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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Mobile Hybridism: The Mexican American Generation and Mexican American Music in Los Angeles Reviews in American History

MS Rodriguez – Reviews in American History, 2011
… overlapping worlds of music learning, teaching, performance, and marketing in the Mexican
American community of Los Angeles shows how connected the various genres of classical, big
band, and jazz instruction were, despite [End Page 494] the professional choices made …
Link to abstract

Tristezas y Esperanza: The Educational Voices of Six Mexican American Students in a California Urban High School

F Jimenez – 2012
Page 1. Tristezas y Esperanza: The Educational Voices of Six Mexican American Students in
a California Urban High School … The comments of Lenny Corzo reflect the enormity of problems
that Mexican American (MA) students often encounter today in public schools. …
Link to Dissertation

Debated Whiteness amid World Events: Mexican and Mexican American Subjectivity and the US’Relationship with the Americas, 1924-1936

M Calderón-Zaks – Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 2011
Page 1. Debated Whiteness amid World Events: Mexican and Mexican American
Subjectivity and the US’ Relationship with the Americas, 1924–1936 Michael
Calderón-Zaks Independent Scholar By the 1920s, anti-Mexican …

Link to abstrarct

The Experience of Chronically Ill Elderly Mexican-American Men With Spouses as Caregivers

DMV Medina, EP Haltiwanger… – Physical & Occupational Therapy in Geriatrics
… Future studies could examine experiences of Mexican-American men with chronic conditions
as they get older. Understanding the impact of illness on occupation over time would help
healthcare professionals better anticipate needs for these individuals. …
Link to abstract

FROM THE BORDER TO THE BOARDROOM: THE JOURNEY TO THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE PRESIDENCY FOR MEXICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN

YN Avalos – 2011
… professional pathways of female Mexican-American community college presidents. The …
Demographics This study specifically examines the professional careers of Mexican-American
women serving as community college leaders. Many demographic summaries combine …
Link to dissertation

Mexican and Central American Immigrants in the United States

K Brick, AE Challinor… – 2011
… immigrants.32 Second-generation Central Americans also are more likely to have a bachelor’s,
graduate, or professional degree than … Significantly, second-generation Mexican American women
are more likely to be employed (62 percent) than their first-generation counterparts
Link to article


  

Poem
“…And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while…”

T.S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Mexican American Proarchive Annual Report for 2022

The American Community Survey is an annual survey administered by the federal government to help local officials and community leaders and businesses understand the changes that take place in their communities. It includes percentages of our population’s graduate school attainment and the employment of Mexican Americans in various occupations.  These important factors influence the allocation of federal resources. Mexican American Proarchives uses the data provided by the American Community Survey to better understand how Mexican Americans compare to the general population.

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