We want to be taken seriously by the major publishers and the media. They’re not going to call out their racist coworker because a white author has made the apparently novel case that Mexicans are people too. There is no doubt that with all this controversy behind the publication of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, author Myriam Gurba was the key spark in calling attention to what she feels are major problems in Cummins’ novel. "American Dirt" is an accurate depiction of what Americans demand Mexicans and other brown people suffer to be allowed into the country. Critics are calling it trauma porn. American Dirt’s Mexican characters are in awe of how beautiful Mexican cities are, at how nice so many migrants are, at how everyone has such sad stories, at how many people in Mexico really are people after all. Austin writer Richard Z. Santos’s debut novel, Trust Me, will be published by Arte Público Press on March 31. Get our weekly newsletter, filled with good reads, news analysis—and updates on special events. But the industry gatekeepers who promoted American Dirt didn’t think about recent immigrants, or second-generation Americans, or fifteenth-generation Americans. Flatiron offered no details, and earlier this week journalist Roberto Lovato said on Twitter that the publisher has acknowledged that Cummins hadn’t received any death threats. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. I thought about it before the 2016 election and I’ve thought about it more ever since. Oprah Winfrey is breaking her silence on the controversy surrounding … We’re looking at our colleagues and marveling at their cluelessness, and we’re getting in lots of social media fights. Characters info-dump how the asylum process works. Tagged Alt.Latino American Dirt controversy Jeanine Cummins Myriam Gurba NPR Parul Sehgal Post navigation. Daniel Peña is an assistant professor of English at the University of Houston-Downtown.He’s the author of the novel “Bang,” which explores “the symbiotic relationship between American immigration policy and the drug war in Mexico.”. If American Dirt was written for a white audience, then who are these anti-violence messages meant for? I felt anxious for myself and my daughter. 'American Dirt' critics confront Oprah, author Jeanine Cummins in upcoming show Winfrey organized a show airing March 6th that put the book, the author and the talk show host herself on trial. At the end of the book, when Lydia and Luca are in the desert, exhausted after their ordeal, knowing how close they are to death and how close they are to salvation, I started to feel a tightness in my chest and a tension in my jaw. All of these people, not to mention Cummins herself, genuinely want the world to be a better, more tolerant place. White writers suddenly felt a need to write op-eds stating that violence is bad. The early buzz was deafening. Writers are finding themselves arguing with friends and heroes. Just How Many Texans Are in the Marvel Universe Now, Anyway? It is Sebastián’s exposé on the kingpin, who also happens to be a frequent customer of Lydia’s bookstore, that serves as the linchpin for the violence that sets off t… Guests. In a recent Latino USA episode on the controversy, Sandra Cisneros admitted that Cummins’s name on the book jacket would reach an audience that Cisneros’s own name just couldn’t. To the book’s most cogent critics it doesn’t matter at all that Cummins is white. But both of those books came out more than a century ago, well before radio, television, film, and the internet stole primacy from the printed word. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it all the time. Julia Alvarez said the book can “change hearts and transform policies.” Stephen King said, “This book will be an important voice in the discussion about immigration.” Kirkus Reviews, which I frequently write for, said the novel “makes migrants seeking to cross the southern U.S. border indelibly individual.” NPR said the novel “nails what it’s like to live in this age of anxiety.”. Because it’s an NPR radio platform, listeners hear not only words of the interviewees, but also their tone. See details. The harder people try to extricate themselves, the deeper they sink. Beautifully written about love and hope, this palpitation inducing story drew me in right from the get go and I could not put it down. “I was appalled at the way Latino migrants … were characterized within that public discourse,” she wrote. We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. At the end of the day, the publishing industry turned us—my us, not Jeanine Cummins’s us—into the faceless brown masses that it so desperately wanted to humanize. So I’m not really part of the group that Cummins is writing about. There were, though, stirrings of dissent. “The real failures of the book,” she wrote, “have little to do with the writer’s identity and everything to do with her abilities as a novelist.”. Sorry, we’re unable to find an account with that username and password. American Dirt’s author, Jeanine Cummins, identifies herself as white and Latina. Coffee House Press is scrambling to print new copies of Myriam Gurba’s Chicana memoir Mean. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. Booksellers quickly latched onto American Dirt, making it their number one recommended book for February. If American Dirt, million-dollar advance and all, had been billed as a juicy romance or a narco-thriller, there still would have been plenty of complaints. To her mind it’s ignorant, and needs to be spoon-fed one-dimensional characters in order to believe that migrants are three-dimensional people. In order to write this piece I read the book that wasn’t meant for me and, through sheer exploitative force of brutal emotion, I saw myself in it. There was the time she picked James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces for the book club, only to later find out that the work he’d presented as a memoir was closer to fiction. I’m a novelist myself, but I don’t believe that novels can do what so many people were desperate for this one to do. Who knew? Cummins received a rare seven-figure advance for the book from her publisher, Flatiron (an imprint of Macmillan), and she sold the film rights immediately. And while it has spurred a worthy dialogue about the right to read (and write), the core message of the book has been lost in the midst. Texas’s Most Famous Historian Looks Back at His Own, Legendary Life, Remembering Karl Kilian, Founder of Houston’s Brazos Bookstore, In Her Tender Poetry Collection, Lucy Griffith Commemorates a West Texas Figure. We dig into the conversation around the novel American Dirt. (By contrast, Myriam Gurba has received death threats for her criticisms of American Dirt.) Which segment of the culture do these white writers think need to hear this message? American Dirtfollows the journey of a mother and son fleeing Mexico for America after their entire family is murdered on the orders of a local cartel kingpin. In her much-discussed author’s note, Cummins admits her didactic intentions. There were other missteps by Cummins and her publisher, everything from her bending the truth about her “undocumented” Irish husband to the gobsmackingly stupid decision to set out barbed-wire themed centerpieces at a luncheon celebrating the book. My eyes have been open my whole life and American Dirt was simply not written for me. Texas Monthly Recommends: Nighttime Kayaking, The Best Thing in Texas: Bernie Sanders Travels Across the State as a Meme, Feast Your Eyes Upon This Outrageous Car-Themed Mansion for Sale in North Texas, Nobody Mattered to the Houston Astros Quite Like George Springer Did, Broken Pelvises, Collapsed Lungs, and Decades of Winning: Barrel Racing’s Martha Josey Has Seen It All, How the Most Hyped U.S. Oil Merger in a Decade Went Bust, Meet the Unruly Clan That Once Ruled the Hill Country, Sanderson Is an Underrated, Adventurous West Texas Escape, After Standing Up to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, Congressman Chip Roy Faces an Uncertain Future in the Texas GOP, Birria Ramen Has Come to Fort Worth, and It Is Glorious, Recipe: Truth Barbeque’s Triple Chocolate Cake. I don’t need a book to open my eyes to the people who need help. Stephen King pompously tweeted: “We don’t threaten writers with violence. 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