What it’s Like to Win a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award for Your Life’s Work
“As a society we have to reassess our assumptions about what is happening within not just immigrant communities, but low-income communities. We don’t give them enough credit for their ingenuity, for their innovativeness, for what it takes to survive and thrive in poverty. . . What we’re trying to do at MAF is actually say no, that’s not true. There’s more to it than that. We can actually build effective, successful programs, but we have to have different assumptions.”
By Taylor Mayol
Gene Luen Yang, a prize-winning author and the national ambassador for young people’s literature, and Claudia Rankine, one of poetry’s brightest and most innovative stars, are among this year’s 23 MacArthur fellows and recipients of the so-called “genius” grants.
“Jose Quinonez crossed the border from Mexico to California when he was 9 years old, accompanied by his five siblings, driven out of his home after the death of their father and mother. Three decades later, Quinonez is set to receive one of the most prestigious honors offered to American professionals: a 
Mission Asset Fund, a Californian non-profit group, assists informal savings groups in immigrant communities. As members make small, regular payments into a common pot from which they take turns to borrow, they are also able to develop a formal credit history.