La Vuelta Podcast: Vanessa Pérez Rosario on her new cultural biography of Julia de Burgos

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When the Puerto Rican poet and essayist Julia de Burgos died in 1953 the tragic circumstances surrounding her death, in many ways, came to define her legacy.  But as Brooklyn College Professor Vanessa Pérez Rosario writes in her recent cultural biography of the iconic writer, Becoming Julia deBurgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon. (University of Illinois Press, 2014) there was much more to Burgos’ legacy than her demise.  For Pérez Rosario, the goal of her book was to read Burgos in a “new way…focusing on the escape routes she created to transcend the rigid confines of gender and cultural nationalism.”  As she explained in her interview with La Vuelta, Burgos was not only a gifted writer but also one who challenged the powerful male writers of her generation on the island, including those with whom she shared commitment to Puerto Rican independence.

Professor Pérez Rosario will be speaking at John Jay College of Criminal Justice on Tuesday, March 24^th from 1:40-2:50 in the President’s Conference Room, 524 West 59^th Street, 6^th Floor, New York.  The event is free and open to the public.    

La Vuelta Podcast: Latinos, Water Quality and Obesity

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Approximately 17 percent of all U.S. children are obese.  While the problem cuts across lines of race, ethnicity and gender, the obesity rate among Hispanic children in the United States is the highest of any group.  In recent years, public health experts and policy-makers have dedicated a great deal of energy to examining the problem of obesity among the nation’s Latino children and to developing strategies to address the crisis.  Yet, a recent report by the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California at Davis suggests that water quality in Latino communities may be a significant factor in contributing to Latino obesity rates.  Looking at water supplies in two low-income immigrant communities in California’s central valley, researchers found that many residents in these areas avoided drinking water, in favor of sugary beverages, because of long-held fears about contaminants in the water supply.  Laura Bliss, a fellow for the Atlantic Magazine's Citylab blog, wrote recently about the UC Davis report. She spoke to La Vuelta about the report’s findings and what they suggest about the connection between environment and obesity in California’s Latino communities.