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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Arm Your Mind With 2017’s Best Latino/Latin American History Books

Every year, university presses across the United States publish dozens of books documenting the Chicano-Latino experience through history, culture, music, immigration, biography, race, and so much more. Unfortunately, most of them – while tackling important and fascinating subjects – get next-to-no mainstream attention because they’re written for an academic audience, which means high prices, a bunch of egghead gobbledygook, and stilted writing that makes reading them a chore few people bother to undertake…
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Starting From the Bottom: Why Mexicans are the Most Successful Immigrants in America

“…according to a study by University of California, Irvine, Sociology Professor Jennifer Lee and UCLA Sociology Professor Min Zhou, contrary to stereotypes, Mexican-Americans are the most successful second-generation group in the country. The reason is simple: The study considered not just where people finished, but from where they started…”
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Identity and Race: Millions of Latinos No Longer Think Of Themselves As Latinos, Study Finds

There are some 43 million people in the United States with Hispanic ancestry. Almost 90 percent of them identify as Latino or Hispanic, making it the nation’s second-largest racial or ethnic group.
But according to an analysis of two national surveys by the Pew Research Center, around 11 percent of all people with Hispanic ancestry—5 million people—don’t identify as either…
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Reality Mini-Series Chronicling the Lives of Blended Mexican-American Millionaire Family Debuts on YouTube

NEW YORK, Dec. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Meet Los Henrys, a blended Mexican-American family from San Antonio, Texas. Their mini-series reality show, “Hangin with Los Henrys” debuted on YouTube on December 13, 2017. The show centers around Thomas “Tom” and Azteca Henry and their two children, Thomas Jr. and model/actress Maya Henry. Also featured is “Abuelita,” Teresa Crawford, who lives with the family in their San Antonio mansion…
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Mexico, Music And Family Take Center Stage In ‘Coco’

Pixar’s newest animated movie, Coco, is meant to be a love letter to Mexico. The movie has a Latino cast. It’s full of Mexican music, culture and folklore — including some of the traditions around the Day of the Dead. And it premiered in Mexico, where it’s gone on to become the No. 1 film of all time. Now, audiences in the U.S. can see it…
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7 Latino Playwrights Bringing Our Stories to the Stage

In the last three years, Lin-Manuel Miranda has taken the theater world by storm with his multi-Tony Award-winning musical about Alexander Hamilton and the founding fathers. As Broadway’s hottest ticket – you literally could not buy tickets for months after it made its debut – Hamilton became as inescapable as the Kardashians, permeating pop culture in ways other shows could only dream of. The musical helped him become a household name and propelled his Hollywood career forward. (Lin-Miranda wrote the music for Disney’s Moana, and landed a role in the upcoming Mary Poppins movie.) While Miranda deserves all the success that has come his way, he’s hardly the only Latino making strides in the theater world.Behind the scenes, there are many more Latino playwrights, composers, and lyricists making the theater world richer and giving our stories a platform. They may not be as big as Lin-Manuel Miranda (yet), but you’ll want to keep an eye on them…

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El Pasoans complete grueling Stanford program

A new entrepreneurial program at Stanford University focused on developing Latino businesses has graduated 12 business owners from El Paso since it was launched two years ago.And on Saturday, Dec. 2, four Latino El Pasoans joined a growing list of business owners who have graduated from the Latino Business Action Network, which is part of the Stanford Graduate School of Business in CaliforniaThere are now 12 El Paso CEOs who have graduated from the program and are part of a network of more than 360 Latino executives around the country…

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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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Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago

Even after decades of affirmative action, black and Hispanic students are more underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago, according to a New York Times analysis.
The share of black freshmen at elite schools is virtually unchanged since 1980. Black students are just 6 percent of freshmen but 15 percent of college-age Americans, as the chart below shows…
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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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Army’s First Hispanic Four-Star General Dies

The man who was raised by a cowhand on King Ranch and eventually became the United States Army’s first Hispanic four-star general has died.
Richard Edward Cavazos, 88, died Sunday. He was living in the Army Residence Community in San Antonio. He is survived by his wife, Caroline, said Bill Fee, who served under Cavazos during the Vietnam War in 1967…
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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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Challenges Remain for Latino College Presidents October 29, 2017

by Jamal Watson
SAN DIEGO—Dr. Beatriz T. Espinoza had no idea of the challenges that awaited her shortly after she took over as president of Coastal Bend College, a community college located in a rural part of South Texas.
The college was financially strapped and was on the brink of losing its accreditation. There was also a “disconnect” between the college and the majority of Hispanics who reside in the town of 12,000 where the college is situated…
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3 reasons for the declining number of Latino physicians

The U.S. Hispanic population has seen significant growth (link is external) in past 50 years, so how is it that fewer Latinos are becoming physicians?
Earlier this year, Latino Leaders Magazine reported on this decline (link is external): a 2015 study, conducted by the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (link is external) at UCLA, indicates that the number of Latino physicians dropped 22 percent over a 30-year period.
1980: 135 Latino physicians per 100,000 Latinos
2010: 105 Latino physicians per 100,000 Latinos…
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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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Autentico: The Definitive Guide to Latino Career Success

R Rodriguez, AT Tapia – 2017
… When Judith Turnock and I wrote Cracking the Corporate Code we were aware that although
the book was about the success of the thirty-two African-Americans we cited, interest in the book
would go far beyond that group. … FRIDA KAHLO, Mexican painter W hy of whom this …
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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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