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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The Jewish-American Writer Who Transformed U.S.-Mexico Relations
The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles is currently highlighting the life and writing of Anita Brenner, a Mexican-born, American Jewish writer. Brenner was born in 1905 in Aguascalientes, and spent the majority of her life writing about the art and culture of Mexico, trying to bridge the gap between the U.S. and Mexico…
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First Stanford Latina physics Ph.D. fights for STEM inclusion opportunities
The victory of becoming the first Mexican woman to earn her Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University was hard-won for Dr. Deborah Berebichez (pictured), who’s faced objection to her desire to work in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, since childhood.
“I was told from a very young age that physics was for geniuses and that I had better pick a more feminine path. … When I confessed to my mom in high school that I loved physics and math, she said, ‘Don’t tell the boys, because you’ll intimidate them, and you may not be able to get married,’” Berebichez said…
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From La Frontera to La Universidad
An accomplished writer, poet and literary scholar, Norma E. Cantú will receive UCSB’s annual Luis Leal Literature Award…
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This Chicana chemist is paying it forward to support students from underrepresented groups
On a calm September evening in 2010, Alegra Eroy-Reveles had come home from lab and put her toddler to bed when a dear friend called. As they talked, Eroy-Reveles scribbled with a marker on the mirrored closet door, like she did on fume hoods in the chemistry lab where she worked as a postdoc at the University of California (UC), San Francisco. The conversation touched on proteases, probes, experiments that weren’t working, and her disillusionment with the pressure to publish. But it took a turn when the friend said she was dying of breast cancer…
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This Is What It’s Like to Be a Latina Writer on NBC’s Workplace Comedy ‘Superstore’
By Carlos Aguilar | 4 days ago
Following a sneak screening of a hilarious episode from the upcoming third season of Superstore, NALIP’s Latino Media Fest hosted a conversation with the two Latina writers on the show, Sierra Ornelas and Vanessa Ramos. Although both of them have extensive resumes working in television – Ramos on multiple Comedy Central Roasts and Bordertown and Sierra on shows like Happy Endings – this is the first show where they have had the opportunity to work alongside another woman of color, or any other person of color for that matter…
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Mexican American Women Leaders
YC Leyva, PD Witherspoon – Gender, Communication, and the Leadership Gap, 2017
… data. Garcia and Enriquez emphasized the importance of data, including statistical
information, in building a case for Page 304. Mexican American Women Leaders■
277 solutions in work and professional contexts. However …
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My Professional Journey
MJT Vasquez – Journeys to Professional Excellence: Stories of …, 2017 – books.google.com
The most wonderful, exciting, humbling, and intimidating period in my life was my service as
president of the American Psychological Association (APA). The decision to run, the process
of campaigning, the election, and the period of service were all part of that phase of my…
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Number of minorities, women taking CS is skyrocketing thanks to STEM collaborations
- Following implementation of a new type of computer science option last fall — AP Computer Science Principles, which puts real-world perspectives on coding — data from 2016 to 2017 shows the number of minorities taking a computer science exam in some form nearly tripled to 22,199, up from 8,283, while the number of girls taking it rose from 12,642 to 29,708.
- AP CSP was born out of a collaboration between the National Science Foundation, College Board and Code.org, along with other authorized providers, who are rolling out the course and training teachers to facilitate it, reports NPR — and over half of the schools teaching the course are using curriculum from Code.org, which trained 500 teachers last year…
Carolina Herrera: A woman who broke the rules at the border with Mexico
Carolina Herrera: A Woman Who Broke the Rules at the Border of Mexico weaves a tale of the events that led to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Carolina’s story is that of the revolution interwoven with a woman whose life was impacted by it. As she was growing up, Carolina had to navigate two cultures—her parents’ Mexican culture, and the mostly American culture she was surrounded with in El Paso, Texas…
How The First Latina Senator Is Putting Congress On Blast
Donald Trump’s presidential victory on Nov. 8, 2016 was an upsetting night for diversity advocates. However, the night was not without its silver linings — and the the election of freshman Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was one of them.
“I’m proud to be Nevada’s 1st female and our nation’s 1st Latina senator,” tweeted Cortez Masto, who filled Harry Reid’s vacant seat, on election night. “It’s about time our government mirrors the diversity of our nation.”…
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Literary Dynamo
Author of more than 200 publications, books, essays, articles, reviews and short stories, UC Santa Barbara professor Sara Poot-Herrera is known for “always working” — organizing conferences or speaking events on Mexican and Spanish American literature, as well as writing, editing and teaching.
“According to my friends, I don’t sleep,” Poot-Herrera joked. Initially “torn” about missing her apartment and friends in Mexico, she sustains her cultural ties by inviting Mexican writers to speak to her students at UCSB, such as Elmar Mendoza, a key figure in the genre known as narcoliterature — crime fiction. The students, she noted, “were captivated.”…
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10 Interesting Hispanic Facts About Mother’s Day
Motherly love and love for our mothers are inherent human traits. This is why Mother’s Day is celebrated in one way or another around the world, and U.S. Latinos are no exception.
It is no surprise that many product and retail categories spike around the second Sunday of May, and since Latino moms are the fastest growing group of mothers in America, an increasing number of Hispanic advertising campaigns are trying to convince Latinos to use their brand for gifts to honor their moms.
Below you’ll find a list of facts and figures that are interesting and relevant for Hispanic marketing initiatives:…
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Beyond the Spitfire: Re-visioning Latinas in Sylvia Morales’ A Crushing Love 2009
From Dolores del Río to Salma Hayek and from Lupe Vélez to Eva Longoria, the portrayal of
Latinas in the United States has provoked debate, criticism and controversy. Since the era of
silent movies, Hollywood’s depiction of the Latina has been rigidly prescribed and reductive…
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Finding Harmony: Meet the Latina Conductor Breaking Barriers With Music
Paula Nava Madrigal started conducting almost by chance. She was a cellist in the Guadalajara University orchestra in Mexico. When their regular conductor became sick, she and her classmates took turns conducting.
“Someone [had] to do it,” she says. “And when I did it, I loved it!”
Not long after, Madrigal went to Mexico City to take her first conducting workshop.
“The role of the conductor is really to make sure that the composer’s written score comes to life,” explains tenor José Iñiguez, whose concerts Madrigal has been conducting. “From the rhythm to knowing when instruments crescendo, diminuendo, to [knowing] the depth of a score.”…
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Mexican-American Biologist Speaks On Science’s Continued Diversity Problem
It wasn’t that long ago that a science professor could easily tell a struggling female student that women just don’t belong in chemistry.
As an undergraduate at the University of Washington in the 1960s, Lydia Villa-Komaroff was determined to be a chemist, but sought help from her advisor.
“Well of course you’re having difficulties,” the professor said, according to Villa-Komaroff. “Women don’t belong in chemistry.”..
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This Upcoming Exhibition Highlights the Work of 116 Radical Latina & Latin American Artists
Because the system’s so biased and so restrictive, so much wonderful art has [gone] completely unnoticed.” With these words, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill succinctly described the impetus for an upcoming exhibition – Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 – at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The last few decades has seen progress for female artists, but the art world hasn’t reached parity, with men still basking in the limelight far more often than women…
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Black and Latina women pitch tech startups at Demo Day in Atlanta
Showcase is hosted by nationally-recognized, Atlanta-based incubator dedicated to increasing the number of women of color in tech
Startups led by Black and Latina women will make their case for capital at the first-ever demo day hosted by digitalundivided’s BIG Accelerator, the new, nationally-recognized Atlanta-based program dedicated to reversing the lack of diversity in the tech industry.
The BIG Demo Day will showcase live demonstrations by each startup to a select group of investors, corporate executives, and tech leaders, as well as talks by leading national experts from the U.S. Small Business Administration, Capital One, and Kapor Capital. helping women entrepreneurs of color develop sustainable businesses. The Demo Day is the culmination of an intense, 12-week accelerator program that provided each startup founder with coaching on how to scale their ventures, mentorship by top industry leaders, office space for one year, and $20,000 in seed funding from the investment fund Harriet Angels Syndicate…
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République’s new wine director is now one of the most influential Latina sommeliers in the country
On the second day of January, Taylor Parsons, chief author of one of the most dynamic wine lists in Los Angeles, left his position at République — that day, by his calculation, represented his 1,000th evening menu at the celebrated Hancock Park bistro. He plans to spend the next year developing a restaurant project he can call his own, consulting, and helping his wife Briana Valdez expand her own business, the Loz Feliz Tex-Mex joint HomeState.
He left the wine program in the hands of 33-year-old Maria Garcia, who instantly becomes one of the most important wine directors in the city, and one of the most influential Latina sommeliers in the country.
Garcia is an L.A. native raised in Whittier. She was set on taking her history and political science degrees from UCLA into a career in education — in fact, she was teaching at a high school in Crenshaw when her interest in wine and cocktail culture drew her back toward..
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Latina Elected Officials Make History in States like Colorado, Illinois
Latina elected officials are making strides not just on the federal level with the first Latina elected to the U.S. Senate and sworn in on Tuesday, but on the state and local level.
Colorado in particular stands out: It’s making history in 2017 with two Latinas in top positions.
Democrat Crisanta Durán becomes the state’s first-ever Speaker of the House. Fellow Democrat Lucía Guzmán was re-elected Senate Minority Leader…
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San Gabriel Valley Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio appointed first Latina chair of human services committee
State Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, has been appointed as the first Latina chair of the Assembly’s human services committee, her office announced Tuesday
The committee oversees child welfare services, foster care, CalWORKs, developmental disabilities services, adult protective services and other human services programs.
Rubio, who was elected to her first term in November, was appointed to the position by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon…
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