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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Obama White House Touts Latino Gains in Income, Education, Health
by SUZANNE GAMBOA
WASHINGTON, DC — The White House on Wednesday touted gains Hispanics have made in education, income and health insurance during President Barack Obama’s time in office.
In a report released to mark the closing days of Hispanic Heritage Month, which ends Saturday, the White House issued a four-page brief from its Council on Economic Advisers on the Hispanics’ economic progress in the Obama years.
Obama marked the close of Hispanic Heritage month with remarks at a White House reception Wednesday afternoon. Hispanic Heritage Month began Sept. 15 and closes on Saturday.
“Over the last eight years we have made a lot of progress, together for all Americans and nowhere have you been able to see more vividly the progress than in the Hispanic American community,” Obama said at the event…
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USC professor spotlights the significance of Latinos to California’s future
The USC Price School of Public Policy has taken a leading role in training local decision-makers and its partnership with the Latino Caucus demonstrates the inroads it has made.
That’s a thought from USC Price Professor Raphael Bostic.
USC Price hosted more than 20 public officials from the League of California Cities Latino Caucus, who took part in the Bedrosian Center on Governance’s Local Leaders Executive Education Forum on Sept. 22 and 23.
The participants, many of whom are mayors or council members of cities across California, heard presentations from USC Price faculty on leadership, public ethics and housing policy, among other topics.
Professor Frank Zerunyan, director of executive education at the Bedrosian Center, led the program, which was the product of an agreement that USC Price and the Bedrosian Center signed with the Latino Caucus in 2014 to provide training aimed at enhancing the leadership capacity of public officials statewide…
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Daniel Torres Hispanic Center urges young Latinos to vote
Kyle Edelman
The presidential election is straight out of a soap opera: Twitter fights, mudslinging and personal attacks are flying between the front-runners. It does make for some great drama. Although the United States is predominantly white, 31 percent of eligible voters in the 2016 election are minorities, according to pewresearch.org…
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Annual New Mexico Hispanic Fiesta Draws Native American Ire
It’s a week-long event that draws together generations of northern New Mexico Hispanic residents, some who can trace their roots to the 1600s.
For centuries, northern New Mexico Hispanic residents have held an elaborate festival in Santa Fe to honor Spanish conquistador Don Diego De Vargas, who reclaimed the city following an American Indian revolt. There is music, dancing, a parade and the reenactment of De Vargas’s “peaceful reoccupation” of what is now New Mexico’s capital…
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Eva Longoria’s powerful speech: ‘My family didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us’
Eva Longoria took the podium at the Democratic National Convention with a powerful speech about her family’s immigrant past.
The actress was among the various speakers at Monday night’s opening night in Philadelphia. She spoke about her personal experience as a Mexican-American living in the U.S.
“I’m from a small town in South Texas, and if you know your history, Texas used to be part of Mexico,” Longoria, 41, said. “I’m ninth-generation American. My family never crossed the border, the border crossed us.”…
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Clinton’s Latina political director Amanda Renteria is key to getting the Hispanic community on board with her
WASHINGTON — For Amanda Renteria, 2016 has made the political even more personal.
When she took the job as Hillary Clinton’s political director, making her the highest-ranking Hispanic staffer on the campaign, Renteria knew she’d play a key role in trying to awaken the sleeping giant of the Hispanic vote. She never imagined she’d do it while squaring off against Donald Trump and his anti-Latino xenophobia…
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Voto Latino Power Summit Kicks Off To Mobilize Young Latinos
With Hillary Clinton now virtually assured to be the Democratic nominee for President, the Voto Latino Power Summit being held this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada holds particular significance for the growing power of Latino millennials, who make up 44 percent of all Latinos according to recent analysis from Pew Research.
An estimated 3.2 million Latinos will be able to cast their votes for the first time in the upcoming presidential election, and will likely pit Republican frontrunner Donald Trump against Clinton. With Donald Trump poised to get the lowest vote ever among Latinos for a Republican presidential nominee, organizations like Voto Latino will be an important venue for using the attention of the election to connect young Latinos with each other in networking opportunities and getting them motivated to become active citizens…
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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: THE MEXICAN PERSPECTIVE
LA FIELDS, S READER
… hire laborers without the proper documents. Generations of Mexican Americans grow up being
exposed to this “Mexican perspective.” These stories are recounted … of these Mexican Americans,
it can be difficult to distinguish between myth and reality. Therefore, while Page 14. …
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Latino Political Pulse: How Hispanics Have Changed California Politics
In our Latino Political Pulse we ask experts and scholars to weigh in and give us their take on timely political and national topics and issues.
With the California presidential primary upon us, we asked a group of California Latina scholars to give us their thoughts on how Hispanics have changed politics in the Golden State and its lasting impact in 2016 and beyond…
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The Growing Economic power of Latino-Americans-by the numbers
While much of the rhetoric regarding Latinos this election cycle has focused on the divisive issue of immigration, a bipartisan group is out to change the narrative. The Latino Donor Collaborative aims to emphasize the growing economic power of Latino-Americans, and the potent political force they can become. John Yang talks to co-founders Henry Cisneros and Sal Trujillo for more…
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Community Home, and Identity
TL Turnipseed – 2016 – books.google.com
Community, home, and identity are concepts that have concerned scholars in a variety of
fields for some time. Legal scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and
economists, among others, have studied the impacts of home and community on one’s …
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Two Sides of a Border, One Community
When I was invited to visit El Paso and Ciudad Juárez by the Aspen Institute, I was immediately intrigued. I have lived my life between the US and Mexico, yet knew relatively little about where the two nations meet – that controversial space so often described in the media and by Hollywood as a dangerous zone of conflict and hopelessness.
What I found was a pleasant surprise. The American and Mexican communities that live at the border are united by common geography, history, language, and aspirations, and have much to teach the rest of the country about how to build harmonious bicultural communities…
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The Census Bureau undercounts Latinos. It’ll take more than technology to fix that
A new report issued last week by Child Trends, a research organization, and the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund calculated that the 2010 census missed some 400,000 young Latino children — the equivalent of more than half a congressional district. The data — a comparison of census records with county birth, death and immigration records — indicate that the 2010 undercount rate for young Latinos was 7.1%, compared to 4.3% for non-Latinos. The shortfall was pronounced in specific counties in five states: California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and New York…
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Mobile-First: Why Latinos are more mobilized than ever for 2016’s election
As the 2016 Presidential election continues its headline-grabbing run to November, American voters are weighing a host of spirited issues and eagerly await the chance to be heard. For many Latino voters, the political stakes feel very personal — and where a candidate stands on these issues will factor heavily into who wins their vote.
Capturing these votes requires a smart digital strategy expressly designed for reaching this audience; the next occupant of the White House may well be in their hands…
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Nebraskan Hispanic population officially ‘large’
OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) – Nearly a third of Nebraska’s 93 counties recorded growth over the previous five years, a new U.S. census data report revealed last month. The biggest population gain was with the Hispanic and Latino populations, who hold the title for the largest minority population in the state.
Counties such as, Douglas, Dodge, Colfax, Madison, Dakota and several others have a Hispanic population that exceeds 10 percent of its entire population, which according to David Drozd, research coordinator for the Center for Public Affairs Research, is enough to say they have a large Hispanic population.
”It just is a good even break point for kind of saying, well that’s an established community, that’s a major presence in the area, and while it’s about 10% right now statewide, by 2050 our projections will show it’s going to be a quarter of the state’s population,” says Drozd…
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Millennials Make Up Almost Half of Latino Eligible Voters in 2016
Hispanic millennials will account for nearly half (44%) of the record 27.3 million Hispanic eligible voters projected for 2016—a share greater than any other racial or ethnic group of voters, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data…
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The Elusive Nature of the Hispanic Category
By 2060, 115 percent more Americans will be of Hispanic origin than in 2015. Consequently, pundits identify “the Hispanic vote” as the next frontier for ensuring political success. Political elites have thus scrambled to investigate, quantify, and draw conclusions about this group in any way possible. They have asked Hispanic respondents about their political beliefs on a range of issues — principally, immigration — in an effort to define the policy matters that are most salient to Latinxs in the United States. This analysis propagates throughout campaign teams, interest groups, academia, and journalism, heavily influencing judgments about the allegiances of the Hispanic community. But, a central and largely unacknowledged point about mainstream political discourses regarding Hispanics are the inherent flaws in defining the Hispanic category itself. Because of distinct colonial histories between Latin America and the United States and between different nations within Latin America, the American mainstream cannot and should not…
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Reading Tejano History
CE Orozco – American Book Review, 2016
… Texas Mexican Americans and Postwar Civil Rights Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez University of
Texas Press www.utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books Pages; Print, $24.95. … The story about
the hiring of Mexican Americans in civil service jobs was unknown. …
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Carlos R. Moreno, is the current Ambassador of the United States of America to Belize
Ambassador Carlos R. Moreno a Mexican American jurist, arrived June 21, 2014 in Belize and presented his credentials to Governor General Sir Colville Young on June 24, 2014. Previously, Ambassador Moreno had a long and distinguished legal career.
Ambassador Moreno served as an Associate Justice on the California Supreme Court from 2001 to 2011. From 1998 to 2001, Ambassador Moreno served as a United States District Judge in the Central District of California…
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Donald the Dangerous
IS there any scarier nightmare than President Donald J. Trump in a tense international crisis, indignant and impatient, with his sweaty finger on the nuclear trigger?
“Trump is a danger to our national security,” John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to the State Department under President George W. Bush, bluntly warned.
Most of the discussion about Trump focuses on domestic policy. But checks and balances mean that there are limits to what a president can achieve domestically, while the Constitution gives a commander in chief a much freer hand abroad…
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