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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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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With around 54 million Latinos living in the United States these day, Latino voters are easily a major factor in determining the outcomes of elections. And this turns out to be good news for any environmentally-minded politicians out there.
A new study — which comes to us from Latino Decisions, a political opinion research group, and the nonprofit Hispanic Access Foundation — has revealed that 80 percent of Latino voters that participated in their “2014 Election Eve Poll” believed that it was “extremely” or “very” important for the federal government to take measures in order to reduce climate changing carbon pollution…
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While the two major political parties remain divided over providing undocumented immigrants a pathway to U.S. citizenship, a majority of Americans have made their preference known.
Overall American Sentiment:
With certain requirements required, most Americans, with 72 percent, said undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. should legally stay in the country. Based on Pew Research Center’s latest survey, when the 72 percent is broken down, 42 percent said they support immigrants’ right to apply for citizenship, while the remaining 26 percent prefer immigrants apply for permanent residency…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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After decades of court wrangling, Yakima is all but assured to elect its first Latino city council member this November.
About 41 percent of the city’s population is Latino. But no candidate with a Hispanic last name has ever won election to Yakima City Council.
The city’s new districts, proposed by the ACLU, were ordered by federal Judge Thomas O. Rice earlier this year, a few months after he ruled that the city’s previous city-wide election system seemed to keep candidates from reaching office…
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The formation of a group identity has always been a major preoccupation of Mexican American political organizations, whether they seek to assimilate into the dominant Anglo society or to remain separate from it. Yet organizations that sought to represent a broad cross section of the Mexican American population, such as LULAC and the American G.I. Forum, have dwindled in membership and influence, while newer, more targeted political organizations are prospering—clearly suggesting that successful political organizing requires more than shared ethnicity and the experience of discrimination…
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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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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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Friday on “The Alan Colmes Show,” Alan spoke with Univision and Fusion journalist Jorge Ramos about why the Latino vote could be the deciding factor in the 2016 election, and how much Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz will matter if they are on the ticket.
Ramos told Alan that in order for a Republican to win the White House, the nominee will have to get 33% of the Latino vote, something neither Mitt Romney or Sen. John McCain was able to do. He also said even though Latinos share many Republican values, they won’t vote for a party who “wants to deport their families.”
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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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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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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. …
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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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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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