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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In Her L.A. Neighborhood, Playwright Josefina Lopez Creates a ‘Casa’ for the Performing Arts
LOS ANGELES — Josefina Lopez has an amazing story: she grew up in a modest neighborhood in the heart of the city’s east side and went on to co-write a hit movie that made America Ferrera a star. Since then, she has harnessed her success to give Latino youth a space to explore – and succeed – in the performing arts.
Recently at her Casa 0101 Theater, a group of actors were rehearsing for a special 30th anniversary production of her acclaimed play, Simply Maria, or the American Dream…
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Rise In Latino, Black High School Grad Rates Boosts National Numbers
National graduation rates reached a record high of 81.4 percent in 2013, in part due to the increase of graduation rates among minority and low-income students.
Over the last decade, 1.8 million additional students have graduated from high school, according to a report released by America’s Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises, Everyone Graduates Center, and the Alliance for Excellent Education.
GradNation, a campaign by America’s Promise Alliance, was launched in 2010 to focus individuals, organizations and communities on decreasing dropout rates. They adopted a goal of raising the national average on-time high school graduation rate to 90 percent by 2020…
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Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Parts Unknown’ Takes a Deep Look at Los Angeles’ Mexican Food Scene
Anthony Bourdain took his love of food, culture, and conversation back to Los Angeles for season nine of CNN’s Parts Unknown. Over the course of several shows, Bourdain has done more than a few episodes in the City of Angels, but this time he focuses his lens on Latinos.
“What if we look at LA from the point of view of the largely unphotographed – the 47 percent of Angelenos who don’t show up so much on idiot sitcoms and superhero films?” Bourdain asked in voiceover. The former chef/current TV host gorged on Tacos Indiana 2 Taco Stand‘s pastor and lengua offerings, mole at Gish Bac Restaurant, camarones borrachos at Mariscos Chente, and Cielito Lindo‘s famous taquitos…
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Machismo is a factor in the retention of Latino college men
Texas State University was recognized as a Hispanic Serving Institution March 24, 2011. One of the things that this HSI or any others across the nation fail to research is the hidden cultural factors that affect Latino enrollment and graduation—namely, machismo.
Machismo, meaning strong or aggressive masculine pride, has been a part of the Latin culture since the beginning. From the Aztecs to the Tejanos to the contemporary Latino, the stigma remains men provide for their families. Even for Latinos who leave the nest, the expectation to support the family remains—especially for the eldest male…
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Hispanics see potential for growth in construction industry
Santiago Perez has built a career in construction. His success story, however, wasn’t written overnight.
The owner of Coastline Construction and Renovation in Tulsa left his native Uruguay to come to the United States when he was 18.
“When I got here, I saw the potential to accomplish the American dream,” said Perez, 33. “It wasn’t just a movie thing.”
Perez hung drywall, framed and served as a project manager, and in 2015 he started Coastline, which specializes in out-of-state hotel renovation. His company, which employs about a dozen people full time, currently is in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, razing and converting a 200-room hotel into time shares…
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14 Latino Art Shows Not to Miss in 2017
2017 is proving to be a banner year for major Latino art shows, with many of America’s top museums hosting important and innovative exhibitions. Spanning a broad spectrum of styles, mediums, eras and regions — from 18th century Mexican painting to 21st century Chilean sculpture — these 14 shows taking place throughout the year highlight the constant evolution and incredibly rich diversity of Latino art…
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RANKING: Top 10 Video Platforms Preferred by US Hispanics
Which video platforms do US Hispanic users prefer? What types of content do they provide? Does gender play a role in audiovisual content preference? Read on for the answers to these questions, drawn from comScore’s February 2016 ranking…
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Analyst: Latino grocery stores likely to see more deals
Scott Moses, managing director and head of food retail and restaurants investment banking for Peter J. Solomon Co., said he sees a rise in Latino-focused grocers in the future, according to the Shelby Report.
Private equity firm KKR recently invested in Cardenas Markets (currently operating 30 stores) and Mi Pueblo (operating 19 stores).
Latino Americans comprise approximately 17% of the U.S. population in 2017….
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How this grassroots environmental justice hero is leading his hometown resistance
The activist mark! Lopez didn’t attend his first march for environmental justice on foot. He was pushed in a stroller. A winner of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots “heroes”, Lopez has agitated alongside his family since childhood.In the late 1980s, when he was growing up in East Los Angeles, Lopez’s grandparents and others took down a proposed state prison, a toxic waste incinerator, and a pipeline planned to run near a school. The 32-year-old Lopez stepped up to help lead the battle against the Exide battery smelter — a factory just outside East L.A.’s borders that for decades spewed noxious chemicals, like lead and arsenic, into neighboring communities that are mostly inhabited by people of color. Activists in the area fought the company for years — citing public health concerns related to lead contamination, such as impaired neurological development in children and increased violence in exposed communities — and the plant officially closed in 2015. Cleanup, however, for which the state set aside $176.6 million, has barely gotten underway and has already hit roadblocks…
A Latino Is Called To Help The Tech-Sun Rise In Arizona
He did it in Boulder, Colorado. He did it in Silicon Valley, California. Now he’s been tapped — called — to help accelerate the startup scene in Tucson, Arizona.
Remy Arteaga was the subject of several stories I wrote here about the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative — an innovative branch of one the the nation’s most ambitious NGO’s devoted to supporting Latino business owners — after serving as director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado-Boulder. In February this year, he was named director of the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Arizona in Tucson. When I first learned about it — over the Winter holiday break — I saw there were at least three things about Remy’s new gig that are noteworthy…
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A Chicana Warrior
Alicia Escalante was an unlikely hero. A poor single mother of five, she became one of the leading activists of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s. She founded the East Los Angeles Welfare Rights Organization (ELAWRO) in 1967 and participated in some of the most important Civil Rights struggles of the decade…
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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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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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Managing Diversity in Organizations: A Global Perspective
M Triana – 2017 – books.google.com
This book equips students with a thorough understanding of the advantages and challenges
presented by workplace diversity, suggesting techniques to manage diversity effectively and
maximize its benefits. Readers will learn to work with diverse groups to create a productive..
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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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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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Latino Self Identity
JME de Queirós – Latin America: The Allure and Power of an …, 2017 – books.google.com
Nowadays, whether one lives in Chicago or San Pedro de Macorís, the Dominican Republic,
one has to be careful. The doorbell may ring at any moment, and one could carelessly open
it to find a social scientist at the door asking how one identifies—Black? White? Mestizo?…
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Photographer Captures The Breathtaking Beauty Of Mexico’s Indigenous Communities
“Oaxaca was something that had to happen, it was something that I didn’t look for. It simply occurred.”
That’s how photographer Diego Huerta describes his work in the southern Mexican state, where he has diligently traveled to for the past four years to document its indigenous communities with breathtaking portraits.
The 30-year-old Mexican photographer began working on this project, titled “Inside Oaxaca,” after traveling to Oaxaca and inadvertently witnessing the Guelaguetza, its biggest annual celebration and parade that features traditional dances and customs from the States’ eight regions…
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Mestizos Come Home: Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity
RC Davis-Undiano – 2017 – books.google.com
Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano has described US and Latin American culture as
continually hobbled by amnesia—unable, or unwilling, to remember the influence of
mestizos and indigenous populations. In Mestizos Come Home! author Robert Con Davis…
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America Ferrera talks about her Latino-American identity crisis growing up, says she felt ‘very alone’
But now that’s she’s a full-fledged Hollywood star, Ferrera is finally able to do something about it. In 2015, she launched her own production company, Take Fountain Productions, which is currently developing “Gente-fied,” a show about seven Latin characters living in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights.
“As an actor, what I love about the process is talking to the directors and writers and discovering it,” she said. “It felt natural to parlay that into producing stories I really thought should be told. I feel driven, as a woman of color who has access, to use that to create opportunity for certain stories that other people may not be paying attention to. There isn’t a majority of people out there searching to tell the kinds of stories I’d love to see”…
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