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,”
Read More…
Why is There No Room for Hispanics On Corporate Boards?
For the seventh consecutive year, the percent of directors of Hispanic origin elected to Fortune 500 boards was sharply lower than the overall representation of Hispanics in the U.S. population, according to the Heidrick & Struggles 2016 board monitor.
Of 399 new directors appointed by Fortune 500 companies in 2015, only 16 were Hispanic — a measly four percent. Over the past seven years, an average of 4.7 percent of new directors have been Hispanic. That dire statistic reveals there has been no discernible upward trend. Nothing. As the Hispanic share of the U.S. population has grown during those years, the gap of under-representation in the boardroom has therefore widened…
Link to article
These Latinos Won at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards
Three Latino artists took home some Billboard 2016 awards.
Romeo Santos, known for leading the Bachata group Aventura, won Top Latin Artist at the 2016 Billboard Awards for the second year in a row.
Nicky Jam and Enrique Iglesias’ hit tune “El Perdón” won Top Latin Song, marking the seventh Billboard Award for duo’s international smash hit.
Juan Gabriel won Top Latin Album for Los Dúo — again — at the Billboards. His album Mis Número 1…40 Aniversario was also nominated in the same category…
Link to article
UCSB Open to Latino Students’ Demands
Several high-ranking university officials including Chancellor Henry T. Yang sat with students in El Centro on Saturday for six hours, going point-by-point through a list of more than 30 demands made by Latino UC Santa Barbara students.
The students are part of a campus group formed in April, VOCEROS, which means “spokespeople” in Spanish and is also used as an acronym for Voices Of the Community, En Resistencia, Organizing Solidarity…
Link to article
Northrop Grumman’s Jeannie Hilger Honored as National Latina of the Year by the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation
SAN DIEGO, May 19, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) vice president Jeannie Hilger has been named a 2016 National Latina of the Year by the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation (MAOF), one of the nation’s largest Latino human service organizations…
Link to article
It’s not only the poor who are coming to the U.S.
Mexico City- If Donald Trump thinks all Mexican migrants are criminals, it’s because he hasn’t met the likes of Pablo Meyer, a computational biologist, or Enrico Ramirez Ruiz, an astrophysicist…
Link to article
Video: The Latino Artisans Who Power L.A.’s High-End Design Industry
For every luxe handmade leather bag or delicate blown glass lamp on display at Los Angeles’ high-end design stores, there is likely a highly-skilled craftsperson (if not several) who helped produce the object. In a new installment of Artbound, KCET highlights the work and stories of the primarily Latino artisans and craftspeople who, despite being responsible for the production of much of the city’s high-end design and retail, remain mostly invisible…
Link to article
English Language Learners and Learning Disabilities
EE Logan – 2016
… their tongues cut out or killed. Mexican Americans students must also fight the persistent myth
that they value labor over education. … forced to leave school because of depressed wages of
Mexican Americans and students must help their family meet their short-term needs. …
Link to thesis
Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities President to speak at National Latino Climate Leadership Forum
Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) President Antonio R. Flores will be a speaker on the session “Building Leadership – Who, How, What’s Needed,” at the National Latino Climate Leadership Forum 2016 on June 17 in Washington, D.C. The forum has invited over 75 national Hispanic and Latino health, faith, business, education, culture, community, government and environmental leaders to discuss and explore Latino leadership on climate solutions…
Link to article
A Stanford Family: Groundskeeper Dad Cultivates His Son’s Classroom Dream
Francisco Preciado came to California from Mexico as a young child. By the early 1980s, he was raising a young family of his own in the U.S. and working as a groundskeeper at Stanford.On a recent visit to StoryCorps, his son, Frankie, recalls, “Since I was around 9 or 10, I would come sometimes with you to help you on campus.”
“I told you that one day, you were going to go here to Stanford,” answers Francisco.
Andy Goodling, with his father, Scott, on a recent visit with StoryCorps.
StoryCorpsAmid A Lost Love, A Son And Father Finally Speak The Secret Between Them
The cookbook, featuring those handprints left in beet juice.
StoryCorpsAt The Root Of It All, A Little Girl’s ‘Grandmapal’ Left Her Lifelong Love
That stuck with Frankie. He remembered those words, the hard work his father and mother put into their jobs, and set them up as examples for himself. And because of his dad, Frankie applied to Stanford…
Education Matters: ALAS Helping Hispanic Students
“The future depends on what you do today”, that’s the message leaders of the Association of Latin American Students are sending to local Hispanic students. They’re using personal experience to inspire others.
Itzayana Ortega has spent much of her life moving between the United States and Mexico City. She says that made her a very shy student.
“School has been a challenge for me,” said Ortega, now President of ALAS at Rock Valley College. “I never had stayed in a set place or country. So, I always have to move from one country to another and just getting used to all those changes.”…
Link to article
By 2020, America will see more spending growth from Hispanics than young adults
Hispanics will experience faster spending growth than young adults by 2020, according to new projections from investment bank Morgan Stanley.
“The aging of the population and the rise of Millennials will continue to impact the consumer landscape over the next 5 years,” analysts said in a note. “However, the share of the consumer wallet controlled by the Hispanic population will experience the fastest pace of growth, driven by the addition of 8.2 (million) people—or 52% of total U.S. population growth—and above-average per-capita income growth…
Link to article
Organization Advocates for More Latinos On Corporate Boards
WASHINGTON, DC — It is an absolute business imperative to have Latinos and Latinas in leadership positions in the business world, particularly on the boards of the country’s top companies, where the numbers remain dismally low. That was the focus of a recent gathering here of many of the nation’s business leaders to commemorate three decades of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR), an organization that advocates for a greater number of Hispanics in corporate America.
Just over 7 percent of Latinos hold board seats among Fortune 500 companies, and just 4 percent of all executive positions…
Link to article
Mexican Business Culture in Trade Books
CM Coria-Sánchez – Mexican Business Culture: Essays on Tradition, Ethics, …, 2016
… Although this study is quite biased by making generalizations such as “It is because Mex- icans
and Mexican Americans tend to be poor and not well educated that they are fatal- istic,” the
analysis shows that “when social class is controlled, Mexicans are not more fatalistic than …
Link to book preview
Wealth Disparity By Race: After 2008 Financial Crisis, Black And Hispanic Families Have Dwindling 401(k) Balances
Eight years out, a new study shows that the 2008 economic meltdown has had lasting impacts on the savings accounts of primarily black and Hispanic households in the U.S. In the near-decade since Lehman Brothers collapsed, signaling the start of a downward economic spiral, the balances of minority 401(k) accounts have dropped while white future retirees have seen little change in theirs.
Since 2007, the balance for 401(k) and similar types of plans held by African-American working households has dropped by at least $14,700 — from $31,100 to $16,400 in 2013 — according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. That’s compared to white working households, whose balances showed no significant changes, and they were roughly three times larger than those of blacks and Hispanics at the end of 2013…
Link to article
Latinas overcome the odds to graduate at the top of their class
Yury Galvez shows off her graduation gown and regalia in the living room of her southwest Bakersfield home.
“This is my honors cord that I got from the Phi Theta Kappa honor society,” Galvez said. “It’s for students that got a 3.5 GPA or higher. I got a GPA of 3.9.”
But it hasn’t been easy getting to this point…
Link to article
Two Sides of a Border, One Community
When I was invited to visit El Paso and Ciudad Juárez by the Aspen Institute, I was immediately intrigued. I have lived my life between the US and Mexico, yet knew relatively little about where the two nations meet – that controversial space so often described in the media and by Hollywood as a dangerous zone of conflict and hopelessness.
What I found was a pleasant surprise. The American and Mexican communities that live at the border are united by common geography, history, language, and aspirations, and have much to teach the rest of the country about how to build harmonious bicultural communities…
Link to article
The Census Bureau undercounts Latinos. It’ll take more than technology to fix that
A new report issued last week by Child Trends, a research organization, and the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund calculated that the 2010 census missed some 400,000 young Latino children — the equivalent of more than half a congressional district. The data — a comparison of census records with county birth, death and immigration records — indicate that the 2010 undercount rate for young Latinos was 7.1%, compared to 4.3% for non-Latinos. The shortfall was pronounced in specific counties in five states: California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and New York…
Link to article
Latino artists wrestle with representation, equity
San Antonio and Providence, Rhode Island, have something unexpected in common: A large Latino population that is still fighting to be represented in mainstream institutions.
Shey Rivera, artistic director of AS220, an arts center in Providence, Rhode Island, drew that comparison during her keynote speech Friday before an audience of Latino artists and arts administrators gathered at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center for the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture’s 30th Regional Arts Training Workshop…
Link to article
Award-Winning Chef Pati Jinich Touts Mexico’s Varied, Evolving Flavors
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just be yourself. It was a risk Pati Jinich, the D.C.-based Mexican- born chef, best-selling cookbook author and television host decided to take when she went off script for her popular PBS series Pati’s Mexican Table. It had been on the air for a couple of years when a new production company meant an entirely new direction…
Link to article
“I AM Latino in America” Tour stops in Dallas
DALLAS — SMU’s Cox Latino Leadership Initiative and the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau hosted the “I Am Latino in America” tour Tuesday at the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium.
The “I Am Latino in America” tour, hosted by award-winning journalist, Soledad O’Brien, kicked off in 2015 and returned in February 2016, adding Dallas to the cities it would visit.DALLAS — SMU’s Cox Latino Leadership Initiative and the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau hosted the “I Am Latino in America” tour Tuesday at the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium…
Link to article
