“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.

"How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With The History Of Slavery Across America"

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, in Virginia, was not only his home but a plantation. A World Heritage site, it has also become a place to memorialize the 607 people Jefferson owned in his lifetime, enslaving even his own six children he had with Sally Hemings. As reporter/researcher Clint Smith notes, the person who wrote "all men are created equal" "believed that Black people, as a rule, were not capable of poetic expression. 'Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.'"

Himself a poet and staff writer at The Atlantic, Smith, a New Orleans native with a Harvard doctorate, visits "eight places in the United States as well as one abroad to understand how each reckons with its relationship to the history of American slavery." Smith calls on scholarly accounts, empathetic interviews with those attending the sites he visits, and oral histories--the way tenuous memories are passed down.

He visits "plantations, prisons, cemeteries, museums, memorials, houses, historical landmarks, and cities," mostly in the South but also New York and Senegal, site of the "Door of No Return."

"How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With The History Of Slavery Across America" ($18.99 in paperback from Little, Brown and Company; also for Amazon Kindle) is the 2023-2024 Book in Common for Butte College, Chico State (resources at csuchico.edu/bic) and other community organizations. (Smith is scheduled for a Laxson Auditorium presentation April 11, 2024.) It is a stunning book, rigorously fact-checked and yet deeply personal.

"Here I was, on a plantation that enslaved hundreds of people who had skin like mine, having a conversation with a white, conservative, Fox News–consuming woman from Texas, whose mother had conveyed to her throughout her life that people like me were—that perhaps I was—better off dead than alive. A woman with whom, surprisingly even to me, I was sharing photos of my fourteen-month-old son."

"The history of slavery," he concludes, "… is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories." There are big gaps in our collective memories, and this book succeeds in filling them in.

"Inspired To Be..."

Sacramento-based Crystel Patterson (crystelpatterson.com), one of the featured authors at the recent Chocolate Festival in Paradise, was drawn by the story of rebuilding and resilience.

That same spirit is evident in her three self-published children's books, each beautifully illustrated by Briana Young and available in Amazon Kindle format, "inspired by the culture, experiences, and dreams of Black people with the goal of inspiring all children." 

The first in the "Inspired To Be..." series, "One Flip, Two Flip, Three Flip, Four" ($9.01 in paperback) tells the story of Ruby, inspired, Patterson writes, "by Gabby Douglas, a gymnast who became the first African American to win the individual all-around event at the 2012 Summer Olympics when she was 16 years old."

Ruby's energy leads to "flipping all around the house/ landing light as a mouse." Gymnastics lessons bring "cartwheels, handstands, tucks and pikes" and eventually a gold medal. "She knew it in her heart./ Her dreams would true true.../ Now, what about you?"

The second book, "I Am Different" ($13.58 paperback), is "dedicated to all the children who look and feel different. I hope you already love or will learn to love everything that makes you stand out ... despite the mixed reactions." The story is about Malachi, Nia, and Ekon, three children who endure stinging words about their skin color, name, or hair. 

"My hair is different, this I know. My hair is different, and it shows./ So mixed reactions I receive, I wonder who I should believe." The answer? "I believe those who matter to me/ My family and friends who uplift me./ They always see the best in me/ Which is what I see when I look at me!" (A glossary of the some of the key words used in the book are intended to spur family discussion about race.)

In "Superheroes Here And There" ($8.25 in paperback), inspired by the late actor Chadwick Boseman, young James asks his parents if superheroes are real. Well, "they can't walk through solid walls, that's for sure." But they "remove obstacles to help us soar.... Like your mom or dad, a teacher or friend.../ Whose powers aren't super, but human instead."

We could use more humanity.

"How To Be An Antiracist"

The 2020-2021 "Book In Common" for Butte College, Chico State University (csuchico.edu/bic), and other local organizations is an autobiographical exploration of the deep roots of racism in America, ideas which infect even people of color themselves. Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, DC, explores his deepening understanding of the pervasiveness of racist policies and invites readers to make the same journey.

"How To Be An Antiracist" ($27 in hardcover from One World; also for Amazon Kindle) begins with definitions, as Kendi realizes how racist policies affect every aspect of a person's existence--from biology (think "eugenics movement") to behavior (where well-meaning abolitionists "argue that oppression has degraded the behaviors of oppressed people").

Two types of racism intertwine in American history, segregation and assimilation. The segregationist declares he is "not racist" in promoting "separate but equal" institutions; more subtly, the assimilationist, also claiming not to be racist, promotes "equality" within a White standard.

Calling oneself "not racist" is, Kendi writes, "a claim that signifies neutrality: 'I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.' But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of 'racist' isn’t 'not racist.' It is 'antiracist.' What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist."

Racist policies, Kendi says, flow from self-interest. "Racism" he defines as "a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities. ... Race and racism are power constructs of the modern world. ... Racism is not even six hundred years old. It's a cancer that we've caught early."

Drawing a metaphor from his experience with colon cancer, Kendi's antiracist response focuses on policy: "Remove any remaining racist policies, the way surgeons remove the tumors. Ensure there are clear margins, meaning no cancer cells of inequity left in the body politic, only the healthy cells of equity. Encourage the consumption of healthy foods for thought...."

And breathe.