What inspired you to tackle this subject?
After the George Floyd protests, the national conversation about race rarely included discussion about the race-centered ideas spread about Latino people. I wanted to write a book that spoke to the hurt and anger young Latino people feel at the government policies and the media stories that denigrate them.
How does your fiction writing inform your nonfiction work?
Writing fiction is about understanding the human soul and relishing the complexities and the ambiguities of being human. Too often, nonfiction approaches its subjects with the idea of using them to make a point. I like to write and to think about real people the way a novelist would.
How do you think the term Latino will change in the future?
Like white, Black, Asian, and Native American, Latino is a label that’s meant to fit the experience of many different peoples inside a coloring-book version of United States history. I’m looking forward to a future when we’re smart enough to understand that human beings and their stories don’t belong in coloring books.•
OUR MIGRANT SOULS: A MEDITATION ON RACE AND THE MEANINGS AND MYTHS OF “LATINO,” By Héctor Tobar
MCD • MAY 2023 • 256 PAGES • $27 HARDCOVER
Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar, whose book The Barbarian Nurseries was a 2021 Alta Journal California Book Club pick, seeks to unpack the meaning of the label Latino by charting his life as the child of Guatemalan immigrants, detailing experiences of his Latinx students, and interrogating Latino representation in media.
