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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Education

Mexican-American Children’s Perspectives: Neighborhood Characteristics and Physical Activity in Texas-Mexico Border Colonias

N Mier, LEE CHANAM, ML Smith, W XIAOHUI… – Journal of environmental …, 2013
… Ten focus groups were conducted with 67 Mexican-American colonia children ages 8 to 13 living
in one of the poorest border … Findings may inform policy makers and public health professionals
about ways to promote PA among underserved children through urban planning …
Link to abstract

Familismo, Ethnic Identity, and Bicultural Stress as Predictors of Mexican American Adolescents’ Positive Psychological Functioning.

B Piña-Watson, L Ojeda, NE Castellon, M Dornhecker – 2013
… Familismo, Ethnic Identity, and Bicultural Stress as Predictors of Mexican American Adolescents’
Positive Psychological Functioning … Page 2. Familismo, Ethnic Identity, and Bicultural Stress as
Predictors of Mexican American Adolescents’ Positive Psychological Functioning …
Link to abstract

GIFTED, BILINGUAL, MEXICAN/MEXICAN-AMERICAN STUDENTS: USING COMMUNITY CULTURAL WEALTH AS A STRATEGY FOR NEGOTIATING PARADOXES

TM Beam-Conroy – 2013
… the approved version of the following dissertation: GIFTED, BILINGUAL, MEXICAN/MEXICAN-
AMERICAN STUDENTS: USING COMMUNITY CULTURAL WEALTH AS A STRATEGY FOR
NEGOTIATING PARADOXES … vii GIFTED, BILINGUAL, MEXICAN/MEXICAN-AMERICAN
Link to dissertation

Mexican and Mexican-American children’s funds of knowledge as interventions into deficit thinking: opportunities for praxis in science education

MM Licona – Cultural Studies of Science Education
… These scholars have also identified other ways that Mexican American parents show they care
about their children’s educations: politically, legislatively … Of course, the responsibility to create
professional development for existing teachers cannot only be a point for rethinking the …
Link to abstract

Cultivating Critical Resilience among Mexican American Community College Students through a Three-Way Learning Community

B Campa – Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, 2013
… Language was a common obstacle among the participants and their Mexican American
peers. In many parts of the world, speaking more than one language is seen as an
asset, an opportunity for personal and professional growth. …
Link to article

Sibling Caretaking Among Mexican American Youth: Conditions That Promote and Hinder Personal and School Success

PL East, SB Hamill – Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 2013
… Others have found large gender disparities in Mexican American parents’ expectations for their
sons’ and daughters’ involvement in family roles and activities … as an end in and of itself, at the
expense of absent or severely limited educational and professional aspirations (Dodson …

Link to abstract

Two legacies: how blacks and Mexican-Americans helped shape University of Texas history

This article was written by Susan Smith and publised in “Diverse Issues in Higher Education

Before Heman Sweatt, an African-American from Houston, won his lawsuit to attend the University of Texas School of Law, Carlos Cadena, a Mexican-American from San Antonio, was among its brightest students. Cadena graduated summa cum laude from the law school in 1940, a decade before Sweatt’s lawsuit forced UT to open its graduate and professional programs to Blacks

Link to article

Linking Acculturation Patterns, Acculturative Stress, and Education Policies to Educational Competence among Mexican-American Children

YM Kim – 2013
Page 1. Linking Acculturation Patterns, Acculturative Stress, and Education Policies to
Educational Competence among Mexican-American Children Yoon Mi Kim … mentor. I am very
grateful for your valuable academic and professional advice and for sharing …
Link to dissertation

Trajectories of Mexican American and Mainstream Cultural Values Among Mexican American Adolescents

GP Knight, CD Basilio, H Cham, NA Gonzales, Y Liu… – Journal of Youth and …, 2013
… This sample of Mexican American families was diverse with respect to both SES and language
(Roosa et al. 2008). … professional experience in a social service agency), strong in communication
and organizational skills, and knowl- edgeable about computers. …
Link to abstract

Attitudes of Mexican American Students Towards Learning English as a Second Language in a Structured Immersion Program

DU MARTÍNEZ, JG PÉREZ, DM FERNÁNDEZ – PORTA LINGUARUM, 2013
… pp. 205-221 Attitudes of Mexican American Students Towards … ABSTRACT: This study involves
the examination of the attitudes of a group of Mexican American students towards learning
English as a second language in a struc- tured immersion program. …
Link to article

The Role of Family Support and Parental Monitoring as Mediators in Mexican American Adolescent Drinking Read More

M Pagan Rivera, D DePaulo – Substance Use & Misuse, 2013
… ORIGINAL ARTICLE. The Role of Family Support and Parental Monitoring as Mediators in Mexican
American Adolescent Drinking. … Analysis of the data utilizes multiple regression to identify risks and
protective factors of adolescent drinking in Mexican American youth. …
Link to article

A Demographic Portrait of Mexican-Origin Hispanics in the United States

A record 33.7 million Hispanics of Mexican origin resided in the United States in 2012, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Pew Research Center. This estimate includes 11.4 million immigrants born in Mexico and 22.3 million born in the U.S. who self-identified as Hispanics of Mexican origin.
by Ana Gonzalez-Barrera and Mark Hugo Lopez
Mexican-Origin Hispanics in the United States
Link to article

Mexican Roots for Majority of Latino Americans

Mexican Latinos make up more than two thirds of all Latinos in the United States, according to a new Pew Hispanic report.

Of the 51.9 million Latinos living in the United States in 2011, more than 33.5 million trace their family back to Mexico.

The report looked at demographic data collected from the 2011 American Community Survey. The report also examined U.S. citizenship, education levels and median income among U.S. Hispanics.
Link to article

Do Peers Contribute to the Achievement Gap between Vietnamese-American and Mexican-American Adolescents?

MT Duong, D Schwartz, CA McCarty – Social Development, 2013
… We recruited participants from a middle school with sizeable numbers of Mexican-American and
Vietnamese-American students in order to identify a … fathers (96.0 percent) and 75.4 percent of
mothers were employed outside the home, with most working at non-professional jobs …
Link to abstract

The role of social cognitive factors in Mexican American students’ educational goals and performance: A longitudinal analysis

PO Garriott, LY Flores – Journal of Latina/o Psychology, 2013
… Participants were 90 Mexican American students recruited from a public high school in the
Southwestern region of the United States as … school” (13.3%), “went to college but did not graduate”
(14.4%), “completed college” (15.6%), and “had graduate/professional training” (7.8 …
Link to abstract

Mexican American integration slow, education stalled, study finds

UCLA report charts Chicano experience over four decades
By Letisia Marquez March 20, 2008
Second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans speak English fluently, and most prefer American music. They are increasingly Protestant, and some may even vote for a Republican candidate…
Link to article


  

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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