customers. That’s why jobs that are inclined to its niche, like Market Specialists, have a projected demand increase of about 41 percent from 2010 to 2020…
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