TOBAR, Héctor 1963-

PERSONAL: Born 1963, in Los Angeles, CA; married to Virginia Espino; children: Dante, Diego, Luna. Education: Attended University of California at Santa Cruz; University of California at Irvine, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Mexico City, Mexico. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Riverhead Books, Penguin Putnam, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Journalist. Worked for a community paper in San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, staff member, 1989–94, 1996–, Buenos Aires bureau chief and Mexico City correspondent, beginning 2005.

AWARDS, HONORS: Pulitzer Prize (with others), 1992, for Los Angeles Times coverage of Los Angeles riots.

WRITINGS:

The Tattooed Soldier (novel), Delphinium Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-speaking United States, Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to various periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Journalist Héctor Tobar was born in Los Angeles, California, to parents who had recently moved to the United States from Guatemala. After college, he worked briefly for a local paper in San Francisco before moving on to the Los Angeles Times. Over the course of his career, he has won a Pulitzer Prize with fellow staff members for his coverage of the Los Angeles riots. Tobar took time off from the paper in the mid-1990s in order to study creative writing at the University of California at Irvine, where he earned an M.F.A.

Tobar's first novel, The Tattooed Soldier, was written during this period. With this book, Tobar mines his own family's background, with an extensive back story that takes place in Guatemala City. He recounts the experiences of a leftist student named Antonio, his revolutionary wife Elena, and a peasant named Guillermo, who becomes the leader of a death squad that eventually kills Elena and her child. At the start of the novel, Antonio has been reduced to a homeless pauper living on the streets of Los Angeles, seeking his revenge on Guillermo. This goal is achieved during the height of the Los Angeles riots. H. Bruce Franklin, in a review for Radical Teacher, called the book "a magnificent work of social realism" and "an overwhelmingly powerful and insightful fiction." Rex Roberts, writing for Insight on the News, commented that the book "can be faulted for dialogue that often seems obvious or awkward," but concluded that it "conveys a sense of history, of world events pressing in on the protagonists" an is "a welcome change from inward-looking narratives that take place in political vacuums."

In Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-speaking United States Tobar turns to nonfiction and chronicles the changes in the attitudes of Latin immigrants to their native language and customs. Where such immigrants were once eager to adopt the customs and language of their new homeland, this is no longer true. They are now more likely to create a new identity that combines old customs with those of their adopted country. Ellen D. Gilbert, in a review for Library Journal, wrote that Tobar "skillfully goes beyond the typical barrio to demonstrate the far-reaching influences of Spanish-speaking individuals and communities in America today." In the Houston Chronicle, Ruy Teixeira remarked that "this book is the perfect corrective to the fuzzy profile of the nation's No. 1 minority group that many Americans carry around in their heads," concluding that "Tobar's stories … should leave no one in doubt about the powerful influence the growth of the Hispanic population will have on communities throughout the United States."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2005, Hazel Rochman, review of Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-speaking United States, p. 1251.

Houston Chronicle, May 6, 2005, Ruy Teixeira, "Not Lost in Translation: Writer Links Experiences of Spanish-speaking Immigrants."

Insight on the News, September 7, 1998, Rex Roberts, review of The Tattooed Soldier, p. 36.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2005, review of Translation Nation, p. 281.

Library Journal, April 1, 2005, Ellen D. Gilbert, review of Translation Nation, p. 115.

Publishers Weekly, April 13, 1998, review of The Tattooed Soldier, p. 48.

Radical Teacher, winter, 2004, H. Bruce Franklin, review of The Tattooed Soldier, p. 38.