American Dirt

[Tom Wood]

I've been watching the uproar surrounding Jeanine Cummins' new book, American Dirt. I just came across the Latino USA NPR podcast of January 29, 2020 here:

https://www.latinousa.org/2020/01/29/americandirt/

The journalist who hosted the podcast, Maria Hinojosa, interviewed Myriam Gurba, who penned a negative review of the book that eventually went viral:

https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/

and also interviewed Sandra Cisneros, who stood by her positive review, Luis Alberto Urrea, a Mexican-American author who has written extensively about border life, and finally Jeanine Cummins herself.

Additional background here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/24/publishers-defend-american-dirt-claims-cultural-appropriation-jeanine-cummins-oprah

Twitter discussions are under the #americandirt hashtag.

Many of the people on Twitter expressed disappointment with Cisneros for standing by her positive review. However, I thought she gave the most nuanced insight into the book when she said that a novel has to be an explosive page-turner from the start and that this novel could act as a Trojan horse to bring the border issues to the wider readership of white middle-class America, and maybe change some minds.

It's interesting that the criticism is (mostly) not about a white person telling a LatinX story, but that the book was positioned as literary social commentary when it should have been sold for what it is - a romance thriller set in Mexico. ETA: And that the literary social commentary should be written by the people who are actually living it, #ownvoices, and the publishing industry should publish those voices.

Regarding the now infamous table setting, Cummins says the publisher gave the book cover to the caterer who gave it to the florist who interpreted it into a table setting that looks like 'the wall' wrapped in barbed wire. That nobody involved understood that they were mis-positioning the book by inadvertently tying it to 'the wall' and hence to immigration is, to me, the real story here. I suspect that the florist was just trying to be 'edgy' and never read the book, so they didn't understand the optics of what they were doing. The publisher has now acknowledged that they were tone-deaf on that one.

[Lynn]

My take is that by telling people what this book should be to them ("a Grapes of Wrath for our times") and positioning it as "the great immigrant novel, the story of our time" was pretty much what led to all this backlash.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/24/798894249/latinx-critics-speak-out-against-american-dirt-jeanine-cummins-responds

That's the article I read about it a week or so ago, and I thought it did a pretty good job of explaining the whole thing.

If this had been sold as any other kind of book, I seriously doubt most of this criticism would have made it off twitter. :D

Apparently the book is doing great in the stores though! :D Controversy sells books if you've got the stomach for it.

[DrewMcGunn]

I've followed a bit of the kerfuffle. While part of me is worried about the whole appropriating thing, some of what I have read strikes a bit closer to home and I think is probably worth discussing. And that is the importance of research. Some criticism has pointed out that the main characters are middle-class and that some of the behaviors were not within keeping of the character's middle-class background.
Of course, I'm a research hound and will dump four or five hours of research into each hour of writing, which makes for slow writing sometimes. But I wonder if some of what folks are tagging as appropriation might actually run foul of poor research. I don't know. I'm not Ms. Cummins, and I don't know how much research she put into her novel.

While I tend to reject the notion and arguments of cultural appropriation and fall firmly on the side of write what you want, I'm also keenly aware of my limitations when writing. In my finished series, I had POV characters that were white, Hispanic, and Amerindian. I had secondary characters that were freedmen and women as well as slaves (Story was set in the antebellum period of the 1830s to 1850s). I researched as best as I was able, the mindset of the various factions that I was portraying so that each POV character was true to what is known.

Setting aside the idea that part of what gets appropriation apologists upset is their feeling that POC are underrepresented in traditional publishing (which, as an indie, I don't really don't have strongly formed opinions about)  I do wonder how much the accusation of appropriation goes the problem of poor research? Any thoughts?

Edited to add my thoughts on Lynn's post: I thought the blurb on Amazon was garbage. Telling people that this is the best novel since sliced bread was stupid, IMO, and worthy of a little blowback.

[Anarchist]

Anyone willing to post a tl;dr?

[LilyBLily]

I'm on the research side myself. I always check my characters' names on google in case they happen to be the same as a movie star or politician--or stripper. In this case, apparently the opening line of the novel uses the same name as the murderer of Selena. Yolanda Saldivar is a name that someone should have checked. People have been laughing on Twitter.

As for the hype, we're used to it for everything; why should this strike us as worse? I suspect it's because there may not have been a major serious novel published here yet about the apparent topic. When society finally pays cognizance to something, there usually are some embarrassingly awkward first steps. 

I say "apparent" because I haven't read the book.

[dgcasey]

Apparently the book is doing great in the stores though! :D Controversy sells books if you've got the stomach for it.

Well, as they say, there is no bad publicity. 

[Tom Wood]

Anyone willing to post a tl;dr?

I wrote several drafts in an attempt to answer you, but it's particularly difficult to do for this situation because there are equally valid and passionately-held opinions that constellate around each other. Trying to do a tl;dr that has any focus at all will do a disservice to most of the other opinions.

[Anarchist]

Anyone willing to post a tl;dr?

I wrote several drafts in an attempt to answer you, but it's particularly difficult to do for this situation because there are equally valid and passionately-held opinions that constellate around each other. Trying to do a tl;dr that has any focus at all will do a disservice to most of the other opinions.

Thanks for trying, man.

I'm gonna let this one go right over my head.

[Luke Everhart]

This came up on the other forum. I've not read it, though I read a fair deal about it. My thoughts are more general.

The notion of "cultural appropriation" is pernicious, balkanizing, and spits in the face of one of the founding concepts of our nation, one essential for a nation predicated on a creed rather than ethnicity, that of the 'melting pot'.

And I guess I'll regurgitate my take I have on it from the other board:

Regarding American Dirt, Mexican American novelist and poet Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) called it "the great novel of Las Americas".
Additionally, Dominican American novelist/poet Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies) declared it a "dazzling accomplishment". 

The most ridiculous notion underpinning this whole controversy is the idea that the experience of immigrants, Mexicans, or Mexican immigrants is monolithic; and, that therefore, the author can be called out for "inaccuracies". Those so-called inaccuracies can be fairly understood to simply be samples of the broad variety of experiences of the people and journey concerned

Their experiences, and that ethnic group generally, is every bit as diverse in its experience and outlook as the broader swath of humanity. Unfortunately, it seems that in recent years every ethnicity is assigned a monolithic identity against which any deviation is deemed offensive.

If those in an uproar over it accorded Mexicans and immigrants the respect and consideration of being a diverse group with broadly varied experiences even in the course of similar events then... well, there wouldn't be an uproar.

[Shoe]

I'm not Ms. Cummins, and I don't know how much research she put into her novel.

Facts seem to matter less and less. I'm bending the topic a bit, but having just finished "Where The Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens, I'm nearly astounded at its success (spending most of last year on the NYT bestseller list), let alone that it was published as-is. It's got over 36,000 reviews, most of them five-star.

Though there's some lovely writing, I doubt the author has ever stepped foot in North Carolina where the novel takes place (an opinion shared in many three- and two-star reviews). Who would drive to Asheville from the coast to buy a bicycle? It's an eight-hour drive. Was nearby Wilmington closed?

And where is the uproar over the racist or tone-deaf vernacular (attributed to '50s Blacks and swamp-poor whites)?

I guess Crawdads slipped under the radar even though it became a bestseller. Lucky maybe.