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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6 Ways ‘Jane the Virgin’ Is Destroying Latino Stereotypes
“This award is so much more than myself,” said Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez upon accepting her Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy series in January. “It represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.”
This sentiment is one with which the hit CW show’s devoted fan base wholeheartedly agrees. Despite the telenovela-inspired comedy’s unabashedly over-the-top premise, Rodriguez’s multidimensional Latina protagonist is part of a stellar cast that offers an arguably unprecedented portrayal of Latinos on network television. Jane the Virgin is a necessary breath of fresh air in a media landscape that has historically been unfriendly to women — especially women of color…
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Finalists revealed: VL Innovators Challenge
Latinos use digital media more than any other ethnic group. But few Latinos are translating their tech savvy into tech work. In fact, only 7% of technology workers are Hispanic. Voto Latino believes Latinos can use their tech savviness to open doors to amazing careers in Science, Engineering, Technology and Math (STEM).
The VL Innovators Challenge was created to get millennials, especially Latino millennials, thinking about technology both as an innovative change agent and as a potential career. Applicants were encouraged to “use a tech tool to address a need in the Latino community.”
The Challenge will award $500,000 in grants to the best proposed projects. Winners will also spend two days on the Google campus in California where they will be paired with members of Google’s Marketing, Creative Labs, and Android teams, among others. Besides the chance…
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Smithsonian embraces Fresno musician’s songs of Chicano movement
It’s ironic: Agustín Lira should have been born an American.
His mother, a U.S. citizen, was illegally deported in the 1930s. Lira was born in Mexico and came to California as an undocumented migrant farmworker before becoming an activist.
The Fresno man’s experiences fuel his work, using art to talk about inequality. Despite the struggles — picking crops from age 7, growing up in poverty, being homeless for a while — he is on the brink of releasing an album of his songs from the Chicano movement of the 1960s for that most quintessential of American institutions, the Smithsonian…
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Domingo Martinez’s Searing Memoir: ‘My Heart Is A Drunken Compass’
Author Domingo Martinez distinctly remembers the morning in October 2012 when his phone began ringing. He was lying in bed at his apartment in Seattle and his first thought was, “Wow, it’s so early, these bill collectors are calling earlier and earlier.”
It wasn’t a bill collector. It was his literary agent calling to tell him that his memoir, “The Boy Kings of Texas,” was a finalist for the National Book Award in the nonfiction category. Although Martinez did not win the award, his life was about to change. Soon he was being profiled in the New York Times and on NPR, with headlines like “From Boy King of Texas to Literary Superstar…
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Mexican American Drama
D Goodrich – Ethnic American Literature: An Encyclopedia for …, 2015 – books.google.com
The roots of Mexican American drama extend far beyond the physical borders and historical
formation of the United States. Theatrical performances by Mexican Americans have
occurred for as long as formerly Mexican territories have been part of the United States. …
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“Where they (live, work and) spray”: Pesticide exposure, childhood asthma and environmental justice among Mexican-American farmworkers
NA Schwartz, CA von Glascoe, V Torres, L Ramos… – Health & Place, 2015
… Mexican American children aged 1–17 in the San Joaquin Valley exhibit a higher prevalence
rate of asthma compared with the … Research assistants were professional children of Mexican
farmworker families who were raised in the San Joaquin Valley and thoroughly familiar …
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Seeing Mothers-in-Law Through the Lens of the Mothering Ideology An Interview Analysis of Taiwanese, Taiwanese American, and Mexican American Daughters-in-Law
KY Shih, K Pyke – Journal of Family Issues, 2015
… subsamples. Only 4 of the 36 respondents are not mothers, including 1 Taiwanese,
1 Taiwanese American, and 2 Mexican American respondents. Most respondents are
employed full-time in a professional or middle-class occupation. …
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UCSB Scholar to Receive National Honors
Aída Hurtado, a professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara, has been named the 2015 Scholar of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). The organization’s highest honor, it recognizes Hurtado’s significant contributions to the field in a career spanning more than three decades. She will be honored at the NACCS annual conference in San Francisco in April. – See more at: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014931/national-association-chicana-and-chicano-studies…
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BBC Pop Up: What does it mean to be Mexican-American?
6 February 2015 Last updated at 01:54 GMT
More than 30 million Americans trace their roots back to Mexico – it’s the fastest growing demographic in the US.
While the focus of the political debate is on the recent arrivals – especially those who entered illegally – many immigrants have been in the country for generations. Of course, some states in the south west, including Arizona, were originally part of Mexico before they joined the Union.
It is therefore hard to define the Mexican-American experience. People’s attitudes, beliefs and even their choice of cuisine is influenced by when they arrived in the US and how connected they stay to their Mexican traditions…
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Explaining the Mexican-American Health Paradox Using Selectivity Effects
EA Téllez, JN Martínez, ER González – 2015
… Banco de México Working Papers N° 2015-02 Explaining the Mexican-American Health Paradox
Using Selectivity Effects January 2015 … Erick Rangel González Banco de México Page 2. Explaining
the Mexican-American Health Paradox Using Selectivity Effects …
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Mexican American Children and Families: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
MOB Caughy, L Franzini – Mexican American Children and Families: …, 2014
… Policy makers and public health professionals must recognize the heterogeneity within and among …
Selected measures of health status for Mexican-American, mainland Puerto Rican, and Cuban …
Child Maltreatment: Journal of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of …
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The Mexican Museum Hires Cayetana S. Gómez as President and Chief Executive Office
Gómez to oversee operations, capital campaign, cultural relations, and collections
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — January 27, 2015 — The Mexican Museum (Museum), the premier West Coast museum of Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, and Latino art, culture and heritage, announces that Cayetana S. Gómez has been hired as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Gómez will be responsible for overseeing business operations for the Museum’s current location at Fort Mason Center. She will also be implementing the business and strategic plans for the cultural component of the 706 Mission Street Residential and Mexican Museum project, which will serve as the Museum’s future home in the heart of the Yerba Buena Gardens Art District.
“We are extremely pleased to have Cayetana join our team,” said Andrew M. Kluger, Chairman of The Mexican Museum Board of Trustees. “Along with her unparalleled communication skills and a vast network of professional relationships throughout the United States and Mexico, she has also held significant leadership positions for some of Mexico’s…
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Tech Program Helps Put Latinos On A Path To Silicon Valley
About an hour south of Silicon Valley in a classroom at Hartnell Community College, Daniel Diaz and Brian De Anda stand at a whiteboard mapping out ideas on how to reduce the size of a mobile app their team is building.
This isn’t a class, and the app they’re building — an informational guide for a drug rehab center — isn’t even a school project. But this is what it takes to have a chance at an elite summer internship, says Daniel Diaz.
“What you are taught at school is not enough,” Diaz says, “especially in today’s competitive society. I think you need to do some more outside learning.”The inaugural class of the Computer Science and Information Technology program, scheduled to graduate in 2016.All Tech ConsideredOut Of The Fields And Into Computer Science Classes
So these students are working on other apps, doing hackathons and learning additional programming languages outside of class. They’re doing it because there’s a thought — perhaps a reality — that hangs over…
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Cecilia Abbott becomes state’s first Hispanic first lady
AUSTIN, Texas
The swearing in of new Texas Gov. Greg Abbott makes his wife the state’s first Hispanic first lady.
Cecilia Abbott is the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and was raised in San Antonio.
Delivering his inaugural address on the steps of the state Capitol on Tuesday, the new governor said his wife embodies Texas.
He said the state “has been the blending of cultures from across the globe even before we became our own nation.”…
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How Mexicans Became Americans
SOUTH GATE, Calif. — A FEW weeks ago, the City Council in this suburb southeast of Los Angeles appointed a Mexican immigrant to its advisory council. Jesus Miranda is from Michoacán and owns a taco restaurant here. He’ll advise the council on housing development and other issues.
Mr. Miranda’s appointment is hardly national news. But small moments like these are signs of a historic change of heart toward America and civic engagement among Mexican immigrants, many of whom, like Mr. Miranda…
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The Culture of Generativity: Exploring the Manifestation of Generativity in the Manifestation of Generativity in the Mexican/Mexican-American Population
Generativity is a developmental stage in adulthood where an individual makes a
conscious decision to leave their mark on the world with the intent to make the world a
better place for future generations. Research has shown that engaging in generative acts
benefits both the person engaging in such practices as well as the recipient, and thus
generativity is positively correlated with reported well being. It has also been shown that
adults engaging in such practices are psychologically healthier and ease into old age with
less resistance than their non-generative counterparts. Generativity is a strengths-
based approach. It is shaped by one’s cultural values and beliefs and also serves
as a window into one’s particular culture…
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Al Madrigal’s New Special ‘Half Like Me’ Is What Latinos Have Been Waiting For
Al Madrigal goes on a journey of self-discovery… starting with how to pronounce his own name.
In his new one-hour special “Half Like Me,” premiering on Fusion on January 22, The Daily Show’s senior Latino correspondent travels across the U.S. to discover what it means to be half Mexican and half white.
“Being half has always been confusing,” Madrigal says in the preview for the special. “White people think you’re Mexican and Latinos give me shit about not being Latino enough.”…
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Chef Ray Garcia’s Broken Spanish Will Speak L.A.’s Mother Tongue: Mexican Cuisine –
The former Fig chef joins the city’s Alta California stars in the cocina as he takes over the former Rivera space
January 15, 2015 Bill Esparza Chefs and Restaurateurs, Dining
When Broken Spanish opens in the former Rivera space, chef Ray Garcia will boldly join the ranks of what I’ve been calling Alta California cuisine, a style of cooking from a group of Los Angeles-born pocho (Mexican-American) chefs rooted in the Latin cuisines of their youth, fine-dining experience in our California-cuisine kitchens, and the use of our abundant and diverse local products from L.A. farmers’ markets. Garcia is one of the most respected chefs in Los Angeles, known for his European-inspired cooking. But you could catch him at events where he’d prepare things like whole pig-head carnitas, and Garcia also had tacos and Mexican comfort dishes on the brunch menu at Fig, where he previously served as executive chef…
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Shumaker Loop names first Hispanic managing partner
Julio Esquivel, partner and a member of the management committee at Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP, is about to make history in the company.
Esquivel will be the firm’s next managing partner, taking over for J. Todd Timmerman, and will be the first Hispanic managing partner in the firm’s history.
Esquivel specializes in corporate law with a focus on mergers and acquisitions, securities, IPOs, franchise and distribution, and international transactions. He’s been a member of Shumaker Loop for 17 years, and said Partner Greg Yadley was his mentor from the start at the firm…
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The Things All White Latinos Are Tired of Hearing
As a white Latina, if I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, “You’re whiter than I am!” I’d have enough money to … well, the point is, I’d be making it rain, OK?
(Also, yes: I’m aware that I’m whiter than you. Trust me. I’d like to be able to tan as easily as you think I do, but alas, that’s not really in the cards for me.)
For many people, it’s not the most offensive thing ever to be told you don’t look Latina or to be asked if you’re adopted or to be asked why you’re white if you’re Latina, but the truth is, people often have a specific, stereotypical idea of what it means to be Latino in the U.S. today, and often that idea is at odds with the reality that pale-skinned, blue-eyed, or blonde Latinos actually can and do exist. After a while, it gets kind of annoying to constantly have to “prove” to people — Latinos and non-Latinos alike — how “Latina” you really are…
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