Join the Book in Common Community Read Challenge and read Héctor Tobar’s Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of ‘Latino’ in preparation for the author’s visit to campus on April 10.
Community Read Challenge 4
By April 16
- Get your ticket for the Book in Common talk by Héctor Tobar, April 10, 7:30 p.m. at Laxson Auditorium (tickets $27, youth age 17 and under $17, free for Butte College and Chico State students).
- Get your copy of Our Migrant Souls and read the following chapters: “Light,” “Home,” and “Conclusion: Utopias” (pages 169-241).
- Join the Four-Week Book Club and attend the fourth discussion on April 16 from noon–1 p.m. in the Arts and Humanities Building (ARTS), Room 227. You can also find discussion questions for these chapters.
- Attend the panel, “What’s at Stake? Immigration, Civil Liberties, and Grassroots Action” on April 16 at 5:30 p.m. in Performing Arts Center 134 (Rowland-Taylor Recital Hall). The panel features Dr. Maitreya Badami, associate professor of legal studies and supervising attorney of the Community Legal Information Clinic (CLIC); Dr. Gloria Lopez, assistant professor of history and faculty in residence of El Centro Latinx Resource Center; Dr. Amy Magnus, associate professor of political science and criminal justice and director of Civic Engagement. Moderated by Yvette Zúñiga, Dream Center coordinator.
- Get your ticket for Chico State Dream Center’s Bonfire Immigration Stories, a collaboration with Bonfire Storytelling. Taking place on May 1 at 6 p.m. in Performing Arts Center 144 (Harlen Adams Theatre), this special event promises to be a powerful evening of community, courage, and connection, with stories by students, staff, alumni, and community members centered on migration, identity, family, resilience, and belonging. Tickets go on sale through the University Box Office on April 14 ($18 general admission, $12 students).
Featuring Ermelindo Salgado Hernandez, graduate student assistant at El Centro Latinx Resource Center, and Kiara Castanon, graduate intern at the Cross-Cultural Leadership Center. Both Ermelindo and Kiara are graduate students in Chico State’s master’s of social work program.
Ermelindo shares, “At its core, El Centro Resource Center is committed to uplifting our Latinx student population. As a Hispanic-Serving Institution, we aim to foster student success, retention, and a deep sense of belonging by providing culturally responsive programming and a safe, affirming space. As a former undergraduate student at Chico State, I saw firsthand the urgent need for more excellent representation and expanded resources to support Latinx students in their academic journeys. El Centro has become more than just a center—it is a home. Since its opening in fall 2024, we have welcomed over 1,800 students, offering them services and a community where they can thrive.
Earlier this semester, Ermelindo and Kiara worked with Dr. Devjani (Juni) Banerjee-Stevens to host the event, “Storytelling as Healing.” This event was designed to urgently recognize a need to come together in community. Ermelindo explains, that in “today’s political climate, where immigration policies continue to shape lived experiences, storytelling offers a means to process, heal, and reclaim our narratives.” Kiara explains that storytelling can become “a platform to give voice to those whose experiences are often overlooked or misunderstood, shedding light on the strength and resilience it takes to overcome barriers.” Inspired by Tobar’s Our Migrant Souls, Kiara also shared that storytelling fosters “empathy, awareness, and ultimately a deeper understanding of the immigrant experience. It’s about not only listening to their stories but also recognizing the shared humanity that unites us all, regardless of the walls that may divide us.” The partnership event between the Dream Center and Bonfire Storytelling on May 1 at 6 p.m. in Performing Arts Center 144 (Harlen Adams Theatre) will center the power of stories and, as Tobar suggests, recognize that change can “begin with the idea that community is born from our shared and intersecting experiences of empire and displacement” (page 237).
| “I realize now that the light of these Guatemalan memories has never left me. The light of Guatemalan dusk, of its incandescent bulbs. A bit of this village, a place I really knew very little about, was always with me during the long, solitary years of my boyhood in Los Angeles, where I grew up as the only child of a divorced and distracted immigrant woman in her twenties. The Eden glow of Guatemala has stayed with me, decade after decade; I’ve never stopped feeling its warmth, and I never stopped believing that my family began in a place where rivers flowed and steam trains ran on steel rails. The Guatemalan light in my memory made me stronger and gave me a sense of my place in the world” (pages 189-190). | “Ahora entiendo que la luz de estos recuerdos guatemaltecos nunca me abandonó. La luz del ocaso guatemalteco, de sus bombillos incandescentes. Un poco de este pueblo, un lugar del que en realidad sabía muy poco, me acompañó siempre durante los largos y solitarios años de mi niñez en Los Ángeles, donde crecí como hijo único de una inmigrante veinteañera, divorciada y distraída. El resplandor edénico de Guatemala ha permanecido conmigo, década tras década; nunca he dejado de sentir su calor, y nunca he dejado de creer que mi familia empezó en un lugar donde corrían ríos y los trenes de vapor circulaban sobre rieles de acero. El recuerdo de la luz guatemalteca me hizo más fuerte y me dio un sentido de cuál era mi lugar en el mundo" (página 205). Traducción de Laura Muñoz Bonilla y Tiziana Laudato |
Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and novelist. Our Migrant Souls won the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction, the Zócalo Book Prize awarded to a nonfiction work that explores community, human connectedness, and social cohesion, and it was named to best of the year lists by The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Time, and NPR, among others. In addition to Our Migrant Souls, Tobar is the author of the critically acclaimed Deep Down Dark, The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. Tobar is a professor of English and Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family.
