A visionary writer redefines his community
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interview | héctor tobar
With Our Migrant Souls, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Héctor Tobar documents the fullness of Latinx experiences. Héctor Tobar has been busy. On a Zoom call because “our literary and cultural production is to his home in California, he tells me that his mediated through New York and American pubnew book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation lishing.” But he thinks Latinx people can reclaim on Race and the Meanings and Myths of the meaning of Latino by unwrapping its history “Latino,” is an “attempt to summarize 30 years and asserting a new definition: “Latino is an alliof learning, reading about race in the United ance among peoples.” States and the Latino experience, and trying When he says this, it’s a revelation: a whole Visit BookPage.com to read our continent-and-a-half of people, united under to understand Latino as a category in the lens starred review of Our Migrant Souls. one word. How has such a of U.S. race history.” This is a pretty serious undertaking— large collection of people’s Tobar says. In the book, he reflects on his own but no one is better suited to existences gone this long family’s migrations, not just to the United States without serious examinalead the charge than Tobar, but throughout Guatemala. There have been whose book surveys the tion? Tobar reminds me that “unending permutations of migrants in my life,” Latinx community’s diverse there has been a long history he says. This is true of all Americans, no matrelationships to migration, of struggle leading up to this ter our ethnic backgrounds. But Latinx people empire, identity and kinship. moment. “We fought for the are disproportionately vilified for migrating, Tobar is a veteran Latino idea that the experience of which is why Tobar maintains that “U.S. immiauthor, writing on par with gration policy is a collective humiliation of the our people was worthy of other modern masters such intellectual inquiry,” he Latino people.” Whether through detention as Ada Limón and Valeria says. “The system that has centers, fear mongering or simply forcing peoLuiselli. One of his most produced these [prejuple to walk through the dangerous, vast desert, significant contributions diced] ideas is ill. It is sick a whole population of people is being erased. to not just Latino literature and inflicting harm upon “[U.S. Customs and Border Protection] will use but literature as a whole is any tool at its disposal,” Tobar says. “It’s a really us, and we need to change Deep Down Dark (2014), cowardly situation.” it; we need new ideas.” which tells the true story of This is why Tobar’s novThis is why Tobar’s mission is so important: 33 Chilean miners who were els always feature working- If Latinx people cannot redefine Latino in order to use it to our advantage, it will continue to be trapped underground for class intellectuals, such as used to categorize and hurt us. When I ask him 69 days. Writing that book the housekeeper in The H Our Migrant Souls taught Tobar a vital lesson: Barbarian Nurseries. Rather how we can defy labels, he tells me, “Think about MCD, $27, 9780374609900 “If I really wanted to create a than rooting his narratives Guatemalan. What does that mean? Every ethwork that would capture the in harmful ideas and stereo nicity is a pan ethnicity! If you look at any label, Social Science fullness of their experience, types, he roots them in the you will find a whole sort of quantum mechanics I had to think about their full experience,” he experiences of real people, the kind he says of people crashing into each other. . . . All of us are says, “about working people and the ambitions you can find anywhere and everywhere in this the constant mixing of entanglements.” in their lives, their hopes and dreams for their country. He knows this is true from his years Tobar believes “this fad, this mania of children, their affairs, the complications in their working as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, applying labels on ourselves, is really counter lives, the dysfunction, the glories. It makes for when he would walk the streets and talk to peoproductive, cruel, anti-human and unintellia much more satisfying read.” This lesson has ple, learning about them and hearing their stogent. Almost any facet of human experience is influenced his writing philosophy ever since, ries. The latter part of going to frustrate an especially in Our Migrant Souls, which makes Our Migrant Souls “Almost any facet of human attempt to put a label is based on a similar significant strides toward documenting the fullon it.” It might seem experience is going to paradoxical, then, to ness of Latinx experiences. approach: using a road about Latinx When I ask Tobar about the necessary steps trip across the United frustrate an attempt to put a write to redefine Latino, he lays out his mission. To States to highlight people and Latinidad the mestizo (mixed) start, he says, editors and publishers can “open (i.e., the diaspora of label on it.” nature of this nation, Latinx peoples), but up critical spaces to Latino writers [who are] tryshowing through testimonies and anecdotes ing to create work that will push Latino letters.” Tobar doesn’t think so. “There’s many differBut in order to do that, they have to get past how ingrained Latinx people are in the culture. ent ways of approaching the truth, and there’s many different truths,” he tells me. the stereotypes. Nowadays, readers and literary We can trace this mixture back to the “That’s true,” I say, and we laugh. beginning of humanity’s story, to migration. professionals see Latino as a marketing con—Eric A. Ponce “Migration is a constant in human history,” cept more than anything, Tobar says—largely
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