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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AP Exclusive: ‘Breaking Bad’ actor runs for Albuquerque seat
…ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Citing the growth of urban sprawl and a need for more Mexican-American elected officials, “Breaking Bad” actor Steven Michael Quezada said he is jumping in a heated race for county commissioner in Albuquerque, New Mexico…
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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.)…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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US Latino Unemployment Rate: 13 Million Latinos ‘Not in the Labor Force’ But May 2015 Hispanic Unemployment Declines
The U.S. Latino unemployment declined by one percentage point in comparison to May 2014, and economists have remained optimistic about the latest jobs report.
Overall, the U.S. unemployment rate increased from 5.4 percent in April to 5.5 percent for May. According to The New York Times, the latest data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) helped ease the debate about the first quarter’s financial results. During May, 280,000 jobs were created, which was a stronger number than expected, and it may further the Federal Reserve to start raising interest rates.
The Latino unemployment rate, however, declined from April’s 6.9 percent to 6.7 percent in May. As the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) noted, Latino employment gains in leisure and hospitality likely attributed to the unemployment rate decline as 57,000 jobs were added in this sector. The leisure and hospitality employment gains come as the summer vacation season approaches…
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Chapter 7: The Many Dimensions of Hispanic Racial Identity
For Hispanics living in the United States, Hispanic identity is multidimensional and multifaceted. For some, it is defined most by their family’s country of origin, such as Mexican, Cuban or Dominican.48 For others, it is defined by pan-ethnic terms like Hispanic or Latino, emphasizing the commonalities of a diverse community…
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Supreme Court could reshape voting districts, with big impact on Hispanics
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take up a Texas case that challenges the way nearly every U.S. voting district – from school boards to Congress – is drawn. The case, in essence, asks the court to specify what the word “person” means in its “one person, one vote” rule. The outcome of the case could have major impacts on Hispanic voting strength and representation from coast to coast…
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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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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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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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