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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UTEP’s New Online Chicano Studies Program Growing March 11, 2018
An online multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary program that offers intuitive understanding of the dynamics of the U.S.-Mexico border and the Latino presence in the U.S. is gaining momentum at The University of Texas at El Paso.
Dr. Dennis Bixler-Márquez, director of Chicano Studies at UTEP, said a new Chicano Studies degree there allows students to learn about U.S.-Mexico economics, culture, history and arts…
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Stanford Study: Latino Startups Are Growing In Numbers But Are ‘Underbanked’
An annual Stanford study — known as the State of Latino Entrepreneurship — arrived this year with its usual mix of good news and bad news for Latino entrepreneurs and their supporters.
The good news: the growth rate of Latino businesses in the US continues to outpace that of other groups. The bad news: as in previous years, the Stanford study reported that a disproportionate few of those Latino businesses are growing beyond the $1 million annual revenue mark, the Stanford threshold for a “scaled business.”…
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A family saga with bounding heart, poetic delivery and plenty of swagger
Luis Alberto Urrea’s “The House of Broken Angels” is a big, sprawling, messy, sexy, raucous house party of a book, a pan-generational family saga with an enormous, bounding heart, a poetic delivery and plenty of swagger. It’s not perfect — in fact, even its flaws are big — but it stays with you, and it stands as a vital reminder of the value of fiction in defining the immigrant experience…
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Latinos grab spotlight at Oscars, and hope to hold it
NEW YORK (AP) — The 90th annual Academy Awards were, by any definition, a moment of triumph for Latinos.
Guillermo del Toro became the third Mexican-born filmmaker to win best director, and it was his lavish Cold War fantasy “The Shape of Water” that was crowned best picture. Pixar’s box-office smash “Coco,” the biggest budget studio release to feature a largely Hispanic cast, won best animated feature and best song. Lin-Manuel Miranda reminded viewers of Puerto Rico, rebuilding from Hurricane Maria. Lupita Nyong’o advocated for the Dreamers. Rita Moreno returned, resplendently, in the dress she wore to the Oscars in 1962. And Chile’s “A Fantastic Woman” won best foreign language film…
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Undocumented Student Program provides #UndocuBruins funds to students
The Undocumented Student Program provided $500 in financial aid for each of 19 undocumented students using crowdfunded money collected last quarter.
USP is using funds from the #UndocuBruins campaign to provide financial support for undocumented students, helping them renew their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, said Paolo Velasco, director of the Bruin Resource Center. The #UndocuBruins campaign, which was created by the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s General Representative 1 office and USP, raised approximately $16,000 last quarter to provide scholarships for undocumented students…
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News flash! The Oscars are still so white. Just take a look at the most excluded group
After the #OscarsSoWhite outcry, we’re seeing glimmers of hope in Hollywood — with black actors, writers and directors nominated in multiple categories this year. But when it comes to Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans, the Academy Awards still have a long way to go to flip the script.
Take a look at this chart. It’s a look at 90 years of Academy Award winners in the major categories. While representation takes many forms, for ease of comparison we looked at US Census data and compared that with representation in Hollywood films. And what you see is that even as African-Americans have fared better in recent years, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans are woefully underrepresented…
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Center for Mexican-American Studies creates home for students
As a first generation student from Laredo, Texas, Ilse Colchado felt out of place when she began her college journey. She felt underrepresented and lost — until she found her home at the Center for Mexican-American Studies.
The Hispanic population makes up 20 percent of UT’s student body, according to UT’s 2017–2018 Statistical Handbook. Colchado, Mexican-American studies and anthropology junior, said her transition was difficult because she came from an environment with a majority Hispanic population to an environment where she was in the minority.
“I didn’t feel represented as a brown student, and so I added Mexican-American studies after my first year,” Colchado said. “That was where I felt like I belonged on campus, especially with having professors of color who integrated their own stories of survival.”…
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50 years after the Walkouts, Los Angeles Latino students are still fighting for educational equity
Before there were Dreamers, thousands of young Latinos marched out of their East Los Angeles classrooms half a century ago for their right to be educated.
“I was never told I was college material or capable of aspiring for something better,” said Bobby Verdugo, one of the leaders of the 1968 Chicano student movement known as “Walkouts or Blowouts.”
“Dreamers are being marginalized today. They are being treated like they don’t belong here, like they are not wanted. That’s how we felt 50 years ago,” Verdugo said.
March 1 marks the 50th anniversary of what has been called the nation’s first major mass protest against racism by Mexican-Americans. More than 15,000 students from Roosevelt, Wilson, Garfield, Lincoln, and Belmont high schools walked out of their classrooms to challenge the inequalities in Los Angeles public schools. Fifty years later, their bold action has reaped educational gains for Latinos, but they haven’t come fast enough, advocates say…
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Olympics 2018: Bobsledder Carlo Valdes shares his Must List, including The Hulk and ‘Clash Royale’
In the USA, the most famous bobsledders might still be the guys from Cool Runnings, but as one of the only Latino and Mexican Americans competing in the 2018 Olympics, Carlo Valdes might just be out to change all that. The 28-year-old athlete hails from Newport Beach, Calif., and competed as a javelin thrower for UCLA before switching sports to bobsledding…
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The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border, reviews
“It is a lament for what a broken immigration system does to families, and its final third is a riveting, heartbreaking exploration of one such case … His lyrical asides about the border, from the history of its creation to quotations of poets who’ve written about it, are passionately delivered and speak to his urge to give nameless migrants an identity. But he spends less time scrutinizing the institutions that create the namelessness. His discussion of the Mexican government’s bloody escalation of the war against the cartels only glancingly mentions the U.S. government’s implication in it or the way border crackdowns only made crossing the border more expensive and risky. The imperfection of Cantú’s approach, though, mirrors the messiness of the crisis he’s facing.”…
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TRAMBLEY, ESTELA PORTILLO
(1926–1998). Estela Portillo Trambley, teacher and feminist author of books, poems, essays, and plays, was born on January 16, 1926, in El Paso, Texas. She was the oldest child of Francisco Portillo and Delphina (Fierro) Portillo. Her father was a mechanic, and her mother was a piano teacher, but Estela spent a considerable amount of her childhood with her grandparents, Julian and Luz Fierro, who were listed in a neighboring household on the 1930 census. Her grandfather was the proprietor of a store in the barrio. She maintained a positive attitude regarding the poverty that she witnessed as a child and later stated that “la pobreza nunca derriba el espiritu” (poverty never defeats the spirit). Growing up, Estela Portillo had a love for literature and was an avid reader. During her formative years, her diverse reading materials included English and American classics, poetry, and philosophy. She attended El Paso High School…
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IFE MORA: A Musical Experience of Detroit Soul Rock
Ifé Mora, a Detroit Native, weaves her African American and Mexican roots for creating a gritty mix, guitar-driven sonic vision of blending Rock, Blues, Soul and Bluegrass genres. Ifé is a Singer and Musician who reimagines the origins and future of Black American rock. As one of the founding bands of the AfroPunk movement in New York City, Ifé Mora has Punk Rock in her roots, and has remained in the forefront of women of color creating and performing Rock and Roll. This concert is being presented with the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California. $5 for UCSB students and youth under 12; $15 for general admission…
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Young returnees start over in Mexico after growing up in U.S.
Even before recent raids by the Department of Homeland Security, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants have been deported annually. And those who grew up in the U.S. have found themselves living in what feels like a foreign country. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro talks to some young people who are starting over and feeling culture shock after having to leave the U.S…
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Graduate student incorporates Spanish romance into self-composed song
Guillermo Ojeda began writing his three-minute romantic guitar solo with just seven notes.
Ojeda, a graduate student in social welfare, submitted his song “Soledad” to “7 Notes Experiment,” a global contest that encourages musicians from across the world to compose a song of any genre from a given set of seven notes. Ojeda is one of 100 finalists who were selected out of thousands of entries from across the world. The contest accepted entries until Dec. 15, and will announce its winner at an unspecified date.
Ojeda heard about the competition from a notification on his Facebook feed in the middle of his fall quarter finals at UCLA. And with just five days to submit his piece, he took on the challenge of composing a new song in under a week…
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Data: Latinos in Iowa City faced worst US bias in home loans
IOWA CTY, Iowa (AP) — Latinos seeking conventional home loans in the Iowa City area were nearly four times more likely to be denied than non-Hispanic whites in 2016, the widest disparity in the nation, a new analysis of federal data shows.
The findings suggest racial inequality in the mortgage market in the progressive college town and appear driven by a high rate of rejections for prospective Latino borrowers reported by a single financial institution, Hills Bank, according to the analysis of millions of records by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. The analysis controlled for factors such as applicants’ income, loan amount, neighborhood that could affect the likelihood of denial…
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Smithsonian Latino Center Accepting Applications for 2018 Young Ambassadors Program
The Smithsonian Latino Center is now accepting applications for the 2018 Young Ambassadors Program June 24 through Aug. 2. The application deadline April 9. The Young Ambassadors Program is a national program for graduating high school seniors that fosters the next generation of Latino leaders in the arts, sciences and humanities through an intensive training and internship program at the Smithsonian. The program receives major and continued support from Ford Motor Company Fund…
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Little-known history of Hispanics must be found
Hispanics, mostly Mexicans, came into the Platte Valley throughout the early 1900s.
The essay titled “Latinos Along the Platte: The Hispanic Experience in Central Nebraska,” by Roger Davis of the University of Nebraska at Kearney, gives a glimpse of the impact the Hispanic immigrants brought to our area.
I have a direct connection to the first-known Hispanics who came into Nebraska, although it would be many years before there would be a more permanent settling of Hispanics in the state…
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Graduate students interpret “Romeo and Juliet” with modern, inclusive twist
Romeo leaped over a fence and climbed onto a balcony to reunite with his Julio in a new short film adaptation of the classic play.
In “Romeo and Julio,” Oscar Emmanuel Fabela and two fellow graduate students directed and filmed adaptations of several scenes from Shakespeare’s original play “Romeo and Juliet” to tell an inclusive story featuring the love between a white man, Romeo, and a Latino man, Julio. The short will screen at a yet-to-be-announced date this quarter…
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LOS CAMBALACHE – Constelacion de Sonidos. Songs and Stories of Love, Migration, Displacement and Resistance.
Cambalache, meaning exchange, is a chicanx/jarochx ensemble based in LA. We will be playing traditional son jarocho music, while bringing our Chicanx experiences and soundscape through verse and dance. In the spirit of the fandango, a traditional celebration of music and dance, Cambalache engages its audience through participatory performances. Cambalache is active in the dialogue between Chicanos in the U.S. and Jarochos in Veracruz, thus strengthening decades of social and cultural exchange of the Chicano-Jarocho network…
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CSUF’s Latino Communications Institute connects students to media careers
When Cal State Fullerton alum Shaira Arias was a student in a school program formerly known as the Latino Communications Initiative (LCI), she met the executive producer of the Spanish-language television network she would someday work for.
“When I saw other students introducing themselves to her at an LCI event, I thought ‘I can do that too,’ because LCI is very encouraging in that way,” Arias said of the program, which aims to build bridges between students and Spanish-bilingual media organizations.
