Author and journalist Héctor Tobar spoke at GCC on Thursday, April 4 as part of the college’s Humanities/Social Science Lecture Series. Tobar, who received a Pulitzer Prize in spot news reporting for his coverage of the 1992 L.A. riots, was invited by academic counselor Nare Garibyan to discuss his career, with a focus on his latest book, “Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.””
“Our Migrant Souls” explores what it means to be Latino in the 21st century through historical analysis, interviews with Latino people across the United States, and Tobar’s own personal experience. “I immediately resonated with the book as an Armenian-American, and learned a lot,” said Garibyan. “I thought to myself, I must find Professor Tobar’s contact info and ask him to campus and converse with our community. I had no idea what the outcome would be.”
Tobar explained how many racial and ethnic identities have their roots in American history. The first identities were Christian and non-Christian, which existed as legal categories to differentiate settlers from indigenous Americans. “Race, like ethnicity, is a story that we tell ourselves to explain why some people work and some people work less hard, why some people own slaves and why some people are slaves, and so Latino is a story like that. I think that our ideas about Latino identity are shaped by immigration and by the work that Latino people have traditionally done in this country.” Speaking on the stereotypes Latinos often face, he said, “The idea of us as this laboring people is created by this uneven economic relationship.”
Tobar grew up in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. As a child, he unknowingly lived next to James Earl Ray, a white supremacist who went on to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. Tobar noted that this connection, which he did not comprehend until he was in his 40s, helped him realize “that I grew up inside of American history,” and was part of his impetus to write a book about race and identity. He believes that all immigrants carry the stories of their identities and diaspora, which end up meshing with the overarching American story.
As part of his writing process for Our Migrant Souls, Tobar traveled across the country to interview members of the Latino community living near the border wall in 2021. He recounted a trip to Idaho, in which he met with a Chicano man who was a permanent resident of the country. This man was not able to vote but said he would vote for Trump had he been able to, mostly due to fear that Biden would raise taxes. Tobar used this anecdote to illustrate the importance of intersectionality in ethnic studies, stating that “Latino identity is something that belongs to working-class people in most of the country, and they have an unease about the political system, and that feeds a lot of different kinds of ideas about politics.”
Tobar also discussed his reporting on the L.A. riots, which earned him the Pulitzer Prize and also inspired him to shift his career trajectory from journalism to fiction writing. He explained that L.A. riots were three different things at once: an African American uprising against police abuse, a pogrom against Korean merchants, and a Latino immigrant riot against poverty. Of this latter point, Tobar stated, “I understood exactly what was happening sociologically, which was that people who had come to the United States, seeing it as a land of opportunity, and they realized how much they were outsiders and how much of that story they had been sold was a lie. In fact, what awaited them if they didn’t work hard enough was a kind of caste status.” Tobar interviewed Latino looters for the paper but regrets that “I never got to tell that story on the pages of the L.A. Times.” Feeling that he was still perceived as the “young intern” and not taken seriously, Tobar quit the Los Angeles Times and pursued his MFA in fiction, in order to share the critical perspective he felt was necessary. His first novel, The Tattooed Soldier, ends with the L.A. riots.
Copies of “Our Migrant Souls” were given to students who arrived early to the event, and Tobar held a book signing at the reception. Tobar shared that his next project is a novel about the history and future of Los Angeles through the lens of homelessness.
“Our Migrant Souls” is available at the Glendale Library. Garibyan, who “filled an entire notebook of all the inspirational quotes from the book,” implores students to check out its extraordinary mixture of history and social commentary. She adds, “As a Hispanic-serving institution, it is so important to encourage our students to embrace their diverse backgrounds and become proud of their “Latino” roots, regardless of how diverse these roots are. And I think that “Our Migrant Souls” can really help to empower our students to appreciate who they are, where they come from, and how they can be the positive change our society needs.”
Even students who are not Latino can benefit from learning about the complex conceptions of race and ethnicity in America and perhaps apply what they have learned to better understand their own communities. Garibyan noticed a parallel between Tobar’s writing and her own experience as an Armenian-American: “When Armenians first came to Fresno, there were signs along restaurant windows, saying “no service to dogs and Armenians.” Sure, we eventually stepped into white privilege in the U.S. But in certain parts of the world being Armenian is challenged day in and out, such as in Turkey and recently what happened in Artsakh and how Azerbaijan continues to threaten Armenia. The important message of “Our Migrant Souls” is that we all matter and that all of us have a valid story to tell.”