New York
Hailed by luminaries such as Stephen King and Oprah Winfrey, “American Dirt” was touted as the next “great American novel,” bought for a seven-figure advance, backed by aggressive marketing and launched last week to great fanfare in both English and Spanish.
Instead of glory, however, author Jeanine Cummins finds herself at the heart of a cultural maelstrom, accused by some of exploiting the tragedy of Mexican migrants in a US election year and of validating stereotypes such as those used by President Donald Trump to fuel his anti-immigration rhetoric.
The book tells the story of a Mexican woman who owns a bookshop and flees on the notoriously dangerous cargo train known as “The Beast” that migrants ride to the north. She also survives the slaughter of almost her entire family by drug traffickers at a traditional birthday celebration.
The book´s publication has generated intense debate about cultural appropriation, the marginalization of Hispanic authors by US publishers, the dangers of spreading misrepresentations and the responsible limits of fiction.
The firestorm took publisher Flatiron Books by surprise, and on Wednesday they canceled Cummins´ planned tour of US book stores. “Based on specific threats to booksellers and the author, we believe there exists real peril to their safety,” said publisher Bob Miller in a statement. – ´Exploitative´ – Horror supremo King described the book as “marvelous” and author Don Winslow compared it to the Steinbeck classic “The Grapes of Wrath”. It is already being adapted for Hollywood. But more than 120 writers, including Mexico´s leading novelist Valeria Luiselli and chicana author Myriam Gurba, whose withering review sparked the debate, have signed a letter calling on Oprah not to feature “American Dirt” in her book club, which has historically been a gateway to massive sales.
“This is not a letter calling for silencing, nor censoring,” said the writers, who called the novel “exploitative.” “But in a time of widespread misinformation, fearmongering, and white-supremacist propaganda related to immigration and to our border, in a time when adults and children are dying in US immigration cages, we believe that a novel blundering so badly in its depiction of marginalized, oppressed people should not be lifted up,” the letter went on to say.—AFP
