El nueve de mayo/May 9th

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Photo from 2011 Mother Jones interview.
Click HERE. 
¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Rosario Dawson! (1979-       )

An actress and activist who is also a singer, producer, and comic book writer, Dawson was born to her Puerto Rican-Cuban mother in New York City when her mother was just 16. The man her mother married when Dawson was one is who she considers her father. Dawson was discovered while sitting on a  porch stoop when she was just 15 and made her feature film debut in the 1995 independent drama Kids. She has not looked back since, appearing in many movies including He Got Game (1998), Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Men in Black II (2002), 25th Hour (2005) (25th Hour is a movie by Spike Lee, and a friend of mine who lost several loved ones in the attacks of September 11th told me to watch it as it was an elegy to the city and those lost, even though the attacks are not directly referenced), Rent (2005), Sin City (2005), Death Proof (2007), Seven Pounds (2008), Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Unstoppable (2010), and Top Five (2014). She is currently filming The Death of Superman, which is slated to be released in August of 2018. Dawson is a political activist, working for Voto Latino in 2008 in a variety of ways to get out the vote, including creating the telenovela spoof La Pasión de La Decisión (click HERE for the final episide), and she is also active in advocating for women's and environmental rights through many different groups. She sits on the Board of Directors of Scenarios USA, which works "to support a generation of reflective, outspoken, and confident youth through filmmaking and uses film to educate students through a variety of programs." The program focuses on youth in marginalized communities. See Dawson interviewed in 2016 for Puerto Ricans in Paris (the interview is in Spanish, though she speaks in English and her answers are translated), HERE.

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Other May 9th birthdays of note:

José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955): Spanish writer and philosopher who lived in exile Buenos Aires, Argentina during the Spanish Civil War (he was a liberal writer who wrote "Rebellion of the Masses."


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