Héctor Tobar Wins the 2024 Zócalo Book Prize

Our Migrant Souls Is an Essential Exploration of ‘Latino’ Identity

Héctor Tobar is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.”

Zócalo has awarded the $10,000 prize yearly since 2011 to the nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion. The 13 previous Zócalo Public Square Book Prize recipients include Heather McGhee, Michael Ignatieff, Danielle Allen, Jonathan Haidt, and most recently, Michelle Wilde Anderson.

Tobar is the author of six books, a …

Interview by Sarah Rothbard | May 4, 2024

This Radical, Revolutionary Nation of Immigrants

Zócalo Book Prize Winner Jia Lynn Yang Chronicles the Changing Tides of American Identity

by Sarah Rothbard | May 21, 2021

The 2021 Zócalo Public Square Book and Poetry Prize winners, Jia Lynn Yang and Angelica Esquivel, are creators of works that find the humanity in two of Zócalo’s favorite subjects: …

South L.A. Doesn’t Need Saving

Instead, the Area Could Be a Savior to a California That’s Pushing out Its Working Class

By Joe Mathews | July 7, 2016

“How can we save South Los Angeles?” is a tired question. It’s an artifact of previous decades when the region formerly called South Central was known by its reputation for …

Using Art to Help Undocumented Students Become More Visible, On Their Own Terms

A Poet’s Powerful Example Inspired Immigrant Students in South L.A. to Dream Bigger

By Ky-Phong Tran | July 7, 2016

For three years, I was a high school English teacher at 103rd Street and Broadway, the southernmost tip of South Los Angeles, a stone’s throw west of Watts. Many Californians …

Big Corporations Are Good for Social Progress

Multinational Companies, in Particular, Have Found That Oppression of Minorities Is Just Bad for Business

by Andrés Martinez | July 13, 2015

Maybe we would all benefit if corporations wielded more political power, not less.

Ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, it’s been fashionable to deplore (with full-on …

Reforming Immigration and Education

Former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl on Ending the Debate Over Immigration and Wendy Kopp and Kevin Carey on Making Great Teachers

Hosted by Anne-Marie Slaughter | January 10, 2014

Anne-Marie Slaughter talks with former Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl about why 2014 may finally be the year the U.S. solves its immigration reform deadlock. Wendy Kopp, the founder of …

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