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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Front Page Items

The Association Between Affective and Problem-Solving Communication and Intimate Partner Violence Among Caucasian and Mexican American Couples: a Dyadic Approach

JF Hammett, DM Castañeda, EC Ulloa – Journal of Family Violence, 2015
… Marital conflict and acculturation among Mexican American husbands and wives. …
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 40(3), 249–256.View Article; Huston,
TL, Caughlin, JP, Houts, RM, Smith, SE, & George, LJ (2001). …
Link to abstract

Self-Reported Parenting of Clinic-Referred and Non-referred Mexican American Mothers of Young Children

KM McCabe, M Mechammil, M Yeh, A Zerr – Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2015
… Risk, conflict, mothers’ parenting, and children’s adjustment in low-income, Mexican
immigrant, and Mexican American families. … Eyberg child behavior inventory and
sutter-eyberg student behavior inventory-revised: Professional manual. …

Link to abstract

Mexican American and Other Hispanic Couples’ Relationship Dynamics: A Review to Inform Interventions Aimed at Promoting Healthy Relationships

RE Orengo-Aguayo – Marriage & Family Review, 2015
… Marriage & Family Review. Mexican American and Other Hispanic Couples’ Relationship
Dynamics: A Review to Inform Interventions Aimed at Promoting Healthy Relationships. …
RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS AMONG MEXICAN AMERICAN AND OTHER HISPANIC COUPLES. …
Link to abstract

How One Law Banning Ethnic Studies Led to Its Rise

The irony is that if Arizona lawmakers had never squashed one Mexican American studies class—in a single district in one city—Curtis Acosta would have no interest in duplicating that same class across the country. Certainly, California and Texas public schools would not be considering to offer the course in all its high schools. And Tony Diaz would never have become the book smuggler…
Link to article

Donald Trump’s false comments connecting Mexican immigrants and crime

Data on immigrants and crime are incomplete, but a range of studies show there is no evidence immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans. In fact, first-generation immigrants are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans. (The Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for restrictive immigration laws, has a detailed report showing the shortfalls of immigrant crime data.)…
Link to article

Why-Mexican-Americans-are-making-more-progress-than-other-minorities

“Tiger Mother” Amy Chua claimed in a recent book that there’s something special about Chinese immigrants, who usually end up ahead of other newcomers both economically and academically. But researchers in the University of California system say Chinese immigrants have a head start, but when it comes to making progress, Mexican immigrants lead the pack…
Link to article

Cultural, Media, and Peer Influences on Body Beauty Perceptions of Mexican American Adolescent Girls

LF Romo, R Mireles-Rios, A Hurtado – Journal of Adolescent Research, 2015
… Beauty Perceptions of Mexican American Adolescent Girls Laura F. Romo1, Rebeca
Mireles-Rios1, and Aida Hurtado1 … Page 2. 2 Journal of Adolescent Research Keywords Mexican
American, Latinas, adolescent girls, body image, self-esteem, appearance …
Link to abstract

Cerritos College a model of boosting Latino students’ success, study finds

Michelle Mancilla enrolled in Cerritos College three years ago on the advice of her father. Impressed with the school’s academic programs, he told her she would have the best chance of success there.
He may have been right. According to a study by New America, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit, Cerritos College was singled out for increasing the number of Latinos who are eligible to transfer and who do well academically…
Link to article

America redefining its identity for 21st century

WASHINGTON
As it marked another birthday, America is forging the outlines of a new century.
It’s moving with now remarkable speed to cast aside some of the traditions and mores that dominated American life for centuries. The Confederate flag is coming down, 150 years after the end of the Civil War and a half-century after it was raised in defiance of civil rights. Marriage is being redefined. Whites are fast becoming a minority. And after electing its first African-American president, the country is poised to elect a new leader from among a roster including a woman, two Cuban-Americans, and the scion of an old Yankee family married to a Mexican-American…
Link to article

Truth vs. perception of crime rates for immigrants

Incendiary comments made by Donald Trump and a random killing of a California woman have added fuel to national debate on the contributions of and concerns about undocumented immigrants. William Brangham speaks to Marielena Hincapié of the National Immigration Law Center, Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute and Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies…
Link to video and program transcipt

Addressing disparities in accessing hearing health care in a U.S. Mexico Border community

Hearing loss has a major impact on the quality of life among older adults. In population-based studies, 90-96% of Mexican-American adults with hearing loss do not have access to hearing healthcare. To begin to reduce this health disparity, we used a community-based participatory research approach to investigate unmet needs of families affected by hearing loss in a rural, predominately Mexican-American community on the U.S.-Mexico border. We utilized the community health worker (CHW) model as a means to address cultural aspects that might impact access to hearing health care. CHWs are individuals from the community who serve as intermediaries between health professionals and patients…
Link to abstract

The Family Festival Prevention Model: findings from a pilot of a teenage pregnancy prevention programme conceptualised by and for Mexican American communities

Y Murphy-Erby, K Stauss, E Koh – Sex Education, 2015
… Festival Prevention Model: findings from a pilot of a teenage pregnancy prevention programme
conceptualised by and for Mexican American communities. … women of Mexican heritage in the
USA, particularly in rural communities, it is important for health professionals to develop …
Link to abstract

How Trump’s comments unleashed ‘Latino Spring’

There were no mass demonstrations in the streets, but Latino protesters amassed online. Their focus? The hurtful anti-Mexican comments made recently by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Latinos gathered in social media circles to condemn, plot and retaliate against Trump with such fervor in the past two weeks that they caused three multibillion dollar media companies to back away from him: Univision, NBC and Televisa…
Link to article

Census: Hispanics overtake whites to become California’s largest ethnic group

It’s official: Hispanics are now the largest ethnic group in California.
About 15 million Hispanics lived in California on July 1, 2014, compared to roughly 14.9 million non-Hispanic whites, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released late last week. The California Department of Finance predicted in 2013 that Hispanics would outnumber whites in 2014; the census figures confirm that prediction…
Link to article

Exploring Mexican American adolescent romantic relationship profiles and adjustment

Although Mexican Americans are the largest ethnic minority group in the nation, knowledge is limited regarding this population’s adolescent romantic relationships. This study explored whether 12th grade Mexican Americans’ (N = 218; 54% female) romantic relationship characteristics, cultural values, and gender created unique latent classes and if so, whether they were linked to adjustment…
Link to abstract

Focus on their promise : how Mexican American teachers address challenging classrooms

M De Lourdes Viloria – Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research …, 2015
… Texas A & M International University, College of Education, Department of Professional Programs,
Office Killam Library 435A. … Abstract This study examined the culturally responsive teaching
practices of two third generation Mexican American teachers from the South Texas …
Link to abstract

JJC receives grant to highlight Latino culture and history

JOLIET — Joliet Junior College was awarded a grant last week that will go toward highlighting the culture and history of than 200 organizations nationwide to receive the grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to participLatinos – a fast-growing demographic at the community college.
JJC was one of more ate in “Latino Americans: 500 Years of History,” produced by NEH and the American Library Association.
Martha Villegas Miranda, JJC Latino student support specialist, said she was excited the college was one of the grant’s recipients.
She said she pursued the grant because of the college’s and community’s growing Latino population. Currently, 23 percent of students at JJC are Latino…
Link to article

Science: There Is No Such Thing As Race

Back in 1950, an international panel of geneticists, sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists issued a statement through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) affirming that all humans belong to the same species. sapiens.
Back in 1950, an international panel of geneticists, sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists issued a statement through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) affirming that all humans belong to the same species…Race is not a biological reality. It is an adaptation of humans living in different parts of the world – and society’s way of dividing people up.
What is referred to as “race” is in actuality a product of social context – as there is only one biological race in the human species: Homo sapiens…
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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