Multicultural Familia

WATCH: Advance Your Career as a Blogger {Webinar Recap}

Chantilly Patiño — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:15:38 +0000

This article was originally published on Multicultural Familia - News, opinion, culture, identity.

There is a brief audio issue at the beginning of the video, but please stick with us as there is tons of great information to be shared! :)

We want to say a special thank you to everyone who joined us for our first LIVE webinar last night! We had a great time connecting with you and answering your questions on blogging and business and we hope to add more webinars on blogging to the lineup of ELLA Leadership Network webinars. Thank you to ELLA Institute for inviting me to contribute to the panel!

We invite you to share this first webinar with your friends and colleagues who may be considering blogging as a catalyst to their careers. We hope you find the information in the video helpful and we welcome you to connect with us in the ELLA Leadership Network Bloggers group to meet other bloggers and be notified of future events.

OFFICIAL ELLA LEADERSHIP NETWORK LIVESTREAM EVENT
ELLA Network Webinar: Advance Your Career as a Blogger
Streamed LIVE on Google Air, Tuesday, April 23rd

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:

Dr. Angelica Perez-Litwin is the Founder and CEO of ELLA Leadership Institute, as well as a clinical psychologist and career coach. She has leveraged social media and blogging to empower and advance the lives and careers of Latina women. Angelica is also the Publisher and CEO of NEWLATINA.net, an online destination for Latina women, centering on personal leadership and career success for today’s Latina. Connect with Angelica on Twitter via @ELLAInstitute and @NEWLATINA.

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Melanie Edwards is the founder and editor of modernmami™.com, an award-winning lifestyle blog, and owner of Ella Media, a small business and social media consulting firm. Melanie holds a degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering and over 10 years experience in Information Technology. She has spoken at various social media conferences, including Type-A Parent, Blogalicious Weekend, and BlogHer. Through Ella Media, Melanie provides digital marketing services for bloggers and brands and focuses on connecting businesses with today’s digital Latina. Connect with Melanie on Twitter via @ellamedia and @modernmami. _________________________________________________________________

Chantilly Patiño is the publisher of several website for multicultural families, including BiculturalMom.com, MulticulturalFamilia.com and MulticulturalBloggers.com. She is the owner of Chantilly Patiño Media & Design, a digital media consulting and design company and currently serves as the Digital Media Director for ELLA Leadership Institute. Chantilly also manages several groups for bloggers, including the Multicultural Bloggers Open Forum and the SEO for Bloggers group. Connect with Chantilly on Twitter via @ChantillyPatino and @BiculturalMom.

About ELLA Leadership Network

The ELLA Leadership Network is an online community of mission-driven women who are serious about advancing their careers. Connect with professional women, leaders, experts, mentors, coaches and women like YOU – across the country and around the world!

LINKS & RESOURCES

This article was originally published on Multicultural Familia - News, opinion, culture, identity.

#L4LL Día Blog Hop: Jungle Tales by Jeff Zorilla #Giveaway

Chantilly Patiño — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 06:00:37 +0000

This article was originally published on Multicultural Familia - News, opinion, culture, identity.

We are excited to share a guest post by Jeff Zorilla, author of a new English translation of Jungle Tales, as part of the Día de los Niños, Día de los Libros Blog Hop. The blog hop is part of an initiative by Latinas4LatinoLit.org, a collective of Latina bloggers who hope to shine a light on published Latino authors and books that represent the diversity and experience of Latinos. Follow along on Twitter via the #L4LL hashtag and @Latinas4LatLit twitter account.

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Guest post by Jeff Zorria

Jungle Tales was created for two reasons; the love of reading and a search for Latin heritage. I moved to Argentina two years ago to learn about the culture of Latin America that my father turned his back on when he left Cuba to start a life in the United States. I was raised with the understanding that Latin America was nothing more than a collection of underdeveloped countries, something like a failed and impoverished version of the United States. And though this is what I had been taught, I had always felt the urge to learn the truth about the culture and, most of all, to learn the language that had been kept from me.

My father never set to teach me his mother tongue but I clearly remember hearing it through the walls as he spoke with business clients from Mexico. Hearing the language in muffled, low tones of snatched conversations through walls created an aura of forbidden knowledge about the language. I was determined to learn Spanish even if I had to do it on my own.

I chose to move to Buenos Aires because of its fame as a cultural hub and for my own interest in the literature of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar. When I arrived, the city bewitched me. I studied Spanish during the days at the University of Buenos Aires and at night I would read book after book, at first not caring about how much I understood but instead just savoring the words in my mouth.

It was actually my passion for literature that brought me to meet the love of my life. I met my girlfriend, Natalia, when I submitted a short film I adapted from a story by Borges to the film festival where she worked. As we got to know each other more and our relationship grew, she helped me to learn Spanish by sharing her favorite authors with me. This was how I was first introduced to Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de la Selva.

As we read the stories together, I basked in how beautifully the long, complicated sentences were delicately weaved to ignight a child’s imagination; I wondered at the complex development of these anamorphic animals; and I was taken aback by the progressive environmentalist message that the book carried (far ahead of its time for a book written in 1917). I found that the stories were just as interesting and engaging as the ones I had read in my own youth, only from a point of view of a different culture.

An English Translation of Jungle Tales

When my Spanish advanced to the level where I could start translating texts, I chose Cuentos de la Selva simply because I wanted to live out the stories through writing. I wanted to immerse myself into the world that Quiroga created by fighting with his long sentences and weighing the different meanings of his words and then finally choosing the one that best fit the feeling he meant to convey. It was not until I had translated three of the eight stories that Natalia and I began to research if there was an English version of the book or not, and when we learned that there was only one out-of-print version of the book (a loosely translated collection of Quiroga’s stories titled South American Jungle Tales from 1921), we decided that the stories deserved to be read by an English speaking public.

We soon finished the translation of the book and as I had to return to the US to finish up my degree, I used the time to look for publishers. At publishing house after publishing house, I was met with the response that it would be too difficult to find an American market that would be interested in stories about animals in the jungles of South America written by an author from Uruguay that no one has ever heard of. But instead of letting all these rejections get us down, we decided to raise the money through the crowdfunding website Kickstarter and publish the book ourselves.

When we began to reach out to the public for support on the project, we found the exact opposite of what the publishing houses had been telling us. As a matter of fact there was a plethora of different organizations that gave the support for the book- from Latin American groups, to literature buffs, and even a few biologists who wanted to see the book printed in English.

After many long nights of reaching out for support to fund the book, and the later, even longer nights of proofreading sessions and galley corrections, the book is now printed. Natalia and I could not be happier. We worked hard to create a book that can create that sense joy and intrigue that makes a person want to read and reread a book. We excitedly thumbed over paper stocks and binding styles all in the hope that these small details would one day be integrated into that joy that comes from these stories. After all the hard work, we are happy to be able to say that we have made a beautiful book that can be enjoyed by children for a long time to come.

The work of translating this book helped to bring me closer to a heritage I had always felt deprived of. Now that these stories are available to an English-speaking public, I hope that other Latino children in the United States may be able to understand a little bit more about Latin American culture and and can feel the pride that was so difficult for me to discover.

About the author

Jeff Zorrilla is a filmmaker and English teacher. He was born in Orange County, California and moved to Buenos Aires two years ago where I live with my girlfriend. Jungle Tales is Zorilla’s first translation. Currently, he is working on his second translation, The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt. Learn more about Jungle Tales: www.jungletales.com.ar

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ENTER THE GIVEAWAY

#L4LL has put together a wonderful collection of Latino children’s literature to be given to a school or public library. Many of the books were donated by the authors and illustrators participating in this blog hop. You can read a complete list of titles (as well as the blog hop schedule) here: Official #L4LL Blog Hop & Giveaway Post

To enter your school library or local library in the giveaway, simply leave a comment below this post.

The deadline to enter is 11:59pm EST, Monday, April 29th. The winner will be chosen using Random.org and will be announced on the Latinas4LatinoLit.org website on April 30th, 2013 – Día de los Niños, Día de los Libros. Winners will be contacted via email, so be sure to enter a valid email address when you comment.

By entering this giveaway, you agree to the Official Sweepstakes Rules. No purchase required. Void where prohibited.

¡Buenas suerte!

This article was originally published on Multicultural Familia - News, opinion, culture, identity.

Teen Travel Summit & Extravaganza {Passport Party Project}

Multicultural Familia — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:42:46 +0000

This article was originally published on Multicultural Familia - News, opinion, culture, identity.

Today we just had to share this awesome event from the The Passport Party Project!

Check out the details below:

Image: Teen Travel Summit & Extravaganza

is a super! fantastic! Weekend Extravaganza

for tw/eens & their parents

featuring travel workshops, travel chat,

travel prizes & loads of travel fun!

MISSION

To encourage safe, educational & fun domestic and international travel for tw/eens and to properly educate and involve parents and loved ones.

So. Are you going to be there…or just hear about it?

Brought to you by

This article was originally published on Multicultural Familia - News, opinion, culture, identity.