By Elia Esparza
At first glance the reviews by The New York Times and GoodReads.com were glowing. Once the avalanche of criticism began in mid-December with a blog by Myriam Gurba calling foul on Jeanine Cummins‘ American Dirt (Macmillan Publishing), a novel about Mexicans, by a writer who isn’t, there The New York Times printed a second not so glowing review and an GoodReads.com updated its review minus the “glow”.
From the onset, Gurba claims Cummins book has:
- Appropriating genius works by people of color
- Slapping a coat of mayonesa on them to make palatable to taste buds estados-unidenses and
- Repackaging them for mass racially “colorblind” consumption.
Gurba points out preconceptions of Latinx comes into play in American Dirt which appeal to White America. “Recently, a white woman got angry at me when she found out that I’m Mexican,” Gurba says. “She insisted that I didn’t look or act Mexican and that I had confused her. But she confused herself. She had a stereotype of what Mexicans are. I defied it. That made her uncomfortable. Now, apply that scenario to the literary equation that [American Dirt has] presented.”
Gurba goes on to point out Cummins, (now self identifying as a Latinx with a Puerto Rican grandmother), having proclaimed just five years ago in an interview that she did not want to write about race and that she was White, is now embracing her Latinx heritage on the heels of her writing about the Mexican immigration novel American Dirt.
Cummins claims, “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it [an immigration story]”. They did. Cummins even thanks them in the pages of her book (sans their literary credits). Among the authors is award-winning novelist Luis Alberto Urrea whose magnificent novels, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Into the Beautiful North are two fine examples of the immigrant story told authentically. Other authors she included were Oscar Martinez, Sonia Nazario, Jennifer Clement, Aida Silva Hernandez, Rafael Alarcon, Valeria Luiselli, and Reyna Grande.
Cummins claims she wrote her novel to give the “the faceless brown mass” a voice. But unlike the Latinx writers mentioned above, her book speaks largely to a White audience, with the stereotypes and clichés mainstream America has come to expect when reading about Mexicans. This is what they know…the border crossing, the suffering mother and yes of course the Cartel. No Mexican story is complete, in their eyes without the Cartel.
This past Tuesday, Oprah announced on CBS This Morning that Cummins’ American Dirt was her new book club selection. By then social media was abuzz with American Dirt “dirt” by the Latinx community at large. A sizeable chunk of the 59 million Latinos/as in the U.S. were having their say. The buzz has reached definitely reached Oprah as she has been mercifly tagged at @oprah, to the point that comment were disabled on her Instagram. Word is there is some concern with the unexpected avalanche of backlash.
While Cummins did get endorsement from some high profile Latinx writers Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez and Jane the Virgin‘s Gina Rodriguez; and Oscar-nominated Roma actress Yalitza Aparicio, the criticism definitely outweighed the endorsements.
“As a Mexican immigrant, who was undocumented, I can say with authority that this book is a harmful, stereotypical, damaging representation of our experiences. Please listen to us when we tell you, this book isn’t it,” Julissa Arce Raya, author of My (Underground) American Dream told The Guardian.
BuzzFeed News reports that David Bowles, a Chicano writer, and professor, called American Dirt “…harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, the trauma-porn melodrama” in a withering review. He also took issue with the use of Spanish words in the dialogue, writing, ‘Actual examples of Spanish are wooden and odd as if generated by Google Translate and then smoothed slightly by a line editor.'”
In one of four version of articles written in The New York Times, Cummins is quoted as saying “I do think that the conversation about cultural appropriation is incredibly important, but I also think that there is a danger sometimes of going too far toward silencing people,” she said. “Everyone should be engaged in telling these stories, with tremendous care and sensitivity.”
But it seems that these rules have not apply to some Latinx writers. As author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, (The Dirty Girl Social Club) writes in her blog today. “The second novel I wrote, after my bestselling debut novel The Dirty Girls Social Club, was Story in B-Minor, an as-yet unpublished book about a young Irish American jazz saxophonist in Boston, and her elderly African American mentor; it was based on my own experience, as a quarter-Irish American jazz saxophonist who went to Berklee College of Music, and had Andy McGhee as my mentor. I was told by my editor at the time that “no one will believe you can write authoritatively about a white experience, it’s not in your brand.”
It begs the question, what would be the more authentic perspective to an immigrations story about Mexicans? A Mexican writing the story or a White identifying author, who just recently claimed her Latinx roots?
In Gurba’s initial scathing takedown of the novel, she dissects the “store-bought taco seasoning” use of Cummins Spanish and “absurd” writing of her protagonist Lydia as seen here below.
“Lydia is incoherent, laughable in her contradictions. In one flashback, Sebastián, Lydia’s husband, a journalist, describes her as one of the “smartest” women he’s ever known. Nonetheless, she behaves in gallingly naïve and stupid ways. Despite being an intellectually engaged woman, and the wife of a reporter whose beat is narcotrafficking, Lydia experiences shock after shock when confronted with the realities of México, realities that would not shock a Mexican.”
This controversy has brought to light many underlying issues that have been festering for years, the shunning of ethnic authors; of books written for White audiences by White authors; the inequity of fees paid ethnic authors compared to “White” mainstream writers. This, it can be said, is a positive to come out of this controversy…at least for the Latinx community. It’s time these issues are being expressed and talked about in the open.
One of best thing to come out of this controversy was best said by Gurba herself in her most recent Tweet:
Myriam Chingona Gurba de Serrano
“Do not be mistaken: This is not a literary scandal. You are witnessing a “cultural inflection point.”
If social media prove one thing is that it is an equalizer where not only persons like Oprah can have a voice, but where the voices of large ethnic communities can be heard just as loud. And with that we leave you with some of those voices.
Esmeralda Bermudez @LATBermudez Tweet:
I am an immigrant. My family fled El Salvador with death pounding on our door. The terror, the loss, the injustice of this experience shaped everything about me. I see no part of myself reflected in #AmericanDirt, a book white critics are hailing as the great immigrant novel.
Obed Manuel @obedmanuel Tweet:
This American Dirt controversy is another sad showing of Latinos not having a platform to tell our stories. Our stories are told through someone else’s perception. They want our stories, our food, our culture, and our languages, but they don’t want us.
Writing My Latino Novel Parodies on Twitter:
*Bel Hernandez collaborated on this editorial