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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History

Understanding Latino History

PR Mitchell – 2017 – books.google.com
Latinos make up a vibrant, expanding, and extremely diverse population with a history of
being in the Americas that dates back to the early 16th century. Today, Latinos represent the
largest ethnic minority group in the United States, yet the history of Latinos is largely …
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Phoenix seeks input on building Latino arts and cultural center

A cultural center showcasing Latino communities may be Phoenix’s next major investment in city art institutions.
Some Phoenix leaders and organizations have for years pushed for a space to highlight the artistic contributions of Latinos through a designated facility, without a designated funding source or plan. Now, the city is considering if nearly $1.4 million in bond funding could launch the project.
There’s no precise vision, location or business model — yet. A consultant approved by the City Council last year is investigating how such a center would function.
The institution would aim to hold exhibitions and programs that focus on cultural education and celebration. Early outreach to artists and an advisory board for the proposal point to interest in a multipurpose space that could include visual and performing arts as well as classroom and event space, said Evonne Gallardo, the California-based consultant working on the project…
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Chomsky gives an historical look at immigration and social justice

DULUTH

Our national quarrel over immigration that was reignited during Donald Trump’s campaign is actually older than this nation. Yet, there has been little substantive debate since his inauguration as the dictates two weeks into his administration showed.
His first dictate could not stand up to the rule of law or the Constitution. So he tried again March 6 with a little softer approach that still offended a majority of Americans, judges, and state attorneys’ general.
The nation would have been better served if President Trump would have waited a day and had sat quietly in the College of St. Scholastica’s Mitchell Auditorium March 7 prior to his second dictate. He would have gotten an historical and social justice perspective on immigration from guest lecturer Aviva Chomsky that would have served us better.
Chomsky did not, however, lay the blame on Trump for where he had arrived on the immigration question
“It’s not like we had a generous immigration policy that Trump was trying to displace,” Chomsky told a gathering of over 100 people.
She said we need to radically change the way we see our history otherwise we end up with incorrect assumptions that permeate the way we think.
And so we end up with the mess that is our national quarrel on immigration.
Chomsky is a professor of history and coordinator of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. She was born into a family of scholars who included her father, linguist Noam Chomsky. She worked for the United Farm Workers in 1976 and 1977, an experience that sparked her interest in migrant workers, labor history, and the effect of global economic forces on individuals…
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International Friendships:The Interpersonal Basis of a World Wide Community

A GARCIA – International Friendships: The Interpersonal Basis of a …, 2016
… American migrants is greater in the United States, in recent years, some publications shed further
information about Latin Americans in Canada … In 2013, approximately 11.6 million Mexican
immigrants lived in the United States, compared to 2.2 million in 1980, representing…
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English graduate student wins Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship

Cesar Soto wants to know how the spark of political revolution can transform religious concepts of community and inclusion.
To better understand the issue, he’s turning to the literature of England, Ireland, and Mexico in the late 1700s and early 1800s.César Soto wants to know how the spark of political revolution can transform religious concepts of community and inclusion.
Soto, a Ph.D. candidate in Notre Dame’s Department of English, has been awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for 2016-17 to support his project.
The fellowships recognize graduate students who have demonstrated superior academic achievement, show promise as future scholars and teachers at a college or university level, and are prepared to use diversity as a resource to enrich the education of all students…
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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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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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HOW DO HISTORY AND RELIGION AFFECT THE READING HABITS AND PRACTICES OF LATINO STUDENTS?

DL Moguel – the Social Studies, 2016
… Paz argued that Mexican Catholicism, a combination of Spanish and indigenous traditions, had
different approaches than European Protestantism toward freedom of … By surveying over 35
thousand Americans over the age of 18, the 2014 Survey has found the following (Pew …
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“I AM Latino in America” Tour stops in Dallas

DALLAS — SMU’s Cox Latino Leadership Initiative and the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau hosted the “I Am Latino in America” tour Tuesday at the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium.
The “I Am Latino in America” tour, hosted by award-winning journalist, Soledad O’Brien, kicked off in 2015 and returned in February 2016, adding Dallas to the cities it would visit.DALLAS — SMU’s Cox Latino Leadership Initiative and the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau hosted the “I Am Latino in America” tour Tuesday at the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium…
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The Collision of Cultural Memories on the Texas_Mexico Border

GW Gómez – How Myth Became History: Texas Exceptionalism in …, 2016
… Texan memory carries traces of the coun-terdiscursive practices voiced in the nineteenth-and
early twentieth-century corrido,“a Mexican folk ballad that celebrates the resistance of Mexican
Amer-ican everyman against the oppression of Anglo Americans”(Sorensen 112). …
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Latina Lives in Milwaukee

T Delgadillo – 2015 – books.google.com
102 days ago – … people of many different backgrounds and experiences but that there are many
forms of achievement—personal, professional, communal—large … local troupe, whether it involved
actors posing as French and Mexican or actual Mexican or Mexican American performers …
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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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