“Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation On Race And The Meanings And Myths Of ‘Latino’”

“Like ‘mutant,’ ‘Vulcan,’ or ‘Wookiee,’” writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar, “’Latino’ and ‘Latinx’ and ‘Hispanic’ are the made-up words of storytellers describing a group of people engaged in an adventure. Latino people are brown, Black, white, and Indigenous, and they are European, Asian, and African. Some of us speak excellent Spanish, but many more of us do not.” 

Still, there are historical ties: “This diverse group of people is joined together by shared roots in the upheavals and the crises set in motion by the building of the United States into a global superpower, and, further back in time, by the Spanish Crown’s attempt to build an empire in the Western Hemisphere.”

Tobar (hectortobar.com) is a Professor of English and Chicano/Latino Studies at UC Irvine and the author of “Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation On Race And The Meanings And Myths Of ‘Latino’” ($18.99 in paperback from Picador; also for Amazon Kindle), the 2024-2025 “Book In Common.”

Book discussions are scheduled throughout the academic year at Chico State (www.csuchico.edu/bic), Butte College, and in the community. The website notes that “Latinx students make up 37% of Chico State’s student body and over 30% of Butte College’s students identify as Latinx. Both of our campuses are Hispanic Serving Institutions” with the emphasis on “servingness.”

Tobar’s compelling prose blends the complexities of history, and his students’ experiences, with his own narrative including visits to his ancestral homeland, Guatemala, where he was conceived, and Los Angeles, where he was born, and where in 1967 a white supremacist moved next door. Later, James Earl Ray would become Martin Luther King Jr’s assassin.

Paradoxically, “The people now known as Latino seem to be perpetually on the brink of being the next group assimilated into whiteness (following the Jews, Italians, and other groups), only to be racialized as a dark other.” Though “race” is a biological myth, “We know race shapes how people see us, that it is a category into which our bodies and our histories are supposed to belong.” 

For Tobar, the question “Who am I?” would take an entire book to answer. This is that book.

“Tías And Primas: On Knowing And Loving The Women Who Raise Us”

“I come from women,” writes Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, “who protected any sense of dignity they had left with elbow grease and determination. This world prioritizes the men in their lives more than them at every turn. What all this translates to is that the women I love were often very judgmental.”

An immigrant to the U.S., Nicaraguan-born, the author “was raised in Latine neighborhoods until I moved away from Miami to Nashville, Tennessee … to attend Vanderbilt University and pursue my master of divinity degree…. My childhood household was very traditional and conservative, based on a patriarchal family structure in which men lead and women follow…. I am a non-white, non-Black Latina and identify as brown.”

Her new book is a compelling meditation on “Tías And Primas: On Knowing And Loving The Women Who Raise Us” ($30 in hardcover from Seal Press, also for Amazon Kindle, to be published September 10)—but not just aunts and cousins; there are matriarchs and best friends as well, all presented in the book as an “amalgamation of many people to create these specific archetypes,” sensitively illustrated by Josie Del Castillo.

These include Latinas who are pushed to be perfect, widowed and divorced aunts, the cousin who doesn’t like other women, the queer aunt, the aunt who is “scandalous,” and more. “I am writing this to rip these tías and primas from the clutches of sexism, homophobia, fatphobia, colonization, stigmatization of mental illnesses, male gaze, and rape culture.”

And “I write,” she says, “to help others feel seen…. I am all of the women in this book, in one way or another. They represent my inner fears, my deepest struggles, my best qualities, and my demons…. As I heal, I find myself writing about the women in my life. May it do for you whatever it needs to do.”

Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez will be speaking on “Self Preservation for First Generation College Students” Thursday, September 19 at 11:00 am at the Butte College Black Box Theater (ARTS 160). The talk is free and open to the public. For more information contact Amy Antongiovanni (Antongiovanniam@butte.edu) and see butte.edu/diversity.