Héctor Tobar

Héctor Tobar (born 1963, Los Angeles) is a Los Angeles author and journalist, whose work examines the evolving and interdependent relationship between Latin America and the United States.

Héctor Tobar
Héctor Tobar at the 2011 Texas Book Festival.
Born1963
Los Angeles, California
Occupationauthor, journalist

Life

Tobar is the son of Guatemalan immigrants. His long career in journalism includes work for The New Yorker, LA Weekly, and many positions at the Los Angeles Times.[1] He was a Metro columnist for The Times, a book critic, and the paper's bureau chief in Mexico City and in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He also worked for several years as the National Latino Affairs Correspondent. Additionally, Tobar contributed to the newspaper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.[2][3] He is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz and the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of California, Irvine.[4]

Tobar is the author of The Tattooed Soldier, a novel set in the impoverished immigrant neighborhoods of Los Angeles in the weeks before the riots, and in Guatemala during the years of military dictatorship there. His non-fiction Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States, is a cross-country journey with stops in many of the new places where Latin American immigrants are settling, including Rupert, Idaho, Grand Island, Nebraska and Memphis, Tennessee. His third book, The Barbarian Nurseries, is a sweeping novel about class and ethnic conflict in modern Southern California: it was named a New York Times Notable Book for 2011 and won the 2012 California Book Award gold medal for fiction.

In 2006, Tobar was named one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the United States by Hispanic Business magazine.

During the 2010 Copiapó mining accident, while still trapped in the mine, the 33 miners chose to collectively contract with a single author to write an official history so that none of the 33 could individually profit from the experiences of others.[5][6] The miners chose Héctor Tobar who had exclusive access to the miners stories. In October 2014, he published an official account titled Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. It was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (General Nonfiction).[7]

Tobar has been an adjunct professor at Loyola Marymount University and Pomona College, was an assistant professor at the University of Oregon's school of journalism and communication, and is currently an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Writing

Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier was published in 1998. In Vasquez's "Interrogative Justice in Hector Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier," he writes, "Much of this scholarship stresses the novel’s pertinence to a demand for the [US] representation of the Central American diaspora. Consequently, in adopting cultural recognition as a precept, these Latinx literary critics often interpret the novel as an allegory for the diaspora’s success or failure to achieve recognition and inclusion within the broader polity. For critic and novelist Arturo Arias, the novel and its characters express the null space of Central American cultural and social identity within US multiculturalism." This interpretation of the novel reflects the valuable implications it serves for the Central American Community.[8]

Works

Novels
  • The Tattooed Soldier (1998), Delphinium Books, Penguin Books, ISBN 978-1-883285-15-9
  • The Barbarian Nurseries (2011), Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • The Last Great Road Bum (2020), Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Short stories
  • "Secret Stream" (2015)

Non-fiction
  • Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States (2005), Riverhead Books, ISBN 978-1-57322-305-8, sociology
  • Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free, or The 33 (2014), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-28060-4, true events

Awards and honors
  • 2011 California Book Awards Gold Medal Fiction winner for The Barbarian Nurseries [9]
  • 2014 California Book Awards Silver Medal Nonfiction winner for Deep Down Dark [9]

Adaptations
  • The 33 (2015), film directed by Patricia Riggen, based on book Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free
gollark: "Oops, we accidentally legalized murder."
gollark: (So they can be patched before release)
gollark: I bet that they have AI systems to attempt to find ridiculously convoluted loopholes in the law anyway.
gollark: Police: *untackle <@202533943705206784>*
gollark: I mean, you still get OS updates for I think 5 years.

References
  1. "Hector Tobar bio". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
  2. Jennifer McNulty (25 April 2005). "Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter's stories lead to new book, Translation Nation". UC Santa Cruz Currents. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
  3. "1993 Pulitzer Prizes". www.pulitzer.org.
  4. "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, alum Hector Tobar speaks on campus". UC Santa Cruz. 15 November 2007. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
  5. Mac McClelland. "'Deep Down Dark,' by Héctor Tobar". New York Times. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
  6. John Williams (November 21, 2014). "Book Review Podcast: 'Deep Down Dark'". New York Times. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
  7. "National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists for Publishing Year 2014". National Book Critics Circle. January 19, 2015. Retrieved January 29, 2015.
  8. Vázquez, Eric (2018-03-28). "Interrogative Justice in Héctor Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier". MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 64 (1): 129–152. doi:10.1353/mfs.2018.0005. ISSN 1080-658X.
  9. "California Book Awards | Commonwealth Club". www.commonwealthclub.org.
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