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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Yakima set to elect first Latino city council member
After decades of court wrangling, Yakima is all but assured to elect its first Latino city council member this November.
About 41 percent of the city’s population is Latino. But no candidate with a Hispanic last name has ever won election to Yakima City Council.
The city’s new districts, proposed by the ACLU, were ordered by federal Judge Thomas O. Rice earlier this year, a few months after he ruled that the city’s previous city-wide election system seemed to keep candidates from reaching office…
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Constructing Identities in Mexican American Political Organizations Choosing Issues, Taking Sides
The formation of a group identity has always been a major preoccupation of Mexican American political organizations, whether they seek to assimilate into the dominant Anglo society or to remain separate from it. Yet organizations that sought to represent a broad cross section of the Mexican American population, such as LULAC and the American G.I. Forum, have dwindled in membership and influence, while newer, more targeted political organizations are prospering—clearly suggesting that successful political organizing requires more than shared ethnicity and the experience of discrimination…
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Author and poet Gary Soto visits Murry Fly
Soto is the author of children’s favorites like “Too Many Tamales,” “Chato’s Kitchen” and “Lucky Luis.”
Three groups of youngsters, one after the other, gathered in the school’s library for a chance to ask Soto questions, hear his stories, share their poetry and draw his portrait. Two from each group were chosen to draw a portrait of Soto, who sported a striped button-down shirt and sweater, green pants and brown wingtips, using multi-colored magic markers…
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Interview: I want visually strong, almost silent movie: Mexican director Michel Franco
By Grandesso Federico
CANNES, France, May 24 (Xinhua) — “I wanted the film to be almost silent if possible, and to be visually strong, because I think it’s hard to discuss about these subjects and put it into words,” Mexican director Michel Franco told Xinhua during an interview presenting his movie Chronic in competition at the ongoing 68th Cannes Film Festival.
Talking about the job on set the Mexican director explained: “The shooting wasn’t complicated and, the fact that I produced and directed, allowed me to take decision faster without having to argue. What was creatively complicated was that I didn’t realize that I wrote a script with four stories and unify them because I didn’t want to give the feeling that they were separate stories”…
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Ramos: Hispanics Are No Longer ‘A Sleeping Giant’ In Elections
Friday on “The Alan Colmes Show,” Alan spoke with Univision and Fusion journalist Jorge Ramos about why the Latino vote could be the deciding factor in the 2016 election, and how much Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz will matter if they are on the ticket.
Ramos told Alan that in order for a Republican to win the White House, the nominee will have to get 33% of the Latino vote, something neither Mitt Romney or Sen. John McCain was able to do. He also said even though Latinos share many Republican values, they won’t vote for a party who “wants to deport their families.”
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Parental Feeding Practices and Child Weight status in Mexican American Families: a longitudinal analysis s
JM Tschann, SM Martinez, C Penilla, SE Gregorich… – International Journal of …, 2015
… Procedure We recruited families to participate in a 24-month longitudinal cohort study to
understand parental influences on obesity in Mexican American children. … Occupational status
could range from unskilled (=1) to major professional (=9) [48]. …
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59 percent of college-educated Latinos have trouble meeting monthly expenses, report says
Published: 19 May 2015 07:11 PM
Updated: 19 May 2015 07:11 PM
A majority of Latinos say they have trouble covering monthly expenses, and almost 40 percent say they would have trouble finding $2,000 in an emergency, a new study said.
Despite attaining higher education levels in recent decades, many Latinos find themselves in a “fragile financial state,” according to the study released Monday by New York investment giant TIAA-CREF…
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Spirituality and Resilience Among Mexican American IPV Survivors
A Iván, T Barnett-Queen, M Messick, M Gurrola – Journal of interpersonal violence, 2015
… Spirituality and Resilience Among Mexican American IPV Survivors. … This study examined the
correlation between spirituality, resilience, and intimate partner violence using a cross-sectional
survey of 54 Mexican American women living along the US–Mexico border. …
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Beyond immigrant status: Book-sharing in low-income Mexican-American families
M Salinas, DR Pérez-Granados, HM Feldman… – Journal of Early Childhood …, 2015
… Rank) Score: 0.726 | 47/222 Health (Social Science) | 125/273 Developmental and
Educational Psychology | 204/1035 Education (Scopus®). Beyond immigrant status:
Book-sharing in low-income Mexican-American families. …
Link to abstract
La Raza group harnesses local community interest
By Christian Urrutia, Photo Editor
May 17, 2015
Filed under Campus Beat, News
One of the multiple clubs on campus utilizing cultural advocacy, La Raza Student Union serves as the active arm of the La Raza studies department and centralizes a lot of its efforts based off the content that is covered in the program.
La Raza Student Union member Maria Lara said the club serves as a place where students can come and share opinions about what is going on in the local community and abroad, for example the economic and political turmoil taking place in Mexico…
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Nevada Gov. Sandoval signs bill allowing Dreamers to get teaching licenses
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) – Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a bill Wednesday that would make it easier for immigrants with temporary legal status to get a Nevada teaching license, saying it would help meet the needs of a “new Nevada.”
Among the people who flanked the Republican governor as he signed AB27 was Uriel Garcia, a 22-year-old Nevada State College student and recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program who was previously denied a license. He said he plans to re-apply as soon as possible to get started on his student teaching and move toward his goal of teaching 2nd grade English language learners…
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Rise In Latino, Black High School Grad Rates Boosts National Numbers
National graduation rates reached a record high of 81.4 percent in 2013, in part due to the increase of graduation rates among minority and low-income students.
Over the last decade, 1.8 million additional students have graduated from high school, according to a report released by America’s Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises, Everyone Graduates Center, and the Alliance for Excellent Education.
GradNation, a campaign by America’s Promise Alliance, was launched in 2010 to focus individuals, organizations and communities on decreasing dropout rates. They adopted a goal of raising the national average on-time high school graduation rate to 90 percent by 2020…
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SF State awarded $17 million by NIH to enhance workforce diversity in biomedical research
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22, 2014 — San Francisco State University has been awarded $17.04 million to address issues of workforce diversity in biomedical research, the National Institutes of Health announced today.
The effort is called SF BUILD, which stands for Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity. Professors in biology, chemistry/biochemistry, psychology, geography & environment, and other fields at SF State working on the project are seeking to upend the presuppositions about members of minority communities — that they may not have the aptitude or the background to excel in the sciences. “We are funded to prime institutional transformation,” said Professor of Biology Leticia Márquez-Magaña, the principal investigator for SF BUILD. “Let’s fix the institution, instead of fixing the students and not recognizing their assets.”…
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Mayor Nelda Martinez, Woman of Distinction
Corpus Christi Mayor Nelda Martinez was honored by the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce at the 4th annual Women of Distinction Awards in Austin.
Mayor Martinez was one of 12 Latinas from across the state that was recognized for their professional accomplishments, community contributions, and leadership. “I am humbled and honored to receive this recognition from such a prestigious state organization as The Texas Association of Mexican American…
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Two Latino Activists Divided by Years, Joined By Their Cause
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — They sat on opposite ends of the room and didn’t know each other. One is considered the old guard, while the other is the fresh young face. One is Puerto Rican and Dominican, born in New York; the other is Mexican American, born in the U.S. but raised in Mexico. One works on the West Coast, the other the East Coast…
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UNC reinstates Mexican-American studies after protests
GREELEY – After students, alumni and community members staged protests in and around the University of Northern Colorado campus over the suspension of the Mexican-American Studies program, university leaders lifted the suspension…
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When I ‘came out’ as Mexican
(CNN)On Sundays, I make tacos and my famous guacamole for my family. Food bonds us, and it’s a way for me to keep in touch with my Mexican heritage. And yet, although my childhood was full of culture, adventure and happiness, for years I denied that I was Mexican. In fact, I finally came out as Mexican only a few years ago…
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Why aren’t more Latinos going to UC, CSU schools?
By Fidel A. Vargas
For those of us working to empower Latino families and help young people attain the American dream through higher education, there is cause to celebrate: The high school dropout rate among Latinos declined by about half between 2000 and 2012. More Latino high school graduates are going to college than ever before; 19 percent of all university students in the United States are Latinos.
While this surge of college-bound Latino students is encouraging, some troubling patterns persist. Latinos are less likely than non-Hispanic whites to attend a four-year university and to graduate from college…
Chicano Batman on Selena, Touring with Jack White, and the Politics of Bringing Cumbia to Coachella
With lyrics in English, Spanish and sometimes Portuguese, L.A. quartet Chicano Batman has a sound that is hyper-local but also global in a very deep way. Their laid-back tunes mix well with sun and summer, but underneath the surface lies a deeper dimension of sly pop culture references, unapologetic Latin pride, and the thoughtful exploration of popular music’s all pervasive black roots…
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Hispanic Media: Fact Sheet
At 54 million in 2013, Hispanics account for 17% of the U.S. population and are responsible for half the nation’s growth between 2000 and 2012. Much of this growth since 2000 has come from the births of Hispanics in the U.S. rather than the arrival of new immigrants. As a result, English use among Hispanic adults is on the rise. Today, about six-in-ten U.S. adult Hispanics (62%) speak English or are bilingual…
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