Nivia Dones and daughter Erin Mercado, 17, from the Bronx, was hospitalized three times for attempted suicide. She has been involved with a suicide prevention program for Hispanic teens since she was 13, which she said has changed her attitude toward life. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times) Life is Precious, a nonprofit suicide prevention program for […]
¿Qué Onda? Urban Youth Culture and Border Identity By Cynthia L. Bejarano Angel was born in Arizona and is part of the in-crowd. She likes clubbing, dancing, and going to car shows. Betzayra is from Mexico City and, despite polio-related disabilities, is the confident group leader of the Mexican girls. Arturo is also from Mexico […]
Free photo source: https://pixabay.com/en/girl-against-the-wall-girl-portrait-1996988/ There’s no winning, because “no soy de aquí, ni soy de allá.” Luckily, I no longer feel like I have to prove my identity to anyone. Because being Latina is a multidimensional experience. I love my Puerto Rican roots, but I’m also not ashamed that I’ve acculturated into American society. And […]
What it Means to be Latino It’s more complicated than you think. What does it mean to be Latino? We asked writer Ruben Martinez, UCLA linguistics professor Otto Santa Ana, and Fordham University sociologist Clara Rodriguez to address that question. In the essays that follow, you’ll find that their answers were all very different. Source: […]
AN INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN STUDIES AND CREATIVE WRITING Real Women Have Curves, the 2002 film based on Josefina López’s two act play, politicizes the female form by strategically exposing and subverting dominant ideals about body image. López takes the overweight form, so often marginalized (like the immigrant) by society and popular culture, and redefines this […]
To what culture would Latinas’ suicidal ideations and attempts be bound? “Is Culture To Blame for High Latina Suicide Attempt Rates?” This is the actual title of an article published by NewsTaco, a Latino online source which provides innovative and insightful news, critique, analysis, and opinions. The headline of the article is significant as […]
Image source: Flickr Brown University – “The Immigrant Paradox” NY Times columnist David Brooks asks: Are new immigrants wrecking the social fabric of the United States? Or is it the other way around? Is America corrupting them instead? Back in 2010, researchers from Brown University have noticed that first generation immigrant children generally outperform second […]
Image source: pixabay.com Aug 29, 2010 Latina girls have twice the rate of suicide attempts as their Anglo and African-American peers: 21%. Professor Luis H. Zayas has been studying the phenomenon since he accidentally stumbled upon it in the 1980s. I spoke with Zayas earlier this summer about his research and his resulting book, set […]
© Copyright 2015 NYU At one o’clock in the morning on a Friday last year, just a few days before their annual beach trip for the 4th of July, the Parapis discovered the body of one of their teenaged daughters, hanging in the basement of their East Elmhurst home. In the days that followed, […]
Image source: healthyhispanicliving.com Review found strong links between discrimination and anxiety, low self-esteem in minority teens Being a victim of racism may trigger poor mental health, depression and anxiety in children and teens, according to a new review. The report, published in the October issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine, looked at 461 […]