Trying to work at home as I recovered from the flu, I hooked onto the Grit channel — all westerns all the time. Something about those rolling wagon wheels and thundering horsemen, all those stalwart performances by the likes of Alan Ladd, Audie Murphy and Randolph Scott, kept me going while not distracting me. And yet, i was aware that these films both reflected and shaped a kind of white, male culture that has resurfaced under President Donald J. Trump — devoid of black people,;suspicious of foreigners and immigrants, particularly Mexicans, who have played such a decisive role in framing the Southwest; brutal toward native peoples; dismissive of women; and triumphing over all with the technology that tamed the West — the technology of the gun.
But these films were made by Hollywood, often in Hollywood. Often, too, they depicted flawed heroes who came to a broader understanding of women and minorities. Still, what did Hollywood really know about the West and did that matter given that these were works of the imagination?
I thought about this as I read about the controversy surrounding Jeanine Cummins’ new novel “American Dirt” (Flatiron). The story of a Mexican mother and child who flee to the United States after their family is gunned down by a drug cartel, “Dirt” would seem to be a novelist’s dream come true — a bidding war for the rights, a seven-figure advance, anointment by Oprah, endorsements by the likes of Stephen King, Sandra Cisneros and Salma Hayek selection by Barnes & Noble’s book club; and a movie deal. Yes, a dream come true — until, that is, the question of cultural appropriation arose. Many Latino and Latina authors have decried what they say are the book’s inaccuracies, its romantic thriller persona masquerading as the great migrant story and, frankly, its very presence at a time when Latino writers are falling off mainstream publishers’ lists.
The situation has not been helped by the publisher’s (Flatiron/Macmillan’s) and the author’s tone deaf choices — a promotional dinner with faux barbed wire floral décor; a shoutout to a fan whose nail art reproduced the book cover. Some are rightly disgustedly calling this “border chic.”
Others, however, are perplexed. Here is bookworm Zibby Owens writing on medium.com:
“This has gone too far. I am truly baffled by the controversial response to ‘American Dirt,’ the stunning debut novel by Jeanine Cummins.
“Jeanine’s book is absolutely sensational. I couldn’t put it down — and as the host of a literary podcast (“Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books”), I read more than 150 books a year, so that’s really saying something. This book simply stands apart.
“I don’t care that Jeanine wasn’t a Mexican refugee herself — or even Mexican. That’s entirely beside the point. I don’t care what her race, gender or nationality is. What I care about is her book. How it makes me feel. What it makes me think about. How I stayed up late at night flipping pages in the dim bedside light as my husband slept beside me because I couldn’t bear to put it down.”
A note here: This is not Cummins’ debut but her third novel and fourth book, the other being a memoir.
I agree in part with what Owens is saying: A novel or any work of art is about psychological truth. It’s not history or current events — not that anyone owns those. Nor is it journalism or a documentary. I don’t hold with the cultural appropriation police, as everything is cultural appropriation. Appropriation has given us some of the greatest works of art, including all of Shakespeare. What did Leo Tolstoy know about being an adulterous woman when he wrote “Anna Karenina”? For that matter, what did Stephen Crane know about a Civil War battlefield when he wrote “The Red Badge of Courage” some 30 years later?
You read, you research, you learn. You let a character seep into your bones until you hear his voice, till you see him, feel him beside you, see his world unfold like a movie. I would hate to see imaginations stymied and publishing houses, which are hard enough to break into, play identity politics and only accept stories about minorities from minorities. Nor would I want to see conservatives dangle cultural appropriation as a way to stereotype liberals and deprive minorities of opportunities. Imagine “Hamilton” with an all-white cast, for instance, or without the rap.
But we live in a racially, ethnically charged time. The border is a mess. The United States’ fractured policy has produced real misery. Latino voices are not being heard. The internet is alive and buzzing. And that has produced a frustrated response that has boiled over into anger and hatred.
I agree with Owens that there is no reason to be mean, though people often are in the age of digital anonymity. I also think she’s right that there is a good deal of jealousy at work here. As Ilan Stavans, the general editor of “The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature,” put it so brilliantly in a New York Times’ piece: “It’s not so much who tells the story but who gets to sell the story.” Would everyone be so excised had the work not brought Cummins fame and fortune?
She’s paid a price for both, with her publisher and bookstores cancelling events. It’s possible that the book is an inaccurate page-turner. As John Warner observes for the Chicago Tribune: “Cummins is not being criticized,because she is a non-Mexican person writing about the Mexican experience. She is being criticized because she is a non-Mexican person writing about the Mexican experience poorly.”
But some of the criticism has to be laid on the doorstep of a publishing industry that is so lacking in discernment, so eager to glom onto the next hot thing, so willing to see a complex subject through a romantic lens and not call it such.
We — readers and writers alike — are all the poorer for it.