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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Spotlight on U.S. Hispanic Writers
The Hispanic Division and the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress have launched a collaborative series of recorded interviews, “Spotlight on U.S. Hispanic Writers.” This series is co-sponsored by Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
“Spotlight on U.S. Hispanic Writers” features emerging and established American poets and prose writers of Hispanic descent who write predominantly in English. In each segment the featured poet or writer participates in a moderated discussion with the chief of the Hispanic Division, as well as reads from his or her work.
This series continues the tradition of the Hispanic Division Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (AHLOT). The AHLOT is an ongoing collection of recorded interviews and readings of contemporary poets and prose writers from the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, the Caribbean, and U.S. Hispanics, which has been compiled by this Division since the 1940s…
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5 Latinos Forging New Ground and Breaking Barriers
We’re all familiar with prominent Latinos who have broken barriers to become national and international household names – from Rita Moreno and Gloria Estefan to JLo and Pitbull. Or think Sonia Sotomayor or Pulitzer prize-winner Junot Díaz.
Here’s a small list of Latinos who are breaking barriers in their professions and leaving their mark as they shake things up. They range from ranging from multi-millionaire techies to VJs and Vine stars. They’re in different stages of their trajectories, and they’re all fascinating…
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Stanford Latino Entrepreneur Leaders Program Recruits Second Cohort For Online Education and Empowerment
PALO ALTO, Calif., April 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/– The Latino Business Action Network (LBAN) has opened applications for the second cohort of its Stanford Latino Entrepreneur Leaders Program (SLELP). SLELP is an investment in helping Latino entrepreneurs to scale — i.e., to grow — their businesses through an immersive six-week program that provides owners the valuable education, enhanced networks, personal mentorship and better understanding of capital resources necessary to grow their businesses, create jobs, and build a stronger economy.
“Latinos are quickly becoming the new face of entrepreneurship in the USA,” said Remy Arteaga, the Executive Director of LBAN. “Several studies, including one by the Kauffman Foundation, support the fact that Latinos are creating more new businesses than any other group in America. We want to empower these entrepreneurs to grow large businesses.”…
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For Board of Education member Herman G. Hernandez, it’s all about timing
CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | April 10, 2016, 3:03PM
Herman G. Hernandez speaks often to youngsters and teens, many of them Latino. He tells a bit about the oscillating arc of his own life and encourages the students to aim high, get involved, study hard and fail, fail, fail.
The sturdy, gregarious Guerneville native and nascent community leader might well recount how his first attempt at college crashed and burned. His parents, Herman J. and Guillermina Hernandez, were determined that, unlike themselves, both their son and their daughter, Daniela, would reap the benefits of advanced education…
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Millennials Make Up Almost Half of Latino Eligible Voters in 2016
Hispanic millennials will account for nearly half (44%) of the record 27.3 million Hispanic eligible voters projected for 2016—a share greater than any other racial or ethnic group of voters, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data…
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First Latino Newbery Medal Award winner set to visit Lee County Library
TUPELO – As the first Latino to win the prestigious Newbery Medal, Matt de la Peña writes stories that take place on the “other side of the tracks” by exploring identity and living as a young biracial boy.
De la Peña, author of the 2016 Newbery Medal award winner “The Last Stop on Market Street,” will visit the Lee County Library on April 11 to open up a conversation at the Helen Foster Lecture Series…
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Latino Internet Sensations Shine at Hispanicize
MIAMI, Florida — At the young age of 19, Venezuelan-born Internet sensation Lele Pons has captured a huge audience. Her funny skits appear on Vine where she has over 10 million followers and her videos generate 7.7 billion loops. The bicultural, bilingual Latina was the first recipient of the Latinovator awards at Hispanicize 2016, which kicked off its 7th annual event on Monday in Miami.
The 5-day event is unique because it brings together Latino trendsetters from a vast amount of fields including journalism, marketing, tech entrepreneurship, music, and film…
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Higher Education News from Northern Illinois: NIU to host ILACHE annual conference
The event is the first to take place outside Chicago – and, of course, it will mark the first time that NIU has hosted the conference.
Participants will discuss the reality of Latinos in higher education and reflect on the challenges that Latinos have overcome to open the path to new opportunities for future generations…
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The Elusive Nature of the Hispanic Category
By 2060, 115 percent more Americans will be of Hispanic origin than in 2015. Consequently, pundits identify “the Hispanic vote” as the next frontier for ensuring political success. Political elites have thus scrambled to investigate, quantify, and draw conclusions about this group in any way possible. They have asked Hispanic respondents about their political beliefs on a range of issues — principally, immigration — in an effort to define the policy matters that are most salient to Latinxs in the United States. This analysis propagates throughout campaign teams, interest groups, academia, and journalism, heavily influencing judgments about the allegiances of the Hispanic community. But, a central and largely unacknowledged point about mainstream political discourses regarding Hispanics are the inherent flaws in defining the Hispanic category itself. Because of distinct colonial histories between Latin America and the United States and between different nations within Latin America, the American mainstream cannot and should not…
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Reading Tejano History
CE Orozco – American Book Review, 2016
… Texas Mexican Americans and Postwar Civil Rights Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez University of
Texas Press www.utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books Pages; Print, $24.95. … The story about
the hiring of Mexican Americans in civil service jobs was unknown. …
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Why Accreditation Reform May Benefit Hispanic and Black Students Most
When it comes to higher education reform, doing a better job of accrediting and evaluating individual colleges for quality and student outcomes is at the top of the list for many policymakers. In just the past year, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on reforming the accreditation process, the Obama administration went to court to force for-profit schools to better prepare their students for “gainful employment” and also lost a battle to create a new College Ratings system to track data on post-degree earnings and job placement…
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Parents Just Don’t Understand: Is It Their Fault?
U Diaz
… Mexican-Americans need in order to maximize potential for academic success? Secondary
Questions: … As Bauman (2008) stated, “Among Mexican Americans, whose cultural values were
collective (as compared to individualistic), relationships with others were important. …
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RAZA RISING: Chicanos in North Texas
Mexican Americans–Texas–Social
conditions. | Mexican Americans–Texas–Fort Worth–Social conditions. …
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Raised in Two Cultures, But Uncomfortable in Both
EL PASO, Texas — “Can I have the rosa-pink sticker instead?” I would ask Miss Pat, my teacher at St. Mark’s when I was three years old. “I don’t like the amarillo-yellow one,” I would say.
Growing up as a three year old, I distinctively remember my obsession with “rosa-pink.” I wanted everything —from my Barbie’s dress to the color of my room— to be “rosa-pink.” My aunts and uncles knew me as “rosa-pink” because everything I owned was “rosa-pink.”
Strangely enough, I never really thought of the term “rosa-pink” to be an odd way to refer to the color pink. It was just the way my mother taught me how to say pink in both Spanish and English…
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Why Accreditation Reform May Benefit Hispanic and Black Students Most
When it comes to higher education reform, doing a better job of accrediting and evaluating individual colleges for quality and student outcomes is at the top of the list for many policymakers. In just the past year, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on reforming the accreditation process, the Obama administration went to court to force for-profit schools to better prepare their students for “gainful employment” and also lost a battle to create a new College Ratings system to track data on post-degree earnings and job placement.
While policymakers hope these reforms will benefit college students overall, the push to emphasize quality may have a more profound impact on minority groups, particularly blacks and Hispanics…
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Latino/Latina students learn about higher education at Cuesta College
Cuesta College worked Friday to inspire the Latino population to break barriers that may be keeping them from higher education.
Cuesta reached out to local Latino and Latina high school students to let them know college is an option and explain the opportunities available.
“We give them motivational speakers, panelists, successful Latinos and Latinas so they can say ‘Oh my goodness, I can do what they did, I am exactly like them!'” explained Estella Vazquez, ESL Specialist Outreach/Recruiter at Cuesta College…
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Community Voices: Latinas working to empower each other
When it comes to Latinas, it seems that all eyes are not only placed on women such as Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez or Sofia Vergara. Throughout the entire country, the number of Hispanic women is growing and so are organizations and companies that focus on the growth of Latinas…
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Food in the Gilded Age: What ordinary Americans ate
Mexican American Diets,Las Cruces, Spring 1896 … Fall through Early Spring, 1901–1903 Typical Winter–Spring Diet,
Tuskegee, 1895–1896 Typical Winter Diet, Poor African Americans, Philadelphia and …
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The Role of Social Class, Ethnocultural Adaptation, and Masculinity Ideology on Mexican American College Men’s Well-Being
L Ojeda, B Piña-Watson, G Gonzalez – 2016
… More specifically, Latinas are surpassing Latino men, and Mexican Americans overall
are less likely to earn a degree com- pared with other Latino ethnic groups (eg, Puerto
Ricans, Cu- bans; US Census Bureau, 2011). These …
Link to report
THE MEXICAN AMERICAN VIETNAM WAR SERVICEMAN : THE MISSING AMERICAN
TM Jimenez – 2015
… By providing information in the area of American identity, race relations, the draft and volunteerism
as well as the sacrifice of Mexican American lives at the time of the Vietnam War, this study hopes
to initiate the inclusion of Mexican Americans in the war’s general history. …
Link to thesis
