Our Migrant Souls


Book Description

WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION Named One of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2023 One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 | A Top Ten Book of 2023 at Chicago Public Library 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. 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.




Migrant Souls


Book Description




Nuestras Almas Migrantes (Our Migrant Souls - Spanish Edition)


Book Description

Ganador del Kirkus Prize para Literatura No Ficción Nominado al Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence en Literatura No Ficción Entre los mejores libros del año: The New York Times • Time • Kirkus Reviews • NPR • BookPage Con su publicación original en tapa dura, Our Migrant Souls abrió nuevos caminos con su poderoso examen de las fuerzas sociales y políticas que moldean la identidad latina. Ahora en su primera traducción completa, Nuestras almas migrantes lleva el análisis definitivo y sin precedentes de Héctor Tobar sobre el significado de lo “latino” a los lectores de habla hispana, con la promesa de tender puentes entre generaciones y traspasar fronteras, ya que el libro sigue encabezando una conversación nacional muy necesaria sobre el pasado, el presente y el futuro de lo que significa ser estadounidense. Inspirado en los escritos de James Baldwin que abordan el papel de la raza en Estados Unidos, en las conversaciones de Tobar con sus estudiantes latinos y, por supuesto, en sus propias experiencias de vida y en las de su familia, Nuestras almas migrantes ofrece un valioso análisis de lo que significa ser latino en los Estados Unidos de hoy. En 2023, entre otros galardones, el libro ganó el Premio Kirkus de No Ficción, y fue seleccionado como Libro Notable del New York Times, uno de los Libros de Lectura Obligatoria de la revista Time y uno de los libros favoritos del año de NPR que “nos abre los ojos” y es “verdaderamente genial”. Al instante se convirtió en una lectura esencial, un libro icónico que ya pasa de lector a lector, provocando animadas y emotivas conversaciones en salas de conferencias, aulas de clase, salas de juntas y comedores. Por supuesto, se trata de una conversación que tiene lugar en más de un idioma a la vez, y es un libro que exige ser leído y comentado en inglés y en español. Ahora, gracias al trabajo de Tobar y de las aclamadas traductoras Laura Muñoz Bonilla y Tiziana Laudato, eso es posible. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION: WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION Long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Named One of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2023 One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 | A Top Ten Book of 2023 at Chicago Public Library A new book by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity. With its original hardcover publication, Our Migrant Souls broke new ground in its powerful examination of the social and political forces that shape Latino identity. Now, in its first full translation, Nuestras Almas Migrantes brings Héctor Tobar’s definitive and unprecedented analysis of the meaning of “Latino” to Spanish-language readers, promising to bridge generations and cross borders as the book continues to spearhead a much-needed national conversation about the past, present, and future of what it means to be an American. Inspired by James Baldwin’s writing wrestling with the role of race in the United States, along with Tobar’s own conversations with his Latino students and, of course, by his and his family’s own life experiences, Our Migrant Souls provides an invaluable reckoning with what it means to be Latino in the United States today. In 2023, among other honors, the book won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book, one of Time magazine’s Must-Read Books, and one of NPR’s favorite “eye-opening” and “seriously great” books of the year. It instantly became essential reading, an iconic book already being passed from reader to reader, provoking lively, emotional discussion in lecture halls, classrooms, boardrooms, and dining rooms. This is a conversation, of course, that takes place in more than one language at a time, and is a book that demands to be read and talked about in English and in Spanish. Now, thanks to the work of Tobar and the acclaimed translators Laura Muñoz Bonilla and Tiziana Laudato—to be published alongside the much-anticipated paperback of the original edition and in time for National Hispanic Heritage Month—eso es posible.







Migrant Song


Book Description

Migration and continuity have shaped both the Chicano people and their oral and written literature. In this pathfinding study of Chicano literature, Teresa McKenna specifically explores how these works arise out of social, political, and psychological conflict and how the development of Chicano literature is inextricably embedded in this fact. McKenna begins by appraising the evolution of Chicano literature from oral forms—including the important role of the corrido in the development of Chicano poetry. In subsequent chapters she examines the works of Richard Rodriguez and Rolando Hinojosa. She also devotes a chapter to the development of the Chicana voice in Chicano literature. Her epilogue considers the parallel development of Chicano literary theory and discusses some possible directions for research. In McKenna's own words, "I believe that the future of this literature, as that of all literatures by people of color in the United States, rests largely on its being effectively introduced into the curricula at all levels, as well as its entrance into the critical consciousness of literary theory." This book will be an important step in that process.




Mobile Bodies, Mobile Souls


Book Description

Mobile Bodies, Mobile Souls engages the complex relationship between family, religion and migration. Following '9/11', much research on migrants in western societies has focused on the public and political dimensions of religion. This volume starts out 'from below', exploring how religious ideas and practices take form, are negotiated and contested within the private domain of the home, household and family. Bringing together ethnographic studies from different parts of the world, it explores the role of religious ideas and practices in migrants' efforts to sustain, create and contest moral and social orders in the context of their everyday life. The ethnographic analyses show how religious practices and imaginaries both enable engagement with new social settings and offer a means of connecting and reconnecting with people and places left behind. Offering a comparative perspective on the varying ways in which religious practices and notions of relatedness interconnect and shape each other, the book sheds new light on a comtemporary global world inhabited by mobile bodies and souls.




Dancing with Ghosts


Book Description

A critical biography of novelist, poet, and former Stanford professor Arturo Islas (1938-1991).




New Strangers in Paradise


Book Description

New Strangers in Paradise offers the first in-depth account of the ways in which contemporary American fiction has been shaped by the successive generations of immigrants to reach U.S. shores. Gilbert Muller reveals how the intersections of peoples, regions, and competing cultural histories have remade the American cultural landscape in the aftermath of World War II. Muller focuses on the literature of Holocaust survivors, Chicanos, Latinos, African Caribbeans, and Asian Americans. In the quest for a new identity, each of these groups seeks the American dream and rewrites the story of what it means to be an American. New Strangers in Paradise explores the psychology of uprooted peoples and the relations of culture and power, addressing issues of race and ethnicity, multiculturalism and pluralism, and national and international conflicts. Examining the groups of immigrants in the cultural and historical context both of America and of the lands from which they originated, Muller argues that this "fourth wave" of immigration has led to a creative flowering in modern fiction. The book offers a fresh perspective on the writings of Vladimir Nabokov, Sual Bellow, William Styron, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Oscar Hijuelos, Jamaica Kincaid, Bharati Mukherjee, Rudolfo Anaya, and many others.




Migrant Soul


Book Description

The autobiography of a descendant of full-blooded American Indians who marries an assimilated Jewess and then begins an amazing journey.




On Migration


Book Description

"Life began with migration." In a magnificent tapestry of life on the move, Ruth Padel weaves poems and prose, science and religion, wild nature and human history, to conjure a world created and sustained by migration. "We're all from somewhere else," she begins. "Migration builds civilization but also causes displacement." From the Holy Family's Flight into Egypt, the Lost Colony on Roanoke, and the famous photograph 'Migrant Mother', Padel turns to John James Audubon's journey from Haiti and France, heirlooms carried through Ellis Island, Kennedy's "society of immigrants" and Casa del Migrante on the Mexican border. But she reaches the human story through the millennia–old journeys of cells in our bodies, trees in the Ice Age, Monarch butterflies travelling from Alaska to Mexico. As warblers battle hurricanes over the Caribbean and wildebeest brave a river filled with the largest crocodiles in Africa, she shows that the truest purpose of migration for both humans and animals is survival.