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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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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At the Core and in the Margins: incorporation of Mexican immigrants in two rural Midwestern communities
J Albarracín – 2016 – books.google.com
Beardstown and Monmouth, Illinois, two rural Midwestern towns, have been transformed by
immigration in the last three decades. This book examines how Mexican immigrants who
have made these towns their homes have integrated legally, culturally, and institutionally. …
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Austin Revealed: Chicano Civil Rights-Desegregation and Education
In the aftermath of desegregation, Mexican-American students and teachers in Austin realized the lack of equality in the school system and higher education. In the first installment of KLRU’s Austin Revealed: Chicano Civil Rights series, students and teachers who lived it share their stories about the disparate conditions and the fight for reform…
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Super Tuesday showcases electorate’s growing racial, ethnic diversity
The U.S. electorate this year will be the country’s most diverse ever, and that is evident in several Super Tuesday states holding primaries or caucuses on March 1 in which blacks could have a significant impact
In five of 12 Super Tuesday states, blacks account for at least 15% of the electorate, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2014 census data. Black eligible voters have the largest footprint in Georgia (31%) and Alabama (26%), while Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas also have sizable black electorates.
In a reversal of historical migration trends, Southern states have seen their black populations increase more than twice as fast as non-Southern states since 1990. From 1910 to 1970, 6 million blacks left the South, with many pursuing industrial jobs in Northern cities in what is called the Great Migration. But since then, blacks have increasingly chosen to live in the South…
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