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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LinkedIn makes slight progress on diversity
SAN FRANCISCO — Change is coming very slowly to LinkedIn which over the past year only slightly increased the number of women and made no headway in increasing the number of underrepresented minorities at the professional networking company.
The Mountain View, Calif., company is still dominated by men, according to work force demographics released Tuesday. Nearly six out of 10 employees at LinkedIn — or 58% — are men, but that is an improvement from 61% last year.
Women also made some progress in the company leadership, holding 30% of those positions, a 5% increase from 2014.
In technical roles, women saw a 1% increase. In non-tech roles, LinkedIn had gender parity with 50% of those positions held by women.
But LinkedIn did not see any improvement in the small percentage of underrepresented minorities. In the U.S., 2% of LinkedIn employees are African American and 4% are Hispanic…
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Juan Felipe Herrera, From Farm Fields to Poet Laureate
The Library of Congress is to announce on Wednesday that Juan Felipe Herrera, a son of migrant farmworkers whose writing fuses wide-ranging experimentalism with reflections on Mexican-American identity, will be the next poet laureate.
The appointment is the nation’s highest honor in poetry and also something of a direct promotion for Mr. Herrera, who was poet laureate of California from 2012 to 2014…
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Supreme Court could reshape voting districts, with big impact on Hispanics
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take up a Texas case that challenges the way nearly every U.S. voting district – from school boards to Congress – is drawn. The case, in essence, asks the court to specify what the word “person” means in its “one person, one vote” rule. The outcome of the case could have major impacts on Hispanic voting strength and representation from coast to coast…
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NCLR Educational Programs to Help Young Latinos and Millenials Swarm the Financial Services Sector
Hispanic/Latino banks, analysts, investors and tellers are noticeably absent from the financial sector. However, programs designed by one of the nation’s largest advocates for la raza should help to swarm the financial services sector with capable young Latinos…
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Dallas Latino leaders savor legislative win on in-state tuition for immigrants
Leaders from the new Latino Center for Leadership Development claimed victory Tuesday in preserving in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants.
Now, they want to boost the use of in-state tuition at colleges and universities among immigrant students.
Miguel Solis, the center’s executive director, said unauthorized immigrants should never give up on an education, despite political gridlock in Washington and court obstacles on liberalizing immigration policies…
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Prominent Latino Commencement Speakers Offer Wisdom to College Grads
During the last few weeks thousands of college graduates around the country heard inspirational commencement speeches as they prepared to embark on their new lives.
We rounded some words of wisdom from prominent Latinos in government, civil rights and the arts who shared their own life stories and journeys and offered students guidance and inspiration for their post-college years…
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ENHANCING SELF – EFFICACY IN MEXICAN – AMERICAN FAMILIES
C Centeno – 2015
Page 1. ENHANCING SELF-EFFICACY IN MEXICAN-AMERICAN FAMILIES A Project Presented
to the Faculty of California State University, Stanislaus … CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
ENHANCING SELF-EFFICACY IN MEXICAN-AMERICAN FAMILIES by Consuelo Centeno …
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Eva Longoria Reveals How She Fought Studio for Role as Inner-City Latina
Mexican-American actress Eva Longoria is one of the most visible Latinas in entertainment, but filmmakers on her latest project needed convincing she could play an inner-city Latina.
Speaking Sunday at the Produced By Conference, Longoria fielded an audience question about juggling her identity as both a Mexican and American female. She touched on her casting in Universal’s upcoming “Low Riders,” a family drama set in the world of hydraulic cars that starts production on Tuesday…
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Students Organize First “Harvard Latino Graduation”
A desire to create a space where Latinos graduating from Harvard University can celebrate their accomplishments with their families in a more meaningful and personal way led a group of students to organize the first-ever Harvard Latin@ Graduation ceremony.
“Many of us are first-generation college graduates and come from middle to lower-income backgrounds. So to be able to graduate from a prestigious institution like Harvard, it’s just really a dream come true,” said Erika Ontiveros Carlsen, a 27-year-old who’s graduating with a Master’s of Divinity degree from Harvard. She led efforts to plan the Harvard Latin@ Graduation – the “@” symbol is more gender neutral…
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Author and poet Gary Soto visits Murry Fly
Soto is the author of children’s favorites like “Too Many Tamales,” “Chato’s Kitchen” and “Lucky Luis.”
Three groups of youngsters, one after the other, gathered in the school’s library for a chance to ask Soto questions, hear his stories, share their poetry and draw his portrait. Two from each group were chosen to draw a portrait of Soto, who sported a striped button-down shirt and sweater, green pants and brown wingtips, using multi-colored magic markers…
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Interview: I want visually strong, almost silent movie: Mexican director Michel Franco
By Grandesso Federico
CANNES, France, May 24 (Xinhua) — “I wanted the film to be almost silent if possible, and to be visually strong, because I think it’s hard to discuss about these subjects and put it into words,” Mexican director Michel Franco told Xinhua during an interview presenting his movie Chronic in competition at the ongoing 68th Cannes Film Festival.
Talking about the job on set the Mexican director explained: “The shooting wasn’t complicated and, the fact that I produced and directed, allowed me to take decision faster without having to argue. What was creatively complicated was that I didn’t realize that I wrote a script with four stories and unify them because I didn’t want to give the feeling that they were separate stories”…
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Parental Feeding Practices and Child Weight status in Mexican American Families: a longitudinal analysis s
JM Tschann, SM Martinez, C Penilla, SE Gregorich… – International Journal of …, 2015
… Procedure We recruited families to participate in a 24-month longitudinal cohort study to
understand parental influences on obesity in Mexican American children. … Occupational status
could range from unskilled (=1) to major professional (=9) [48]. …
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59 percent of college-educated Latinos have trouble meeting monthly expenses, report says
Published: 19 May 2015 07:11 PM
Updated: 19 May 2015 07:11 PM
A majority of Latinos say they have trouble covering monthly expenses, and almost 40 percent say they would have trouble finding $2,000 in an emergency, a new study said.
Despite attaining higher education levels in recent decades, many Latinos find themselves in a “fragile financial state,” according to the study released Monday by New York investment giant TIAA-CREF…
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Spirituality and Resilience Among Mexican American IPV Survivors
A Iván, T Barnett-Queen, M Messick, M Gurrola – Journal of interpersonal violence, 2015
… Spirituality and Resilience Among Mexican American IPV Survivors. … This study examined the
correlation between spirituality, resilience, and intimate partner violence using a cross-sectional
survey of 54 Mexican American women living along the US–Mexico border. …
Link to abstract
Beyond immigrant status: Book-sharing in low-income Mexican-American families
M Salinas, DR Pérez-Granados, HM Feldman… – Journal of Early Childhood …, 2015
… Rank) Score: 0.726 | 47/222 Health (Social Science) | 125/273 Developmental and
Educational Psychology | 204/1035 Education (Scopus®). Beyond immigrant status:
Book-sharing in low-income Mexican-American families. …
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La Raza group harnesses local community interest
By Christian Urrutia, Photo Editor
May 17, 2015
Filed under Campus Beat, News
One of the multiple clubs on campus utilizing cultural advocacy, La Raza Student Union serves as the active arm of the La Raza studies department and centralizes a lot of its efforts based off the content that is covered in the program.
La Raza Student Union member Maria Lara said the club serves as a place where students can come and share opinions about what is going on in the local community and abroad, for example the economic and political turmoil taking place in Mexico…
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Nevada Gov. Sandoval signs bill allowing Dreamers to get teaching licenses
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) – Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a bill Wednesday that would make it easier for immigrants with temporary legal status to get a Nevada teaching license, saying it would help meet the needs of a “new Nevada.”
Among the people who flanked the Republican governor as he signed AB27 was Uriel Garcia, a 22-year-old Nevada State College student and recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program who was previously denied a license. He said he plans to re-apply as soon as possible to get started on his student teaching and move toward his goal of teaching 2nd grade English language learners…
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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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SF State awarded $17 million by NIH to enhance workforce diversity in biomedical research
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22, 2014 — San Francisco State University has been awarded $17.04 million to address issues of workforce diversity in biomedical research, the National Institutes of Health announced today.
The effort is called SF BUILD, which stands for Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity. Professors in biology, chemistry/biochemistry, psychology, geography & environment, and other fields at SF State working on the project are seeking to upend the presuppositions about members of minority communities — that they may not have the aptitude or the background to excel in the sciences. “We are funded to prime institutional transformation,” said Professor of Biology Leticia Márquez-Magaña, the principal investigator for SF BUILD. “Let’s fix the institution, instead of fixing the students and not recognizing their assets.”…
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Mayor Nelda Martinez, Woman of Distinction
Corpus Christi Mayor Nelda Martinez was honored by the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce at the 4th annual Women of Distinction Awards in Austin.
Mayor Martinez was one of 12 Latinas from across the state that was recognized for their professional accomplishments, community contributions, and leadership. “I am humbled and honored to receive this recognition from such a prestigious state organization as The Texas Association of Mexican American…
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