‘American Dirt’ Needs to Be Buried
The fierce backlash over the immigration-themed novel could spark change in the publishing industry. Or it may just happen all over again.
Jeanine Cummins, author of the new novel American Dirt, made some mistakes.
Some critics believe Cummins showed a lack of judgment in the first place by writing a fictional book from the point of view of Mexican immigrants. Though she says she did five years of research, Cummins’ main qualification seemed to be that she had a Puerto Rican grandmother. That’s like saying an author from Honduras is the best person to write about the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico because they happen to be from another Spanish-speaking country.
Whether you think a person not of Mexican descent has the right to pen a lurid book described as “torture porn,” it would be hard to overlook the missteps Cummins made before her book was chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s book club. In the months leading up to the book club selection, Cummins promoted American Dirt by splashing the cover’s barbed-wire iconography on launch-party table centerpieces and, most gallingly, on her fingernails.
