Crossing the Threshold of the City: Urban Refugees in Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier

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ABSTRACTOne of the few novels in contemporary American literature representing the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier serves as a historical text providing insight into a tumultuous moment in American history. This article examines The Tattooed Soldier as a literary documentation of the pre-uprising period at a time of severe distress in the city. The depiction of the Los Angeles uprising at the end of the novel dramatically draws a parallel between the civil war in Guatemala and urban discord in the US, with the violence reviving the traumatic memories of Central American refugees in the host country. The narrative framework gradually unravels the threads of an urban tension that has accumulated in the deeper layers of the city and finally erupts into “the great burning.” The documentation of a specific period before the uprising not only reveals the workings of spatial injustice in the city but also provides an alternative to the mainstream discourse that associates the Los Angeles riots with stereotypical images of African-Americans destroying public property. More importantly, Tobar’s representation of an urban everyday life that remains outside the official geometric city grid serves as a critical esthetic that contributes to the discourse of resistance among urban study scholars.