May 2012
21 posts
"I'm a Minority Within a Minority" by Esther...
Any day you learn something important about yourself is a great day.
That’s how I felt the day the Pew Hispanic Center published its report “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity.”
That was the day I realized I’m a minority within a minority – one of the mere 21% of respondents who trace their roots to a Spanish-speaking country but identifies primarily as an American.
No...
A Conversation About (Latino/Hispanic/Panethnic)...
May 30, 2012
The Pew Hispanic Center recently published “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and their Views of Identity.” The report was based on a nationwide survey that found most Hispanics don’t embrace the term “Hispanic.” And even fewer prefer the term “Latino.”
In the days following the release, hundreds of people offered their observations on...
UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta received the...
fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:
The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, was first awarded in 1963. Puerto Rican Governor Luis Muñoz Marín became the award’s first Latin American recipient that same year, while still in office as the island’s first democratically-elected head of government. Since then, a number of Latin Americans and Americans of Latin...
Teenaged immigrant solves problem that baffled...
Sixteen year old Shouryya Ray denies being a genius, but he’s being hailed in news reports for having come up with the solution to a problem that has baffled mathematicians ever since Sir Isaac Newton first posed it over 300 years ago.
The problem involved calculating the path of a projectile that is subject to both gravity and air resistance. Ray also solved a second problem, involving a body...
“[W]e face to-day a widespread assumption throughout the dominant world that...”
– W.E.B DuBois, The Negro
Jennifer Clarvoe, "How I Fell & How It Felt"
sharingpoetry:
At the movies, in my suede boots, like a fawn in the dark startled by the lights, I fall; down the stairs vertiginous steep I fall all week—and still fall, and still bark and bloody my shin, and I am still asleep.
Or no, moving from Cheer, to Joy, to All, I fall like a cumbersomely breaking sack of groceries in the parking lot. Why call for help, game hens, why hope...
“Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his...”
– Mitt Romney’s prep school classmates recall pranks, but also troubling incidents
“Ay! Me llamaste!? Pensaba que no me ibas a llamar hasta el Domingo porque eres...”
– What my mother told me when I called her for su feliz día de la madre
“The president of the United States: now in the 21st century.”
– Fox News’ Shepard Smith, just a few minutes ago.
“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to...”
– The full quote. (via nprfreshair)
There are many things that one thinks they won’t see in their lifetime. Watching the president of the United States of America affirm the love of my mom and her partner of nearly 30 years was one of them. No more. Thank you, Mr. President. You have joined the right...
Four More Years: Obama/Biden '12
Obama Tells ABC News Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal President Obama declared for the first time on Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage, putting the moral power of his presidency behind a social issue that continues to divide the country. “At a certain point,” Mr. Obama said in an interview in the Cabinet Room at the White House with ABC’s Robin Roberts, “I’ve just concluded that for me...
“A Chicano was someone who could do anything. A Chicano was someone who...”
– Cheech Marin, “What is a Chicano?”
“I’m convinced that writer’s block doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to say....”
– Sandra Cisneros
4 tags
“Mi familia era pobre de recursos y muy noble en valores espirituales.”
– Spanish poet Gloria Fuertes on her family.
(This is how I feel about my parents too. How beautifully put together.)
April 2012
115 posts
Being bilingual improves ear function, says study
(Courtesy Tetra Images)
Being bilingual has been getting a lot of really good press lately. Bilingualism may make you smarter, bilingual immigrants may be healthier and speaking two languages might even make you a better multi-tasker. But a new study out today says bilingual people may have better ear function as well.
Read More
“We, as women, go our whole lives believing this lie that all we have to do is to...”
– Lindy West, “For Chrissakes, There Is Nothing Wrong With You: A Dating Manifesto” in Jezebel
Yosimar Reyes: Gordito
The first time someone call me a JOTO I must have been in Elementary school but it wasn’t the actual word that broke my spirit. I think it was the energy in which it was said. Truth be told at such a young age I had no idea what that meant but I knew it was bad cause it didn’t feel right…. Read more
A Must Read: "Unexceptionalism: A Primer" by E. L....
Published: April 28, 2012 by the NYTimes
TO achieve unexceptionalism, the political ideal that would render the United States indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world, do the following:
PHASE ONE
If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and suspend the counting of ballots in a...
Mexican Immigrant Labor History
The Mexican migratory worker in southwest America is regarded as a necessary part of the bustling harvest season. The need of U.S. employers to import foreign manual labor was heightened first by the expansion of cattle ranches in the Southwest, and by the increase of fruit production in California in 1850 and 1880.
Before Mexican workers supported American agriculture, it was the Chinese who...
“Recent studies on literacy reveal that black males are fast becoming one of the...”
– bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking
“One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say good bye to...”
– Sandra Cisnero, The House on Mango Street
Bilingual tips from a literacy expert (and mom!)
(Photo/Getty Images)
Raising your children to speak Spanish fluently while living in an English-dominated country isn’t easy and no one knows this better than Virginia Gonzalez, a mother and professor in the literacy and second language studies at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Education. She immigrated to the US from Peru just over 20 years ago and while raising her own bilingual...
Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero----and... →
The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants——more than half of whom came illegally——the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped——and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of...
Miss Lora by Junot Diaz →
Short story published in the New Yorker 04/23/12.
A girl was outed to her parents and is now unable... →
Courtney’s Response… by UWEC Campus PRIDE on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 12:56am ·
Courtney Jo Dunn
In response to: “Bring Courtney Home”
I recently read the article titled “Bring Courtney Home” by Lindsey Forss. I am writing to confirm that the information in the article is accurate and all of the events listed are true and really did happen. Currently, my situation has...
“Regardless of whether respondents were first-generation immigrants or...”
– Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR, “Data Reveals Complex Picture of Hispanic Americans”
Famous Selena truism said it all: “We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans… Damn, its exhausting!”
The Dream Act and why we need it
thereverseracist:
sxithappens:
I guess I can start with my own personal story.
I was brought to the US about 10 years ago, and having no prior knowledge of English, it is needless to say it was a big change. My parents packed up one day and took my siblings and I to the US, leaving behind their family and friends in search of the American Dream. I’m the oldest of three, and my younger...