Book in Common Lecture:
from Héctor Tobar
Thursday, April 10 | 7:30 p.m.
Laxson Auditorium
Buy Tickets: $27 | Youth age 17 and under $17 | Chico State Student FREE
The Book in Common is a shared, community read, designed to promote discussion and understanding of important issues facing the broader community. The Book in Common is chosen each year by a group of Chico State University and Butte College faculty, staff, students and community members.
We are excited to announce that the Book in Common for 2024-2025 is Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of ‘Latino’ by Héctor Tobar (2023). Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and novelist. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestseller, Deep Down Dark, as well as The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. Héctor is also a contributing writer for the New York Times opinion pages and an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. He's written for The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and other publications. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, L.A. Noir, Zyzzyva, and Slate. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family.
The publisher describes the book as “a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as ‘Latino’… [that] 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, leader, and 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 21st century.”
Join Héctor Tobar for a lecture on this book selection, a curated Q & A session, and exclusive book signing at the close of the event.
Author Website Book in Common
