In its most recent California Reading List update, The New York Times has named UC Irvine professor Héctor Tobar's The Barbarian Nurseries (Picador) among readers’ top choices for books most representative of the Golden State published since 2000. Released in 2011, the novel by the professor of Chicano/Latino studies and literary journalism examines the class and ethnic divide in modern Southern California. It was a New York Times Notable Book; a Los Angeles Times Bestseller; a winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal for Fiction; and among Best Book of the Year lists by The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe.

According to the NYT recommendation submitted by Casey Lewis of Los Angeles, “It’s set in a fictional Orange County neighborhood that feels so real and is a great examination of the communities, and yet also the isolation, that define our lives in the Golden State. And it really dissects what it means to be Mexican American. I recommend this book to so many people, and it’s the kind of book that could have been written only by someone who really understands Southern California.”

In addition to The Barbarian Nurseries, Tobar has authored five books including the multi-award-winning Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of Latino and Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free. The latter was a New York Times bestseller and adapted into the film “The 33,” starring Antonio Banderas.

Tobar’s writing career has spanned more than 30 years with posts as a metro reporter, editor, critic, columnist, foreign correspondent, national correspondent, and city reporter at El Tecolote (San Francisco), LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. He’s written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harpers, and National Geographic, and he continues to be contributor to the op-ed pages of The New York Times.

Tobar earned his MFA in creative writing, fiction at UCI and has held teaching roles at Loyola Marymount University, Pomona College, Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the University of Oregon. He joined UCI as a member of the faculty in 2017 in both the School of Social Sciences and School of Humanities.