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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Cockroach Dreams: Oscar Zeta Acosta, Legal Services, and the Great Society Coalition
Early in Oscar Zeta Acosta’s 1972 novel, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, his protagonist, Oscar Acosta, quits his job as a War on Poverty-funded Legal Services lawyer in East Oakland, California, dumping his law license in the wastepaper basket. His resignation precipitates his search for racial identity in Autobiography and eventual transformation into Buffalo Zeta Brown, the activist Chicano lawyer in Acosta’s sequel, The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973). (1) Oscar’s abrupt departure enacts a double rejection. First, he rejects the liberalism that led him to take on “the enemy our president [Lyndon Johnson] so clearly described in his first State of the Union address” (Autobiography 22). Instead, especially in Revolt, Oscar/ Brown adopts a militant Chicano/a Cultural Nationalism at odds with the politics of integrationist Mexican American leaders affiliated with the Democratic Party. (2) Second, he rejects the professional aspirations…
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City Election Sea Change Santa Barbara to Initiate New District System This November
Although a few “i”s remain to be dotted and few “t”s to be crossed, the Santa Barbara City Council voted 6-0 to settle a lawsuit charging that the at-large elections City Hall has conducted since 1971 have yielded “racially polarized” results as defined by the California Voting Rights Act. The five plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit pointed out that only one Latino — Cathy Murillo — had been elected to the council since 2000 even though Latinos make up 38 percent of the population and 24 percent of eligible voters. As part of the settlement, the council agreed to begin holding district elections this November, when three seats come up for grabs…
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‘Birdman’ Wins Best Picture At 87th Academy Awards, Alejandro González Iñárritu Wins Best Director
The results are in: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman” is the best picture winner of the 87th Academy Awards. The film starring Michael Keaton tells the story of a down-and-out actor looking to get back into the spotlight with a passion project. The film was produced by Alejandro González Iñárritu, John Lesher, Arnon Milchan and James W. Skotchdopole, who were on-hand to accept the award at the rushed conclusion of the Oscars telecast…
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El Movimiento Chicano in Colorado
On Saturday February, 7 the Colorado History Museum opened an exhibit of El Movimiento – The Chicano Movement in Colorado that attempts to offer a picture of over a decade of explosive activities that described the drive for social and political justice for Latinos. Among the founders of the exhibit is Ricardo LaFore who talks of it as immersing the visitor “in the urgency, passion and vitality of one of Colorado’s most important social movements as activists fought to end discrimination and to gain social and political power through education, culture and the arts.” …
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6 Ways ‘Jane the Virgin’ Is Destroying Latino Stereotypes
“This award is so much more than myself,” said Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez upon accepting her Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy series in January. “It represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.”
This sentiment is one with which the hit CW show’s devoted fan base wholeheartedly agrees. Despite the telenovela-inspired comedy’s unabashedly over-the-top premise, Rodriguez’s multidimensional Latina protagonist is part of a stellar cast that offers an arguably unprecedented portrayal of Latinos on network television. Jane the Virgin is a necessary breath of fresh air in a media landscape that has historically been unfriendly to women — especially women of color…
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Finalists revealed: VL Innovators Challenge
Latinos use digital media more than any other ethnic group. But few Latinos are translating their tech savvy into tech work. In fact, only 7% of technology workers are Hispanic. Voto Latino believes Latinos can use their tech savviness to open doors to amazing careers in Science, Engineering, Technology and Math (STEM).
The VL Innovators Challenge was created to get millennials, especially Latino millennials, thinking about technology both as an innovative change agent and as a potential career. Applicants were encouraged to “use a tech tool to address a need in the Latino community.”
The Challenge will award $500,000 in grants to the best proposed projects. Winners will also spend two days on the Google campus in California where they will be paired with members of Google’s Marketing, Creative Labs, and Android teams, among others. Besides the chance…
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Smithsonian embraces Fresno musician’s songs of Chicano movement
It’s ironic: Agustín Lira should have been born an American.
His mother, a U.S. citizen, was illegally deported in the 1930s. Lira was born in Mexico and came to California as an undocumented migrant farmworker before becoming an activist.
The Fresno man’s experiences fuel his work, using art to talk about inequality. Despite the struggles — picking crops from age 7, growing up in poverty, being homeless for a while — he is on the brink of releasing an album of his songs from the Chicano movement of the 1960s for that most quintessential of American institutions, the Smithsonian…
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Domingo Martinez’s Searing Memoir: ‘My Heart Is A Drunken Compass’
Author Domingo Martinez distinctly remembers the morning in October 2012 when his phone began ringing. He was lying in bed at his apartment in Seattle and his first thought was, “Wow, it’s so early, these bill collectors are calling earlier and earlier.”
It wasn’t a bill collector. It was his literary agent calling to tell him that his memoir, “The Boy Kings of Texas,” was a finalist for the National Book Award in the nonfiction category. Although Martinez did not win the award, his life was about to change. Soon he was being profiled in the New York Times and on NPR, with headlines like “From Boy King of Texas to Literary Superstar…
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Mexican American Drama
D Goodrich – Ethnic American Literature: An Encyclopedia for …, 2015 – books.google.com
The roots of Mexican American drama extend far beyond the physical borders and historical
formation of the United States. Theatrical performances by Mexican Americans have
occurred for as long as formerly Mexican territories have been part of the United States. …
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“Where they (live, work and) spray”: Pesticide exposure, childhood asthma and environmental justice among Mexican-American farmworkers
NA Schwartz, CA von Glascoe, V Torres, L Ramos… – Health & Place, 2015
… Mexican American children aged 1–17 in the San Joaquin Valley exhibit a higher prevalence
rate of asthma compared with the … Research assistants were professional children of Mexican
farmworker families who were raised in the San Joaquin Valley and thoroughly familiar …
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Seeing Mothers-in-Law Through the Lens of the Mothering Ideology An Interview Analysis of Taiwanese, Taiwanese American, and Mexican American Daughters-in-Law
KY Shih, K Pyke – Journal of Family Issues, 2015
… subsamples. Only 4 of the 36 respondents are not mothers, including 1 Taiwanese,
1 Taiwanese American, and 2 Mexican American respondents. Most respondents are
employed full-time in a professional or middle-class occupation. …
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UCSB Scholar to Receive National Honors
Aída Hurtado, a professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara, has been named the 2015 Scholar of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). The organization’s highest honor, it recognizes Hurtado’s significant contributions to the field in a career spanning more than three decades. She will be honored at the NACCS annual conference in San Francisco in April. – See more at: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014931/national-association-chicana-and-chicano-studies…
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BBC Pop Up: What does it mean to be Mexican-American?
6 February 2015 Last updated at 01:54 GMT
More than 30 million Americans trace their roots back to Mexico – it’s the fastest growing demographic in the US.
While the focus of the political debate is on the recent arrivals – especially those who entered illegally – many immigrants have been in the country for generations. Of course, some states in the south west, including Arizona, were originally part of Mexico before they joined the Union.
It is therefore hard to define the Mexican-American experience. People’s attitudes, beliefs and even their choice of cuisine is influenced by when they arrived in the US and how connected they stay to their Mexican traditions…
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Explaining the Mexican-American Health Paradox Using Selectivity Effects
EA Téllez, JN Martínez, ER González – 2015
… Banco de México Working Papers N° 2015-02 Explaining the Mexican-American Health Paradox
Using Selectivity Effects January 2015 … Erick Rangel González Banco de México Page 2. Explaining
the Mexican-American Health Paradox Using Selectivity Effects …
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Mexican American Children and Families: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
MOB Caughy, L Franzini – Mexican American Children and Families: …, 2014
… Policy makers and public health professionals must recognize the heterogeneity within and among …
Selected measures of health status for Mexican-American, mainland Puerto Rican, and Cuban …
Child Maltreatment: Journal of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of …
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The Mexican Museum Hires Cayetana S. Gómez as President and Chief Executive Office
Gómez to oversee operations, capital campaign, cultural relations, and collections
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — January 27, 2015 — The Mexican Museum (Museum), the premier West Coast museum of Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, and Latino art, culture and heritage, announces that Cayetana S. Gómez has been hired as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Gómez will be responsible for overseeing business operations for the Museum’s current location at Fort Mason Center. She will also be implementing the business and strategic plans for the cultural component of the 706 Mission Street Residential and Mexican Museum project, which will serve as the Museum’s future home in the heart of the Yerba Buena Gardens Art District.
“We are extremely pleased to have Cayetana join our team,” said Andrew M. Kluger, Chairman of The Mexican Museum Board of Trustees. “Along with her unparalleled communication skills and a vast network of professional relationships throughout the United States and Mexico, she has also held significant leadership positions for some of Mexico’s…
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The Mexican morass
A president who doesn’t get that he doesn’t get it
Jan 24th 2015
IN A new year message Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, promised to work to “liberate” his country from crime, corruption and impunity. His cabinet has duly set these as its priorities. The message is the right one. But unfortunately for Mr Peña, Mexicans are increasingly cynical about the…
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Tech Program Helps Put Latinos On A Path To Silicon Valley
About an hour south of Silicon Valley in a classroom at Hartnell Community College, Daniel Diaz and Brian De Anda stand at a whiteboard mapping out ideas on how to reduce the size of a mobile app their team is building.
This isn’t a class, and the app they’re building — an informational guide for a drug rehab center — isn’t even a school project. But this is what it takes to have a chance at an elite summer internship, says Daniel Diaz.
“What you are taught at school is not enough,” Diaz says, “especially in today’s competitive society. I think you need to do some more outside learning.”The inaugural class of the Computer Science and Information Technology program, scheduled to graduate in 2016.All Tech ConsideredOut Of The Fields And Into Computer Science Classes
So these students are working on other apps, doing hackathons and learning additional programming languages outside of class. They’re doing it because there’s a thought — perhaps a reality — that hangs over…
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Cecilia Abbott becomes state’s first Hispanic first lady
AUSTIN, Texas
The swearing in of new Texas Gov. Greg Abbott makes his wife the state’s first Hispanic first lady.
Cecilia Abbott is the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and was raised in San Antonio.
Delivering his inaugural address on the steps of the state Capitol on Tuesday, the new governor said his wife embodies Texas.
He said the state “has been the blending of cultures from across the globe even before we became our own nation.”…
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How Mexicans Became Americans
SOUTH GATE, Calif. — A FEW weeks ago, the City Council in this suburb southeast of Los Angeles appointed a Mexican immigrant to its advisory council. Jesus Miranda is from Michoacán and owns a taco restaurant here. He’ll advise the council on housing development and other issues.
Mr. Miranda’s appointment is hardly national news. But small moments like these are signs of a historic change of heart toward America and civic engagement among Mexican immigrants, many of whom, like Mr. Miranda…
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