#yolanda-vega

#yolanda-vega

I had come out to friends and family, but I'd never come out publicly in England because I didn't want to give them something else to box me in with.

Samara Joy sings with old-school phrasing and a modern calm that makes the Great American Songbook feel freshly alive. Her tone is warm and centered, her control is ridiculous, and the swing is the real flex, every line shaped with patience and purpose.

"My paintings can be described as sculptural in nature, emphasising physical presence, weight and materiality."

"I said it all at once: Dad, Mom, I want to be an artist, I'm leaving home, I'm gay and I have a boyfriend," he recounted, according to the outlet Lecturas.

The Bandera Cimarrona, a flag conceived at the first edition of the International Summit of Afro-descendants in Puerto Rico in 2022, stands as a symbol of the resistance, the pursuit of freedom, and the strength of Afro-descendants on the island and throughout the Americas.

"In that darkness, I found myself. This album is totally about empowerment. There's an energy behind it of divine justice... What's for you belongs to you."

It makes me feel proud, simply because of the specific time we're in right now. It definitely takes a lot of courage for kids my age to represent their culture. Anthony Benitez, an 18-year-old violin student born in the United States to Mexican immigrants, expressed how the academy provides a meaningful outlet for cultural expression amid punitive immigration enforcement affecting Latino and immigrant families across the country.

The Center for Literary Arts presents acclaimed author Venita Blackburn, Compton-born creative writing professor and founder of Live, Write, an organization offering free creative writing workshops.

I have been very vocal about the fact that I'm scared of what I'm seeing in this country. I've been living here for decades. This is not the place that I grew up in. We need to all stand up.

I vividly recall watching Saved By the Bell as a little girl and being drawn to the character of Zack Morris. My grandfather Tati, however, would repeatedly mention AC Slater and the fact that a Latino cast member on an American TV show was amazing. After renting Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet on VHS and gushing over Leonardo DiCaprio, I would listen to my grandfather point out John Leguizamo in the cast.

Over the past three years, several Latin American countries have witnessed the arrival of the Orb, a futuristic-looking spherical device used to read irises and capture biometric data. This striking technology, developed by World Foundation and created by Sam Altman, a leading figure in artificial intelligence and CEO of OpenAI, along with its operational partner, Tools for Humanity, has been installed in shopping malls, gas stations, and other locations in Colombia, Chile, and Brazil.

When your plane descends into Puerto Rico's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, it will likely fly low over the colorful buildings of Santurce, a sprawling district famous for its creative residents and Afro-Caribbean influences. Neglected for decades, Santurce is rapidly reclaiming its title as one of San Juan's most exciting quarters - a transformation that has earned it the nickname "The Brooklyn of Puerto Rico." And if you're looking for Afro-Caribbean cuisine, you're coming to the right place.

Michelle Paulin dances while instructing youth at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. Dulce Tricolor, a Bay Area Venezuelan dance group founded in 2019, teaches children traditional folk dances while preserving culture, building community and offering a sense of home amid Venezuela's ongoing political and economic crisis. (Josie Lepe for KQED)

She manages billions of dollars, decides how the biggest sporting spectacle on the planet is staged, and engages audiences exceeding 300 million people. During the Super Bowl, she generates tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue for that game alone, with 30-second spots costing over $7 million each. Behind these staggering figures is the commitment of Marissa Solis (Mexico City, 1972) to transforming the NFL into a global passion.

But instead, they find their way to a small studio, where they join 27 others in strapping on a pair of high heels and throwing themselves into two hours of dance moves. This is the beginners heels class at Vibe Dance Studio, which was started by Izzy Gonzales and her dad Ed four years ago. It's a place where people can show up exhausted, but end up with so much energy they don't want to go home.

Last summer, she was one of the interpreters at his 30-date concert residency in Puerto Rico, No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí (I Don't Want to Leave Here), which injected hundreds of millions of dollars into Puerto Rico's economy. With lyrics that capture the grief and alienation of Puerto Ricans forced to leave home in search of opportunities, Bad Bunny's 2025 album Debí Tirar Más Fotos became a global phenomenon that continues to resonate across cultures.

"She was such a force of nature in her enthusiasm for making our city, county and the whole Bay Area a better place." One of many comments shared about Roma Dawson, a dynamic activist who succumbed to cancer last December. Many knew Roma as a longtime dedicated League of Women Voters and community member for San Jose and the Bay Area.

In the just-named Grammy Album of the Year, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS-which Bad Bunny has declared his " most Puerto Rican album " to date-the supernova reggaetonero painted an evocative portrait of the Caribbean island, while declaring to a whopping 8.6 million listeners: "VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR" (I'm going to bring you to Puerto Rico). And he did. Last year, a record-breaking number of tourists-7,486,000 to be exact-visited Puerto Rico's tropical shores.

Otherworldly forms greet you at the entrance to the exhibition, transporting you into a kaleidoscopic, dream-like space. A voice speaks in the background as projected images dance across the forms, animating the space. "It's been really beautiful to see her work come alive, become a landscape ... where you can traverse and kind of get lost," curator Fabiola R. Delgado says of Lisu Vega's "The Uncertain Future of Absence (El Futuro Incierto de la Ausencia)" (2025).

The only thing most people know about epiphytes, if they know about them at all, is that they're rootless. That's not quite true - they develop highly specialized root systems adapted to wherever they land. In Epiphytic Elucidations at Patel Brown Gallery, Calgary-based artist Marigold Santos takes this fact as more than a metaphor. The exhibition uses epiphytes - plants that grow on other plants without harming them - as a framework for the expansive ways diasporas form through material labor.

Wang was on the edge of 17 when she arrived at Nashville International Airport with her entire life packed into three suitcases and a carry-on. She had traveled all the way from Zhejiang, China, chasing a dream that would ultimately shape her future: studying music business at Belmont University. Now 26, Wang is an Artist Development Manager at Sony Music Entertainment.

In her manifesto, Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldúa presents what she calls a new mestiza consciousness, which advocates for ambiguity and moves "toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes." Groundbreaking when it was published in 1987, this theory pushed queer, feminist, and cultural scholars to consider how identity is both fluid and informed by several overlapping factors. It also helped to lay the groundwork for branches of study like ecofeminism,

The highly impressive group reflects the current state of jazz, where both young guns and veterans are combining to bring the music to a new swell of fans. To talk about the present state of jazz, The Times brought together 26-year-old Joy and 75-year-old Bridgewater. What followed is an incredible conversation on politics, race, equality and mutual fandom. You both have had Grammy success.

Regina Silveira has spent the better part of three decades considering the relationship between media and meaning, particularly as it relates to Latin America. First presented in 1997, "To Be Continued..." features 100 black-and-white reproductions of photos, newspaper clippings, propaganda, advertisements, and more. Silveira nests each image into an oversized puzzle piece, which cuts off faces and scenes to leave fragments of pop culture icons, flora and fauna, and even the occasional mugshot spliced next to one another.