Literature and theater and television about the Latino experience is replete with didactic narratives that illustrate the basic outline of our history at a grade-school level; these works tell stories of our ‘nobility,’ and of racists and our victimized bodies, all written by artists who push at the open door of white guilt,” Héctor Tobar writes in his most recent book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.” This work is a lucid investigation of what Latino means in the United States and the different ways there are to be it, particularly in the context of empire and colonialism, with their attendant myths, and it won the 2023 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.
Tobar’s own novel The Barbarian Nurseries, which was the California Book Club selection in December 2021, is a work that defies any tendency toward didacticism, and that is largely because of the personality of its protagonist. Araceli is a Mexican housekeeper for a couple who get into a quarrel and inadvertently abandon their children to her care; she goes on an odyssey across Los Angeles to locate their grandfather. As the author describes her in Our Migrant Souls, “When my novel The Barbarian Nurseries was published, with its prickly and surly Mexican (and undocumented) housekeeper as its protagonist, a respected Latinx book critic asked me: ‘Aren’t you worried about introducing an unsympathetic character into the immigration debate?’”
Relatedly, in an essay for the California Book Club about why he writes, Tobar calls Araceli “an intellectual trapped in the body of a servant.” He also explains, “I write now to enter into our grandness and our grandiosity, the human complexity of us. I am wrestling against the stereotyping and infantilization of Latino subjects in United States literature and, more than anything, against our erasure in the culture. Even the ethnic terms assigned to us—Latino, Latinx, Hispanic—are a poor fit for the richness of our experience.”
Dagoberto Gilb’s novel The Flowers, published a few years before The Barbarian Nurseries, also presents us with a very human protagonist in working-class Sonny. There’s no preachiness or sentimental innocence here; there’s nothing designed to provoke us into seeing him as a victim. Rather, it is Sonny’s flaws and immaturity, his navigation of ugly racism and his sexual and romantic desires, that keep us interested in what’s happening. We are pulled along by his largely unfiltered thoughts and feelings as if by a rip current, drawn further into the chaos around him.
We are pleased to welcome Tobar as the special guest to discuss The Flowers with Gilb and California Book Club host John Freeman this Thursday evening. The conversation is bound to be a rich one—we hope you’ll join us. (And Tobar’s next novel, with a working title of My Beloved, My Metropolis, is set to be published in 2027—look out for it!)•
Join us on May 21 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Gilb will sit down with Freeman and Tobar to discuss The Flowers. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
SHARP LIP OF KNOWLEDGE
Read California Book Club host John Freeman’s essay on The Flowers. —Alta
MARRIED WOMAN
Read Dagoberto Gilb’s story “Answer.” —Alta
PAS DE DEUX
Read Alta Journal contributing editor David L. Ulin’s review of Allie Rowbottom’s Lovers XXX. —Alta
CITY OF CANALS
Literary couple Enrico Rotelli and Andrew Sean Greer, a past CBC author, write about their lives after relocating to Venice from San Francisco and Milan. —Alta
STAR POWER
Read about seven celebrity book clubs. —Alta
PROVOCATION
Past CBC author Ishmael Reed is writing a play about Elon Musk. —New York Times
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