Nerd Picnic reviewed Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar
Three and a half stars
3 stars
The subtitle is apt: a meditation on race and the meanings and myths of "Latino". It's a series of essays that combine memoir, history, travel, and interviews.
I liked that he never goes long without reminding the reader that "race" and "nationality" are made up. (He touches on how gender is also a performance, rather than an essence, but that's not the topic of the book.)
At the same time, he has a couple of insights that give specific attributes to this provisional category of "Latinx" within the United States. The insights are hard to summarize, but are related to the essentialness of their jobs, their intimacy with "White" neighbors, and having survived the machinery of empire.
Ultimately, I think this is a class-based analysis. He knows that ethnic and race categories are fluid across time, but economic exploitation really isn't.
The subtitle is apt: a meditation on race and the meanings and myths of "Latino". It's a series of essays that combine memoir, history, travel, and interviews.
I liked that he never goes long without reminding the reader that "race" and "nationality" are made up. (He touches on how gender is also a performance, rather than an essence, but that's not the topic of the book.)
At the same time, he has a couple of insights that give specific attributes to this provisional category of "Latinx" within the United States. The insights are hard to summarize, but are related to the essentialness of their jobs, their intimacy with "White" neighbors, and having survived the machinery of empire.
Ultimately, I think this is a class-based analysis. He knows that ethnic and race categories are fluid across time, but economic exploitation really isn't.
