Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”

A new book by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.

In Our Migrant Souls, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Héctor Tobar delivers a definitive and personal exploration of what it means to be Latino in the United States right now.

“Latino” is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States, and also one of the most rapidly growing. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as “Latino,” Our Migrant Souls is the first account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity.

Taking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of “Latino” as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and gives voice to the anger and the hopes of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes and who have faced insult and division—a story as old as this country itself.

Tobar translates his experience as not only a journalist and novelist but also a mentor, a leader, and an educator. He interweaves his own story, and that of his parents’ migration to the United States from Guatemala, into his account of his journey across the country to uncover something expansive, inspiring, true, and alive about the meaning of “Latino” in the twenty-first century.

About the Author

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.