I've been writing books long enough to remember a time when there were only a handful of Latinx reviewers. That's changed. Dramatically. Huge thanks to @_franciscocantu for his thoughtful, beautiful review of my book Our Migrant Souls in @nytimesbooks.

My prologue for the reissue of the Nobel laureate Miguel Angel Asturias's novel Men of Maize is in The Paris Review online.

My book Our Migrant Souls is the winner of this year's Zócalo Book Prize. Please join myself and the great Natalia Molina as we talk about the book on Thurs., Jun 13 at 7. pm., in downtown L.A., at the old Herald Examiner building.

I can't wait until the movie awards season is over. Because then, and only then, will I stop getting messages in my in-box telling me "American Fiction is an instant modern classic." Attn: Orion Pictures: a dozen emails (yeah, I counted them) is enough.

Craft+persistence=a writer. Craft+persistence+humility=a good writer.

Truly moved to see my book Our Migrant Souls on the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2023. Really a wonderful honor. And to see it on the best-of-the-year lists at Time, Amazon, and NPR. Many thanks to the editors and reviewers at those places.

Our Migrant Souls won the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction this week. And I was deeply honored to share a stage with my fellow honorees: The legendary novelist James McBride (who won in fiction) and Ariel Aberg-Riger (for her work in YA literature).

My wonderful Guatemalan mother, so smart and funny. Like me, she never took a class in literary criticism. But throughout my life she's read my work and told me: "Mijito, siempre le das ese toquecito humano." Yeah, mom: little human touches. That's what it's all about. Gracias.

New Yorkers! Please join me next week, Thursday Oct. 12 @ 7 p.m., at the New York Public Library's iconic Schwarzman Building, where I will be discussing my book Our Migrant Souls with the wonderful novelist Alejandro Varela.

RT @nypl: On 10/12, join us for #LIVEfromNYPL with the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer @TobarWriter & Alejandro Varela as they discuss the co….

I think that we Latino writers, especially, should peer into the questions of social class at the root of our “identity.” We should write about our relationship to "white" ideas of success and stauts. A lot of our bravest writers do this. Onward and upward with the arts! 8/8.

The most infuriating thing was to read works of historical fiction (by some of our most celebrated writers) that were set in times and places where Latino people played a central role in the real-life story—and to see Latino people erased from the narrative. 7/8.

In the U.S. imagination, “Latino” identity is often equated with working-class status. It was no surprise, then, that time and again in those 150 nominated books (only a handful of which were written by Latinx writers) I saw Latino characters only in thin, supporting roles. 6/8.

I’m looking forward to literary art that peers into the soul of a country defined by its growing income inequalities. Art that reveals the essential emptiness and unsustainability of a middle-and-upper class life focused on consumerism and the acquisition of social status. 5/8.

Demon Copperhead, a novel filled with dysfunctional and drug-addicted Appalachian people, offers plentiful examples of the patronizing attitude our country’s cultural elite has toward poor “white” people. It was an often-beautiful book—that just as often truly offended me. 4/8.

U.S. Literature, like other mass media, most often tackles questions of class (income equality, exploitation) as stories about ethnic identity. Being poor and proud and angry about it in fiction usually means you’re a “person of color.” Or a character in a dystopian novel. 3/8.

After reading 150 books, it’s clear to me that the white cultural elite (being a published writer makes you part of the elite) can’t imagine working-class status and poverty as anything else but tragedy. “Poor” white people in the novels I read are sad, broken, failed people. 2/8.

Today, in honor of Labor Day, I would like to tell you what I learned about class struggle--and U.S. literature--after reading 150 novels and story collections, as a member of the 2023 Pulitzer jury for fiction. 1/8.

RT @pbsbooks: Be sure to tune in tonight at 8:00 PM ET to hear from @TobarWriter. His newest release, “Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on R….

I'm deeply honored to join so many great writers as a finalist for The Kirkus Prize, for my book "Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of 'Latino'"

Crazy Hilary got lost on the LA freeways apparently. She left Tijuana headed north, got to Palm Springs and made a left, going west all the way to Compton, then a sharp right on the 110 to Dodger Stadium, and then up the 5 into the desert, where she got lost looking for Vegas.