Controversy over ‘American Dirt’ continues

When she set out to write “American Dirt,” Jeanine Cummins wanted to start a conversation about migrants at the border.

Instead, the writer’s fourth book sparked a very different debate — on equally fraught questions of identity, authorship and cultural appropriation — as an ever-growing chorus of critics condemns the novel for its portrayal of migrants fleeing gang violence.

Some of the criticism got so heated, the book’s publisher said Wednesday, that it has canceled what’s left of Cummins’ national book tour.

Citing “concerns about safety,” including threats of violence to Cummins and booksellers, the 13 events left on her schedule will instead be replaced by town hall-style discussions between the author and her critics, Bob Miller, president and publisher of Flatiron Books, said in a statement.

“It’s unfortunate that she is the recipient of hatred from the very communities she sought to honor,” Miller said. “We are saddened that a work of fiction that was well-intentioned has led to such vitriolic rancor.”

It’s perhaps the strongest response to weeks of intense debate pegged to “American Dirt,” which follows Lydia, a middle-class bookstore owner forced to flee Acapulco after gangs kill her husband.

Cummins, who began working on the project seven years ago, said she initially sought to open “a back door into a bigger conversation about who we want to be as a country.”

With a movie deal and seven-figure advance, “American Dirt” seemed poised to become a hit. It was praised in book reviews and hailed by other authors, including several Latina writers. They called it a thrilling page-turner, “a ‘Grapes of Wrath’ for our time” and “the great novel of las Americas.”

Oprah Winfrey, who said she was “riveted from the very first sentence,” selected it for her book club, giving Cummins a literary seal of approval that is all but guaranteed to boost sales.

Last week, that momentum came to a screeching halt. A scathing review by the Chicana writer Myriam Gurba went viral, propelled by other Mexican Americans who seemingly agreed with her take: “American Dirt” is “a literary licuado that tastes like its title.”

Not only did the book traffic in stereotypes and falsehoods about Mexican culture, they said, but it also packaged those tropes through the fetishizing lens of “trauma porn.”

“While some white critics have compared Cummins to [John] Steinbeck,” Gurba wrote, “I think a more apt comparison is to Vanilla Ice.”

Her review opened the floodgates to a series of nonstop commentary: on who should be able write what, and how they should write it; on which books are promoted by the publishing industry, and how it treats Latinos, both as authors and characters; on who counts as “Latino” to begin with.

Some accused Cummins of inappropriately stealing from writers of Mexican descent, many of whom had long struggled to break into a publishing industry they said is overwhelmingly white. The actress Salma Hayek apologized for endorsing the novel. Facing calls and boycotts, several booksellers set to host the author pulled out at the last minute.

But not everyone went so far. Winfrey said she recognized the need for a “deeper, more substantive discussion,” and PEN America, the free expression advocacy group, condemned the “harsh invective” coming after the author. Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling Mexican American author, doubled down on her defense.

“The story is going to enter like a Trojan horse and change minds,” Cisneros said, “and it’s going to change the minds that I perhaps can’t change.”

Cummins had otherwise remained relatively quiet, but she appeared on an episode said on the podcast “Latino USA” on Wednesday that she was “feeling disappointed with the tenor of the conversation.”