Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" is a powerful book that explores the complex development, meaning, and identity of "Latino." Tobar organizes chapters by themes titled: Empires, Walls, Beginnings, Cities, Race, Intimacies, Secrets, Lies, Light, and Home, each weaving a variety of generational perspectives, historical events, sociocultural developments, and personal accounts of Tobar and his family as well as his students and their families. This beautifully written collection of essays contains the linguistic elegance of poetry, the depth of sociocultural research, and the heartfelt connection of memoir. The following characterization of "empire" illustrates this point: "Stories about empire move us because they're echoes of the memories that reside deep in our collective consciousness. We live in a world of migrating peoples and interconnected markets, a global system of wealth creation built upon acts of violence."

The focus of the book shifts towards the end as Tobar describes traveling across the United States visiting Latinos living in a variety of contexts throughout the country. This section feels a bit disjointed from the rest of the book in that it reads like a traveling narrative describing encounters with individuals along a journey. Nevertheless, the book is an engaging and insightful read well balanced with historical and sociological research coupled with heartfelt personal experiences.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

One of the best non-fiction books I have read so far this year. This is my first exposure to the author, and this book drew me immediately. There is a photo of him and his mother and he writes using "you" as in talking about his mother's history but expands to talking to his students. He weaves personal narratives from his life, from his students and history. It is grounded in Los Angeles where he grew up and he weaves through Thomas Dixon whose book ended up becoming the film "Birth of A Nation" to living next door to James Earl Ray. He talks about racial constructs as pertains to Latinos/Hispanics and Latinx.. His chapters are simply titled - Empires, Walls, Beginnings, cities, Race, Intimacies, Secrets, Lies, Light, and Home - yet the way he weaves different generational perspectives, personal histories, cultural histories and feelings is incredibly beautiful and moving. One of the particularly moving passages to me was when his young son asked (upon seeing the border wall between Mexico and the U.S. extend into the water -- "can't people just swim around the wall?" - how do you tell a young child what the ramifications for anyone who tried that would be (he equates it to how black parents have to have the "talk" with their children about encounters with the police. And as a professor, having to explain to his young students who are writing about their parents but don't seem to know what they were fleeing when they came to America.

I highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC and I left an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, it was inter-connected tales and essays about the Latino experience. I liked the author's insight. Very well-written, thought-provoking

I loved the prose in the book, though I admit I found it hard to get into the content at the beginning of the book. Otherwise, I loved how the author weaved his and other stories, as well as some historical anecdotes to reflect and meditate on past, current and potential future experiences of the Latino/Latinx communities. It was both a realistic and sad reflection, yet hopeful at the same time. I felt he did a good job and showcasing the interconnectedness of different communities and showing the humanity in the groups he spoke about.

Our Migrant Souls is a beautiful, book-length essay filled with indignation, melancholy, and, most importantly, love. Love for Latinos, love for a mixing of races and cultures, love for breaking free of outdated, restrictive stories.

Unlike his earlier Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States, which was essentially a compilation of mini-profiles as Tobar traveled across the United States meeting Latinos, this book masterfully weaves the stories of his students, the people that he meets, and his own family into a moving treatise about what connects Latinos of all sorts and about the future we can create if we fight the oppressive capitalist system that dehumanizes the poor and the brown and Black.

Read it. If, like me, you're Latino, it will fill you with pride. If you're not, it will help you see the people all around you that you're failing to see.

Sadly, it wasn’t what I expected from the book and I couldn’t connect with the main message of the author. I read a few pages, but I didn’t continue because it felt like an obligation to read this book and that feels like a burden. I hope others have a different experience with this book.

Wow. Tobar uses the phrase 'emotional commonality,' and I understood the interconnectedness across Latino populations and the POC diasporas. This book is truly a meditation, as Tobar explores the intersections of the umbrella term 'Latino' (and its offshoots) and how colonial structures of oppression bind us as people of colour.

Using snippets and ideas of stories told by his students, we see a journey through America where the nation's heart lies in the turmoil and hope of a generation of Latino Americans who take up the banner of multiple cultural faces and nomenclature.

The book is grounded in history, yet it looks to the present, in the varying faces of existence across time and place, to explain the resilience of populations.

Dislikes:
The writing, while beautiful, could often be jarring due to its sequencing and pacing.