Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
‘American Dirt’ debate turns focus
Lists of books by Latino authors generate sales
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When Oprah Winfrey endorsed the novel “American Dirt” for her book club last month, many Latinos took to social media to decry the selection for its stereotypes and caricatures.
The novel about a Mexican mother and her young son fleeing to the U.S. border had been praised widely before its Jan. 21 release. But anger built over “American Dirt,” by Jeanine Cummins — a writer who primarily identifies as white — and Latinos shared reading lists and pointed to recent work that went overlooked, offering “alternative” options for those who wanted to read about the Latino experience in the United States.
Across the U.S., Latino writers say they are seeing a jump in sales of those works following social media campaigns to draw more attention to Latino literature as big New York publishers face criticism for ignoring the work or not promoting it enough.
Nicolas Kanellos, founder and publisher of Houston-based Arte Publico Press, the largest publisher of Hispanic literature in the U.S., said he noticed last month some of his books by immigrant writers selling out.
“I’m not on Twitter but my staff told me some of our books were appearing on these lists as suggestions,” Kanellos said. “They are gone now.”
Journalist and novelist Luis Alberto Urrea, who Cummings cited as an influence, reported seeing sales of his early 2019 novel “The House of Broken Angels” jump, to his surprise. It was one of the books mentioned on social media.
“Thank you. #14 on the LA Times bestseller list. Again,” Urrea wrote on Facebook. “Big Angel keeps coming back.”
Wendy C. Ortiz’s memoir “Excavation” in California’s San Fernando Valley also sold out on Amazon.
Others suggested readers buy the novel “Dominicana” by New York-born Angie Cruz and El Paso-born Sergio Troncoso’s short story collection, “A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant Son” — works released last year.
PEN-award winner and Fresno, California-born writer Daniel Chacón’s “Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall” also was recommended as a work to understand like on the borderlands. The collection was sought out as comfort following the August 2019 killing of 22 people in a shooting that targeted Mexicans in El Paso, Texas.