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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In the Wake of Art
“…From 1944 to 1956, the Cuban journal Orígenes was the most important arts and literature periodical in the Spanish-speaking world. Co-edited by a pair of cultural luminaries, José Lezama Lima and José Rodríguez Feo, the publication featured a cosmopolitan array of contributors: Cuban writers like Eliseo Diego and Virgilio Piñera, Mexican poet Octavio Paz, American poet Wallace Stevens and many others…”
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Bicultural Biography, Ana Maria Salazar
“…Ana Maria Salazar ’89 always notices the surprised looks. Salazar, deputy assistant secretary of defense for drug enforcement policy and support, gets that reaction often on the job. Someone in her position is not supposed to be a civilian, not supposed to be young, not supposed to be a woman. But, as a Mexican American woman who easily traverses different cultures, she knows her presence at the table helps many countries stem the spread of drugs.
“It’s surprising for them to see a woman walk in heading a delegation of generals and colonels and uniformed men and women in the different services, but at the same time, I come in, I speak the language and understand them,” said Salazar. “Being bilingual and bicultural has been one of the most important assets I bring.”…”
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HOOLIGAN makes a splash with ‘The Little Mermaid’ rendition,Sylvia Camacho
“…Sylvia Camacho, a first-year English student who plays Ariel in the show, said some of her earliest memories come from her experiences singing in a church choir. Camacho never formally took vocal lessons; however, singing has always been a part of her life, making her in some ways similar to Ariel, the mermaid princess whose voice is the driving force in the musical’s plot…”
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Hector Cantú, Mexican American cartoonist
“…We did it! Thanks to the super efforts of founders and organizers Javier Hernandez and Ricardo Padilla [and their families!], the first Latino Comics Expo was a truly special event! The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco was a great host and we all had a wonderful time meeting fellow comic fans and hosting panels on creating comics. We’re hoping to do it again in May 2012. I’ll keep you posted…”
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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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Paying for college: What you need to know
‘If you have a college-bound senior, now is the time to start the search for financial aid. This week, applications are accepted for FAFSA, the federal form most schools and states use to determine who gets loans, grants and work study awards. Senior Personal Finance Correspondent Sharon Epperson explains what they need to know about your financials, and what you need to know to cut that tuition bill…”
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Mexicans decline to less than half the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population for the first time
“…Number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. declined over the past decadeThe number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants in the United States declined so sharply over the past decade that they no longer are the majority of those living in the country illegally, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on government data. In 2017, there were 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., including 4.9 million Mexicans…”
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The Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada wins the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism
“…Washington Post Nonfiction Book Critic Carlos Lozada has won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his ambitious and innovative essays that range across politics, presidential history, immigrant memories, national security reporting and feminist analysis to probe national dilemmas.
“The frenzied presidency of Donald Trump has upended countless norms of political and national life. Understanding it requires a critic who can sift through the clashing ideas and agendas, pushing through the noise to find the signal underneath. Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post’s nonfiction book critic, is the interpreter we need. Rather than remain hostage to the publishing industry with weekly reviews of one-off books, Lozada gathers armfuls of new or related volumes and grasps the themes, arguments and urgency pulsing through them,” wrote Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, in his letter of support.
Lozada’s writing has explored the role of identity in political and cultural life, how anti-Trump conservatives contributed to the destruction of the…”
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Here’s why the US census citizenship question stokes mistrust
“Census experts, social scientists and immigrant advocates have warned for years that adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 survey would scare immigrants — no matter their legal status — from participating. And this week, a New York federal judge issued a decision that blocks the Trump administration from asking it.
The question would have required respondents to answer whether they and everyone in their household is a US citizen. The Justice Department has filed a notice to appeal. There’s a small chance it could still end up on the census if the Trump administration can convince the Supreme Court to step in on its behalf. That would all need to happen by the June deadline for finalizing questions so the questionnaires can go to print…”
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California Vs. Texas: Education — Comparing The Two States 1 In 5 Americans Call Home By The Honorable Chuck DeVore|
“California, with 39.5 million people, and Texas, with 28.3 million, are two of America’s four majority-minority states, the other two being Hawaii and New Mexico. As such, the education systems’ effectiveness in the two most diverse states that 1-in-5 Americans calls home is of vital interest to the rest of the nation.
Because of the high stakes involved in public education—student achievement as well as billions of dollars ($72.6 billion in taxpayer dollars were spent in California in 2016 and $45.9 billion in Texas) the rhetoric surrounding the issue tends to obscure facts on the ground—by design…”
“The Ballad of Huck & Miguel”: Huck Finn revisited, in today’s L.A.
“The mighty Mississippi has spawned many a mighty tale, but few as famous as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Although now it’s required reading in most schools, when Mark Twain first published it in 1884, some didn’t consider the book’s discussion of slavery and racism such a charming tale.
Now, Tim DeRoche, a writer in Los Angeles, wants Huck to weave us a tale again, but with some modern-day twists. “I wanted to do it in a way that honored the original but that still added something new and that would be fun,” DeRoche said.
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Redtail Press
In Twain’s version, Huck was fleeing his abusive alcoholic father, and along the way hooks up with a slave named Jim, also on the run.
In DeRoche’s re-telling, Huck remains the same troublesome teen from Missouri, but his companion has more modern-day woes to run from: immigration authorities. “What an escaped slave and an undocumented immigrant have in common…”
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California assembly bill looks to increase Cal Grant access and funding by Armando Carrillo
“…Assemblyman Jose Medina, who represents the district containing the UC Riverside campus and co-authored the bill, said AB 1314 would increase funding for financial aid and potentially address rising student debt.
Undergraduate students in the United States graduated with an average student debt of $28,650 in 2017, according to The Institute for College Access and Success. This is up from $12,750 in 1996.
Medina added AB 1314 addresses the total cost of attending college by covering tuition fees and nontuition costs, which the current Cal Grant system doesn’t adequately cover.
Eligibility for the Cal Grant, under the new bill, would no longer be based on GPA, age and years out of high school. Medina said this would allow nontraditional students, who don’t go to college right after high school, to have access to financial aid.
“Students today are not the same traditional students that they were 20 years ago,” Medina said. “We see more working adults, working parents, and these would be individuals who may not qualify for Cal Grants today (but) are going to school and would benefit from Cal Grants.”…”
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Promise Fulfilled
“…Rodolfo Hernandez is the eighth of nine siblings in his family. And on June 16, he’ll become the first among them to finish college.
That he has reached this point — graduating from UC Santa Barbara — is impressive on its own. But on top of a bachelor of arts degree in sociology, a minor in applied psychology and designs on graduate school with the GPA to get there, Hernandez will walk away with something few other students can claim: zero debt.
Hernandez is part of the first graduating cohort of UC Santa Barbara Promise Scholars — a group of high-achieving, low-income Californians selected for four-year scholarships to UC Santa Barbara in a program created by the campus that is the first of its kind in…”
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Artist Miguel Colon on community and learning to see himself
“…New York artist Miguel Colon suffered for years before finally receiving a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, during a hospitalization. In the psychiatric ward, he did a lot of drawing, working on a graphic novel and realizing the “life-affirming” nature of creativity and how it brought other people to him. Colon offers his brief but spectacular take on learning to see himself…”
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Lecturer repurposes Romance languages to reflect on its meaning in poetry book
“…Poems will mix multiple languages in “The Latin Poet’s Guide to the Cosmos.”
Susannah Rodríguez Drissi, a UCLA lecturer in Writing Programs, published her book in May. The book is a collection of 26 poems written in a combination of Romance languages including Spanish, Italian, French, English, Portuguese, and the Berber language, but most clearly resembling Spanish and Italian.
Each poem is written in a combination of many languages rather than one specific language. The book prompts readers, through exposure to a number of languages at once, to engage in interactions with the languages that allow them to better understand the poetry, Rodríguez Drissi said..”
Review: A Timely Take on ‘Oedipus’ by Way of South Central Los Angeles
“…In America, there are stories we like to tell. Stories about meritocracy and opportunity, about talent, hope and help. We tell them, in part, so that we don’t have to voice less comfortable truths — that the circumstances of a person’s birth often prophesy the life that follows.
That’s uniquely true of Oedipus, the limping princeling fated to kill his father and marry his mother. He’s crossed seas and centuries to appear in Luis Alfaro’s vigorous and pointed “Oedipus El Rey,” at the Public Theater, which resets the tale in modern-day South Central Los Angeles. Directed by Chay Yew with energy and flair, it’s the most successful offering yet from the Sol Project, an initiative dedicated to producing the work of Latinx playwrights.
The play opens in a prison complex, as a convict chorus rushes around the stage in orange scrubs and tries to decide what story to tell. Stories are boring, some prisoners say; they’re depressing, they don’t change anything. But one chorus member says, “Stories are all we got.” So they shed the scrubs and take on the roles in this Oedipus update.
As written by Sophocles, the original “Oedipus Rex” is an oldie but a goody, provided your definition of a goody is heavy on the incest and the self-mutilation. And so it goes here. When Laius (Juan Francisco Villa), a Los Angeles gangster, learns that his unborn son will kill him, he arranges to have the baby killed, slashing the bottoms of his feet for good measure. “I don’t want him chasing me in the afterlife,” Laius says…”
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A Life Rebooted
“…Ron Jimenez was not on the college track. His high school GPA was 1.5. He dropped out a week before graduation. Higher education wasn’t an option — or even a consideration.
Fast-forward nearly two decades. Jimenez, now 35 and married, is about to earn a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from UC Santa Barbara, the first in his family to graduate from college.
“I never thought in a million years that I would have any sort of degree,” he said. “I was very disenchanted with school..”
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‘Top Secret’ maps reveal the massive Allied effort behind D-Day
“…The Allied invasion of German-occupied France that began in the early hours of June 6, 1944, was long in the making. By gaining supremacy in the Atlantic in 1943, the Allies had cleared the way for a huge buildup of American troops and equipment in Great Britain. Between January and June 1944, nine million tons of supplies and 800,000 soldiers crossed the Atlantic from the United States to bolster the invasion, designated Operation Overlord…”
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Adolfo Roberto Ramirez, Normandy Invasion
“by David Ramirez
On June 6, 1944, Staff Sergeant Adolfo Roberto “Rusty” Ramirez was a member of the largest invasion force in all of recorded history. He was assigned to the 29th Infantry Division, 116th Regimental Combat Team’s 121st Combat Engineering Battalion. The 29th and 1st Infantry Divisions had been given the mission to assault Omaha beach in Normandy, France. Of this 55,000-man combat force assigned to Omaha beach, the 116th Regimental Combat Team of the 29th Infantry Division was assigned to land at Zone “Dog Green.”
Ramirez had been training for the invasion for more than two years at Tidworth, England (specializing in demolition and getting specialized training in the “Bangalore torpedo,” a device designed to roll up barbed wire barriers), after having occupied Belfast, Ireland, to keep it from being seized by the Germans. Just prior to the invasion, Ramirez and his buddies in the 29th had been placing bets on the day of the invasion, and he recalled he came the closest, guessing June 5th…”
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Honoring Latino Military Heroes on Memorial Day
“…Latinos have a “proud and indeed enviable” record of military service that dates back all the way to the Civil War, according to a U.S. Army historical website.Latino military army service memorial dayAn illustration of Puerto Rico’s 65th Infantry Regiment, “The Borinqueneers” in South Korea, Feb. 2, 1951 (via U.S. Army Center of Military History, https://www.army.mil/hispanics/history.html).
About 20,000 Latino serviceman and women participated in Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, 80,000 in the Vietnam War in 1959-1973, and more than 400,000 in World War II in 1939-1945.
More than 40 Medals of…”
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