Like most readers, I maintain a to be read (TBR) list. (Okay, actually three lists: one for fiction, one for nonfiction, and one for job-related nonfiction). When I finish reading a book, I usually consult my list and choose what’s next. Sometimes, though, I abandon my carefully curated selections and stroll over to the university library to browse the new books section to see if anything grabs my attention. Something always does. It is one of my core beliefs that there are too many interesting books to read and not enough time to read them. I want to read all the books.
Earlier this fall one such browsing session brought me to check out Héctor Tobar’s new book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.” Everything about the book sparked my curiosity from the title and subtitle to the unique layout the publisher—MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux—used.
I finished reading it this morning and thoroughly enjoyed Tobar’s elegant writing style, the captivating experiences he shares from history, contemporary Latinos, and his own life. The book struck me as a bit in the mold of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and I delighted in my familiarity with some of the scholars that influenced Tobar’s thinking about race and the migrant experience. He dedicated the book to Vicki Ruiz and acknowledged the influence of Nell Irvin Painter, Mae Ngai, Kelly Lytle Hernández, Natalia Molina, and Cheryl Harris. At one time or another I have asked students to read read articles, books, or excerpts from each of these scholars, except Harris, but I recall fondly reading Harris’s seminal law journal article, “Whiteness as Property,” as a graduate student.
I suspect some of Tobar’s key insights will rattle around in my head in coming weeks and that the extensive notes I took might come in handy later.
My venture away from my TBR list definitely paid off.
I am also adding at least one of Tobar’s other books to my TBR list, a work of fiction titled The Last Great Road Bum: A Novel. The title alone drew me in, I think because I’ve been contemplating a post election re-read of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, but after taking a look at the publisher’s description, I felt not that I might read this book, but that I must read this book:
Joe Sanderson died in pursuit of a life worth writing about. He was, in his words, a “road bum,” an adventurer and a storyteller, belonging to no place, people, or set of ideas. He was born into a childhood of middle-class contentment in Urbana, Illinois and died fighting with guerillas in Central America. With these facts, acclaimed novelist and journalist Héctor Tobar set out to write what would become The Last Great Road Bum.
A decade ago, Tobar came into possession of the personal writings of the late Joe Sanderson, which chart Sanderson’s freewheeling course across the known world, from Illinois to Jamaica, to Vietnam, to Nigeria, to El Salvador—a life determinedly an adventure, ending in unlikely, anonymous heroism.
The trove of personal documents, the connection to Urbana where I earned my PhD at the University of Illinois, the intertwining of late-twentieth-century international affairs—irresistible.
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