Skip to main content

Héctor Tobar

Biography

Héctor Tobar

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.

Héctor Tobar

Books by Héctor Tobar

Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino"
by Héctor Tobar - Nonfiction, Social Sciences

“Latino” is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States, and also one of the most rapidly growing. Composed as a direct address to the young people who identify or have been classified as “Latino,” OUR MIGRANT SOULS is the first account of the historical and social forces that define Latino identity. Taking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media and pop culture, Héctor Tobar's book 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.

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free
by Héctor Tobar - Biography, Nonfiction

When the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped 33 miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking 69 days. The entire world watched what transpired above-ground during the grueling and protracted rescue, but the saga of the miners' experiences below the Earth's surface --- and the lives that led them there --- has never been heard until now.

The Barbarian Nurseries
by Héctor Tobar

Héctor Tobar takes us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams and ambitions.