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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Law

Colorado Hispanic Bar Association celebrates 40

The Colorado Hispanic Bar Association (CHBA) will hold its annual gala and fundraiser on January 21, 2017, at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Denver. The event will raise operational funds for the organization, as well as scholarship funds on behalf of its Foundation. The gala begins at 5:30 p.m., with a cocktail hour and Latin Jazz played by Freddy Rodriguez. Dinner begins at 7:00 p.m., with a three-course meal. During the dinner program, the CHBA will honor outgoing President Arnulfo D. Hernández and swear in incoming President Ruth N. Mackey…
Link to article

5-Year-Old Mexican Farm Worker Grows Up to Be US Federal Judge

Manuel Barbosa’s life is a rags-to-riches tale that exemplifies the American Dream. The Dream isn’t perfect, as the obstacles in Barbosa’s life have shown, but he feels nonetheless that “it is alive and well.”
In 1948, when Barbosa was 2 months old, his parents crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico to Texas on a raft. At the age of 5, he started picking cotton with them to earn 1 cent per pound…
Link to article

Mexico Stubbornly Resists Accountability

When he campaigned for the presidency of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto used the title of his book, “Mexico, the Great Hope,” to explain the record he hoped to achieve and the nation he hoped to build. More than three years into his presidency, it seems more likely that he will be remembered not as the transformational leader Mexicans thought they had elected, but as a politician who skirted accountability at every turn…
Link to Editorial Opinion

Open Letter to Arthur Liman

AL Higginbotham – Yale Law & Policy Review, 2015
… of Clarence Thomas has accomplished anything, it has accomplished this: it has made it safe
for the enemies of racial progress, such as Professor Lino A. Graglia of the University of Texas
Law School, to assert openly that “[b]lacks and Mexican- Americans are not …
Link to article

George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican Integration by Carlos Kevin Blanton (review)

JL Pycior – Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 2015
… Today the University of Texas education building bears Sánchez’s name. What really matters,
though, as this definitive account makes clear, is that his words and deeds contributed mightily
to the civil rights advances of Mexican Americans. [End Page 231]. …
Link to review

Truth vs. perception of crime rates for immigrants

Incendiary comments made by Donald Trump and a random killing of a California woman have added fuel to national debate on the contributions of and concerns about undocumented immigrants. William Brangham speaks to Marielena Hincapié of the National Immigration Law Center, Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute and Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies…
Link to video and program transcipt

Supreme Court could reshape voting districts, with big impact on Hispanics

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take up a Texas case that challenges the way nearly every U.S. voting district – from school boards to Congress – is drawn. The case, in essence, asks the court to specify what the word “person” means in its “one person, one vote” rule. The outcome of the case could have major impacts on Hispanic voting strength and representation from coast to coast…
Link to article

Mexican and Central American Immigrant Rights: Local Justice Struggles in a Global City

C Kovic – 2015
… inequalities. Global cities are highly stratified sites which require both high-level, well paid
professionals and low-paid service sector workers, employed as domestic workers, in food industry,
and as janitors (Sassen 1991). … 7 term Mexican American, Chicano, or Hispanic. …
Link to working paper

Shumaker Loop names first Hispanic managing partner

Julio Esquivel, partner and a member of the management committee at Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP, is about to make history in the company.
Esquivel will be the firm’s next managing partner, taking over for J. Todd Timmerman, and will be the first Hispanic managing partner in the firm’s history.
Esquivel specializes in corporate law with a focus on mergers and acquisitions, securities, IPOs, franchise and distribution, and international transactions. He’s been a member of Shumaker Loop for 17 years, and said Partner Greg Yadley was his mentor from the start at the firm…
Link to article

The Election of Pete Chacón: Latino Hope, Pride and a New Belief in the System

By Maria E. Garcia
Peter “Pete” Chacón
The general public knew Peter Chacón as a California State Assemblyman who served from 1970-1992. Very few know or understand what Pete’s election meant to the Latino community.
From the time I was a small child I remember my parents going inside a building to vote. They would take turns voting as we sat in the car. One parent would go inside to vote while the other parent would care for us. Then the reverse would occur. Voting was always a special activity and in many ways a mystery…
Link to article

The United States and Mexico: Forging a Special Relationship

Should the United States and Mexico establish a “special relationship,” similar to those the US maintains with Great Britain and Israel? For Samir Tata, an increasingly self-confident and politically active Mexican – American population means that the historical, geographical, demographic and economic case has never been more compelling…
Link to article

In Defense of My People: Alonso S. Perales and the Development of Mexican-American Public Intellectuals ed. by Michael A. Olivas (review)

JR Buriel – Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 2014
… Perales’s professional work on behalf of Mexican Americans entailed legal practice on social
justice cases involving equality in employment … Mario T. García calls in Mexican Americans:
Leadership, Ideol- ogy, and Identity, 1930–1960, “The Mexican-American Generation” (1989 …
Link to abstract

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…
Link to article

James J. Lorence. Palomino: Clinton Jencks and Mexican-American Unionism in the American Southwest.

BD Behnken – The American Historical Review, 2014
… The union soon transferred him to New Mexico, where local Mexican American leaders such
as Juan Chacón were already involved in a bitter … The jury found Jencks guilty of perjury based
largely on the testimony of FBI informant and professional liar Harvey Matusow, who …
Link to review

Divorce and the “Modern Family”: Using a DR to a ddress Our Ever-Diversifying Society’s Family Law needs

By Antoinette Raheem
with the contributions of
Holly Thompson, Sayed Mostafa, Tim
Cordes,Eileen Slank, and Belem Morales

We all know that divorce is never a one-size-fits-all process. However, when the parties to a domestic matter are culturally
or otherwise diverse, family lawyers need recognize that even more care should be taken to address the unique needs
of the parties. While it goes without saying that, within any group, people are unique and no one group has all the same
characteristics, to the extent there may be some prevalent…
Link to article

No green card? No problem — undocumented immigrant can practice law, court says

By Catherine E. Shoichet and Tom Watkins, CNN
updated 9:25 AM EST, Fri January 3, 2014
Illegal immigrant becomes lawyer
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: California State Bar: The decision is a legal one, not a political one
California’s Supreme Court: Undocumented immigrant Sergio Garcia can practice law
“I’m glad to see us moving forward in the right direction,” one law student says
Critic: Case shows troubling trend, a push to “normalize illegal immigration”

(CNN) — Sergio Garcia’s parents brought him to the United States from Mexico nearly two decades ago. He’s been waiting for a green card ever since.

But there’s one thing the undocumented immigrant no longer has to wait for, according to a California Supreme Court ruling on Thursday: his law license.

Link to article

LUIS RODRIGUEZ OF L.A. TO BECOME FIRST LATINO TO LEAD THE STATE BAR OF CALIFORNIA

SAN FRANCISCO, July 19, 2013 – Los Angeles attorney Luis J. Rodriguez was elected today as president of the State Bar of California for 2013-2014. He will be the first public defender and first Latino to hold the office.

Rodriguez, 46, will be sworn in as the 89th president of the 243,000-member organization at the State Bar’s Annual Meeting in October in San Jose. He currently serves as vice president and ran unopposed in the Board of Trustees election. Craig Holden, 43, a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP of Los Angeles, was elected vice president. Heather Linn Rosing, 41, of Klinedinst PC in San Diego was elected treasurer.
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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