Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”

Every day, people from Latin America enter into the United States, and they bring their hopes and dreams with them. Desires for safety and prosperity drive them to leave their ancestral lands and embark on that journey. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Tobar (The Last Great Road Bum) dives into the stories of migrants and their families as they explore what it means to relive their memories and mix it with the histories that made those experiences possible. Tobar does not shy away from addressing the interconnectedness of their memories with incidents of racism on U.S. soil. Their stories of humanity, hope, strength, and, at times, brutal grit, take readers from the deck of a steamship docked in the San Francisco Bay to the backyard deck of construction professionals in Georgia. Each story unpeels the layers of each individual’s sense of national and cultural identity, the connection to their ancestral pasts, and their visions for future generations growing up in their new country of origin. The passion for social justice is palpable in Tobar’s writing.