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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News and Information

Mexican-American To Coordinate Care Immigrants, Undocumented Children In Chicago

Mexican-American Tonantzin Carmona, 24, has assumed the management of the Office of New Americans at Chicago City Hall, which provides needed aid to immigrants and will coordinate shelter in this city for 1,000 undocumented Central American children.
The young woman replaces another Mexican, Adolfo Hernandez, who was the first director of this office, founded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel soon after he was elected, with the mission of making Chicago the best city in the world…
Link to article

The Fluffy Movie

By Kurt Jensen
Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) — Like Bill Cosby, Gabriel Iglesias tells stories, not jokes. In “The Fluffy Movie” (Open Road), the rotund Mexican-American comic, whose tales are as soft around the edges as the man himself, shares engaging accounts of weight loss and the difficulties of being the stepfather of a teenage boy…
Link to review

Mexican American Vintners Association Enters Retail Scene with Whole Foods Market Partnership

Napa, CA (PRWEB) July 24, 2014
In an effort to educate California wine lovers about the variety and quality of wines made by Mexican-American winemakers in the region, the Mexican American Vintners Association (MAVA) is breaking into retail. During the months of August and September, Whole Foods Market’s Northern California and Reno stores will highlight wines crafted by select MAVA members. Never before has a retailer of any size focused specifically on wines produced by Mexican-American vintners…
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My Career Veered Off Course On purpose: Melissa’s #LaunchLikeABoss Story

Melissa is part of a classic American immigrant tale.

Her Mexican-American parents raised her with a strong ethic of hard work and community. She prioritized her education to become a first-generation college graduate, and she made it all the way to law school before taking on the kind of corporate desk job her parents always dreamed for her. Melissa was not going to have to work with her hands…
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Diversity in the Workplace: NPR’s Latino Employees, Audience Statistics Below US Population Average

National Public Radio’s employee ethnicity rate is nearly identical to their listenership statistics. NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos disclosed the company’s ethnicity data following criticism of the cancellation of its diversity-focused talk show “Tell Me More.”

“I agree that cancellation of the journalistically excellent seven-year old show is sorrowful, and I don’t think I am talking out of school when I say that this seems to be a feeling shared up and down the NPR hierarchy,” Schumacher-Matos wrote. “The reasons for the closure, as Chief Content Officer Kinsey Wilson has made clear in a number of public statements, are that the show had a relatively small audience, lost money and is a victim of shifting strategies to keep up with changing times.”…
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Included in Communication Learning Climates That Cultivate Racial and Ethnic Diversity

OI Davis, JM Martinez, TK Nakayama – … : Learning Climates That Cultivate Racial and … – ERIC
16 days ago – … As an African American, a Mexican American, and an Asian American who teach
and conduct research in performance studies, inter- cultural communication, and rhetoric,
respectively, we bring an array of differ- ences together in our professional lives at Arizona State …
Link to essay

Latino scholar gifts books to S.A. Central Library’s Latino Collection

The San Antonio Public Library, its foundation and the Latino Leadership for the Library Committee celebrated art historian Tomás Ybarra y Frausto Tuesday for a donation of hundreds of Latino literature books, accumulated over a long career as a scholar and Latino arts and cultural historian.
The works will go into the Central Library’s Latino Collection on the sixth floor. His gift was a timely one, as the space is being renovated with new branding and furniture. The project will be completed this fall…
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Students take pride in their heritage by showing #WhatLatinosLookLike

The Latino community wants the world to know #WhatLatinosLookLike.
When The New York Times reported “more Hispanics are declaring themselves white,” Latinos took to Twitter and Instagram to highlight the diversity of their community. Using the hashtag #WhatLatinosLookLike, Latinos posted pictures of themselves to refute the claim…
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3 Big Latino stars headed to the Walk of Fame

Their hard-working trajectory has made them some of the most successful Latinos in the entertainment business. That’s why three big Hispanic stars are headed to California’s popular tourist destination in Hollywood boulevard and Vine street to be honored with their very own star in the Walk of Fame.
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has announced the “Class of 2015 Star Honorees,” which include three very much-loved artists of our own.
SEE ALSO: Stars of ‘Rio 2′ fly to Miami’s Walk of Fame
Next year, Colombian actress Sofia Vergara, Cuban-American rapper Pitbull and Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez will inaugurate their own permanent public monuments for their achievement in the biz…
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Yahoo Diversity Figures Show Lack of Blacks, Hispanics

Yahoo has released information on the diversity of its workforce, and like Google it has a lot of room for improvement.
Last month, Google revealed that only 2% of its workforce was Black, 3% Hispanic and women only 30%.
Yahoo has followed suit by publishing its workforce diversity figures, and they are along the same lines. Women make up 37% of the overall workforce, with blacks representing 2% and Hispanics 4%.
In leadership positions at Yahoo (defined as VP and above), the story is even more lopsided. 77% of those posts are held by men, 2% are held by Hispanics and only 1% by Blacks…

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Arthur J. Ochoa Receives Mexican American Bar Foundation Professional Achievement Award

Newswise — LOS ANGELES (June 17, 2014) – The Mexican American Bar Foundation named Arthur J. Ochoa, Cedars-Sinai’s senior vice president of Community Relations and Development, the 2014 recipient of the legal organization’s Professional Achievement Award. The award was presented at the Mexican American Bar Foundation’s Annual Scholarship and Awards Gala June 14 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles…
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Top 10 Chicano Films for M.A.S.

Mexican American Studies (MAS) is spreading like wildfire in Texas.

By the time you read this, Texas will have the most schools teaching MAS in the nation-and growing.

On that note, we’re fine-tuning the MAS Texas Took Kit to help any K-12 teacher to incorporate Mexican American Studies. This can range from implementing an entire curriculum to using one lesson plan for a particular unit or obvious time of year such as Hispanic Heritage Month…
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Do Bilingual Teachers Hold Key to Latino Students’ Achievement Gap?

In an attempt to close the achievement gap between white and Latino students, the Santa Barbara Unified School District plans to hire more bilingual and bicultural teachers in 2015 and beyond.
The percentage of Hispanic students in Santa Barbara schools is more than double the percentage of Hispanic teachers.
“Our Latinos are…
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The Experience of Giving Informed Consent in a Mexican-American Older Adult

H Zamora – Sigma Theta Tau International’s 25th International …, 2014
… a complex process that has ethical and legal implications for the health care professionals who
are tasked with obtaining it. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and
describe the experience of giving informed consent in a Mexican American older adult …
Link to abstract

The health data that shows Hispanics can’t be lumped into one group

Data looking at diabetes among Hispanics shows what experts have known for some time; the rate of metabolic disease among this growing minority is significantly higher than among non-Hispanic whites.

That being said, the data also shows something else that’s very important–Hispanics cannot be lumped under an umbrella term when it comes to health.

The new information is part of an ongoing large-scale study of Hispanics in the United States entitled “The Hispanic Community Health Study/ Study of Latinos”, and according to project manager Larissa Avilés-Santa, MD, from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the findings are complex when it comes to the health of Hispanics but clearly show there is no single “Hispanic profile.”…
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This Fall TV Season Has Greatest Representation of Latino Actors, Characters

Goodbye summer. Welcome, fall.

This week kicks off the premieres of this year’s fall season shows, and the representation of Latino artists is at an all-time high.

More than 20 shows in all major networks will feature at least one Latino actor or actress in lead or supporting roles in both returning and premiering shows.

One show – “Welcome to the Family” starring Justina Machado and Ricardo Chavira alongside Mike O’Malley and Mary McCormack – has five Latino stars leading the way. The series premiere for the ABC show is Oct. 3 at 8:30 p.m….
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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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