👨🏻🙋🏽👱🏾👩🏾👧🏻The Latinx Collective - Issue #31

THIS WEEK'S SIX:

Here's the video and transcript of the 60 Minutes episode featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Of course, CBS News mostly focuses on her saying the president is a racist during the interview, which we all know to be true...🙄 But otherwise, the interview with Anderson Cooper highlights her family's story, her beliefs and what she'll be focused on while in office. Thoughts?

I think this is a really interesting read for those of us that are first generation Americans but have a very strong pull to the island or country where our parents were born. I feel the same way. I was not born in the Dominican Republic but spent most vacations and summers there as a kid, and feel I owe much of what I am today to the hardships the generations before me faced on the island. This excerpt gave me goosebumps:

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a New Yorker, born and bred. He has spent most of his nearly 39 years living in Upper Manhattan; he attended New York public schools, and his career was established on New York’s stages. But Puerto Rico offers a thread, a theme, a thesis for his life. It’s the homeland where both of his parents grew up. It’s the place he long idealized, where many now idealize him. As we talked about how Puerto Rico shaped his personal, political and artistic identity, he mused aloud about questions he has grappled with. What does it mean to feel nostalgia for a place you never lived, a place your parents loved but left? How does fame affect the way you see, and are seen, in that place? I believe I owe a great deal of who I am to this island,” he said as we drove from a coffee plantation deep in the mountains to the theater in San Juan where he hoped “Hamilton” would be staged.

For the movie buffs: a list of 10 films that are evidence to the overflowing talent in the Latinx community. From sci-fi, to comedy, an animated documentary, and even a thriller, and a treasure hunt, prepare yourself for the best of the best. Some of these short films premiered last year, but all of them played at least one film festival in 2018. 

Here's an interview with Chef Carlos Gaytán, the first Mexican to earn a Michelin star and to come in third place on Top Chef in the United States. He was born October 20, 1970, in Huitzuco, a city in the southwestern state of Guerrero. Enjoy!

This is a fun piece.

While Stanley mostly cooks tamales for her network of Latino friends and family, Rodriguez says that his clientele—white, black, Latino, Asian—reflects the diversity of San Antonio. It’s a kind of reverse integration, Janer says; while people often think of immigrants as being shaped by their new country, the opposite is often happening with their own food. “Latino culture has an impact on the food cultures where they are,” she says. “It’s part of the ongoing history of tamales. They are becoming a part of the food culture and the lives and communities.”

Appreciate you reading this week’s issue of The Latinx Collective. Please feel free to forward this to friends or family so they can join you in celebrating the every day contributions the Latinx community is making. Additionally:

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