WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION
Named One of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2023
One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 A Top Ten Book of 2023 at Chicago Public Library
A new book by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.
With its original hardcover publication, Our Migrant Souls broke new ground in its powerful examination of the social and political forces that shape Latino identity. Now, in its first full translation, Nuestras Almas Migrantes brings Héctor Tobar's definitive and unprecedented analysis of the meaning of "Latino" to Spanish-language readers, promising to bridge generations and cross borders as the book continues to spearhead a much-needed national conversation about the past, present, and future of what it means to be an American.
Inspired by James Baldwin's writing wrestling with the role of race in the United States, along with Tobar's own conversations with his Latino students and, of course, by his and his family's own life experiences, Our Migrant Souls provides an invaluable reckoning with what it means to be Latino in the United States today. In 2023, among other honors, the book won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book, one of Time magazine's Must-Read Books, and one of NPR's favorite "eye-opening" and "seriously great" books of the year.
It instantly became essential reading, an iconic book already being passed from reader to reader, provoking lively, emotional discussion in lecture halls, classrooms, boardrooms, and dining rooms. This is a conversation, of course, that takes place in more than one language at a time, and is a book that demands to be read and talked about in English and in Spanish. Now, thanks to the work of Tobar and the acclaimed translators Laura Muñoz and Tiziana Laudato-to be published alongside the much-anticipated paperback of the original edition and in time for National Hispanic Heritage Month-eso es posible. Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Deep Down Dark, as well as The Last Great Road Bum, The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. Tobar has been a contributing writer for the New York Times opinion section and is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. He has written for The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Los Angeles Noir, Zyzzyva, and Slate. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family.
"Easily his most personal book. . . Tobar uses his biography sparingly to illustrate larger aspects of Latino experience. He is as likely to quote historians and cultural theorists as he is to cite students, store clerks or an undocumented Trump supporter randomly encountered on the street. . . Tobar takes care to depict Latino life in a universal light, as something easily comprehensible to anyone who has ever felt the pull of a far-off person or place. . . There is power in the refrain of Tobar's direct address, which gives his writing the feel of warm advice dispensed to youngsters grappling with a sense of self."
-Francisco Cantú, The New York Times Book Review
"Tobar's book should be read in the context of other works that, for more than a century, have tried to elucidate the meaning of latinidad. . . Our Migrant Souls is, therefore, only the latest attempt to pin down an inherently slippery concept. More than these other works, though, it engages in contemporary debates and issues, such as how Latinos have related to Blackness and indigeneity, the question of why some Latinos choose to identify as white, and the political conservatism of certain Latino communities. It is also the most lyrical and li
