One shamefully even declared herself unfit to review it, because she herself was neither Mexican nor a migrant. A petition calling for Oprah to rescind her book choice was signed by dozens of Latin American writers, and some reviewers started clambering over the fence. American Dirt was quickly labelled “trauma porn”. When Gurba’s article was picked up by The New York Times, it went viral. Boasting of “zealously hate-reading the book”, Gurba accused Cummins of cultural appropriation (Cummins is not Mexican), of filling her novel with stereotypes, and of exploiting “the gringo appetite for Mexican pain”. The article, Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature by Myriam Gurba, a self-identifying queer Mexican-American writer, called American Dirt “an obra de caca” (a work of shit). The truth of their humanity is this gap in the middle that I felt like many people haven’t really thought about, so I think that’s what they were responding to.”īut while early reviews were mostly positive, an extraordinarily vitriolic piece, published on an obscure academic blog called Tropics of Meta a month before the book came out, proved to be a game-changer. “We have these political narratives from the Right and the Left, and everyone paints migrants with their own preconceived notions either they need our help and we need to save them, or they’re rapists and murderers. “The ways in which we’re engaged in the story of migration in this country tend to be very superficial,” she says.
We also introduce you to future contributor Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, a current NPR Kroc fellow, who joined the conversation. I asked Alt.Latino contributors Marisa Arbona-Ruiz and Catalina Maria Johnson to weigh in on the discussion from an arts and culture perspective.
Our colleagues at NPR's Latino USA probably have the most extensive and insightful exploration of the facts surrounding the issue. The back-and-forth has dominated social media for the last week and a half. The controversy surrounding the publication of American Dirt, a novel by Jeanine Cummins, has resulted in a firestorm: detractors claim the author lacks the credibility to write a story about Mexican immigrants (Cummins claims Puerto Rican heritage by way of a grandmother) those whom support her work say she has written a book with well-researched, real-to-life depictions of those who cross the U.S. When does a depiction of culture, history and identity become inauthentic? And according to whom? The response to American Dirt hasn't kept the novel off bookshelves, but has sparked a conversation.
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