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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Mexican Director Ernesto Contreras Wins Audience Award at Sundance

LOS ANGELES – Mexican director Ernesto Contreras won the Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic for “Sueño en otro idioma” (I Dream in Another Language) at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film tells the story of the arrival of a linguist in a community that is home to the last two speakers of a millennia-old language who have not spoken in 50 years…
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Deported by Marriage: Americans Forced to Choose Between Love and Country

B Caldwell – Brooklyn Law Review, 2016
… Article 1 Fall 12-1-2016 Deported by Marriage: Americans Forced to … For more information, please
contact matilda.garrido@brooklaw.edu. Recommended Citation Beth Caldwell, Deported by
Marriage: Americans Forced to Choose Between Love and Country, 82 Brook. L. Rev. …
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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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Take Notice, Hollywood. Latinos Are Part Of The New Mainstream.

Watching the Golden Globes last Sunday night, I recalled the story Diego Luna shared on Twitter of an older Hispanic man who cried after watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and for the first time being able to relate to a hero (Luna) in a blockbuster movie, a character who looked and sounded like him. While the story went viral and brought tears to the eyes of millions of Americans, I couldn’t help but wonder how that same man felt watching the Golden Globes that evening, and if he was wondering where the Latino nominees were who looked and sounded like him.
Now extend that experience to his kids and grandchildren, and the more than 40 million American Latinos in the U.S. who often feel invisible, non-existent, and irrelevant in the eyes of media – despite their spending power in movies and entertainment. And needless to say, this lack of Latinos has nothing to do with lack of talent or beauty, but with the lack of Latino hires on and off camera…
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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…
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Hispanic Latino Affairs launches mentorship program

A new UF mentorship program is helping Hispanic and Latino freshmen adjust to college life.
The Latino Educational Advancement Program, started by Hispanic Latino Affairs this Spring, is a five-week program that aims to help freshmen succeed in college classes and get involved on campus, said Carissa Cullum, the coordinator for LEAP. The program began Friday when the first 20 mentees and 10 mentors introduced themselves in the Multicultural and Diversity Affairs suite.
Cullum, a 24-year-old UF Latin American studies graduate student, said the program will host workshops every Tuesday starting this week. The workshops will teach students about on-campus resources, study tips, scholarship opportunities and Hispanic and Latino inclusion in higher education, she said…
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New Campaign Launched to Increase Latino Representation and Impact Across Greater Boston: Press Release

BOSTON, MA – The Greater Boston Latino Network (GBLN) today launched a new campaign to increase Latino representation and impact in local government, which will include digital outreach, discussion forums and the release of a new report.
“Latinos are the region’s fastest growing population, contributing billions to our local economy and tax base, but we are largely absent from decision-making positions,” said GBLN Steering Committee Member Alex Oliver-Dávila. “This campaign will help increase the voice, impact and representation of Latinos across Greater Boston.”…
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Why This Poet Is Tired Of Trying To Prove He’s Both Mexican And American

n the 1997 film “Selena,” actor Edward James Olmos recited a monologue that resonated with many bicultural Latinos living in the United States. As he put it, being Mexican-American was “tough” because you have to be “more Mexican than the Mexicans, and more American than the Americans, both at the same time.”
And spoken word poet Christopher Martinez personally understands that struggle. The Mexican-American begins his poem, “An Untitled Brown Poem,” with a reference to the iconic words by the actor, who portrayed Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla’ father Abraham in the movie…
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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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8 Great Latino Books Published In 2016

As the year comes to a close, here’s one final look at some great Latino books published in 2016.
This list includes titles by U.S. Latino and Latin American authors who have been translated into English. Together, these selections shape a compelling portrait of the Americas as a vibrant territory that welcomes change but holds firm to its ethnic roots and cultural histories…
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News Programs Need To Make Latino Representation A Priority

The Latino population is growing at the second-fastest rate in the country, meaning that the United States of the future will be increasingly Hispanic. But for television news, 2016 was a year in which Latinos were underrepresented — even in conversations about Latinos — misidentified, or simply not included.
In 2015, the number of Latinos in the United States grew to 57 million, and yet, during 2016, television news continued the disturbing pattern from previous years of marginalizing Latino voices in cable news discussions. This creates a blindspot in news media and marginalizes Latinos from discussions on the American experience. Latinos were even underrepresented or altogether ignored in discussions of stories that intimately affected the Hispanic community…
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International Friendships:The Interpersonal Basis of a World Wide Community

A GARCIA – International Friendships: The Interpersonal Basis of a …, 2016
… American migrants is greater in the United States, in recent years, some publications shed further
information about Latin Americans in Canada … In 2013, approximately 11.6 million Mexican
immigrants lived in the United States, compared to 2.2 million in 1980, representing…
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Hispanic Female-Owned Businesses On The Rise In Arizona

At about 8 o’clock on a recent Tuesday night, 36 small-business owners were working their second shift of the day at the Fuerza Local business accelerator.
The six-month-long program is for Spanish-speaking business-owners and is run by the Local First Arizona Foundation. The program trains small-business owners on the ins and outs of starting and running a business, from finances and budgeting to planning for growth, according to Edgar Olivo, the director of the program.
At the end of the program, each business will receive $1,000 to invest in their growth…
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WeHo’s John Duran Elected Chair of Latino Elected Officials Group

NALEO today announced the election of Duran as chair of its board and of two new members on the 15-member board. They are Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, executive vice president of government and corporate affairs at Univision Communications Inc. and Joseph “Pep” Valdes, executive vice president and director of new business development for Parking Company of America…
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Latino voters will reshape American politics as we know it — and here’s the proof

Twenty years ago, neither Democrats nor Republicans saw Latinos as a voting bloc worth wooing. Instead, they often pursued policies that actively played into xenophobia. In 1996, Bill Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which according to a recent Human Rights Watch report, set into motion today’s mass deportation. In that same year, future Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel wrote a memo urging Clinton to “claim and achieve record deportation of criminal aliens.”
Over the last decade, the Democratic Party has changed its tune, and started trying desperately to woo Latinos. Today, leading Democrats overwhelmingly support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and are using executive orders to halt deportations, while Republicans, led by Donald Trump, continue to demonize Latinos and promise harsh countermeasures to stop undocumented immigrants from entering the country…
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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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