Many Latinx writers, including here in the Bay Area, have expressed frustration with American Dirt, a new book by Jeanine Cummins that has been called the next great American novel. Oprah even selected it for her book club.
But it’s also been criticized for an inaccurate, stereotypical depiction of migrants who are trying to cross the US-Mexico border.
“If it had been published and kind of billed as, ‘This is our romanticized view of the border and its just for entertainment,’ there’s room for that on the shelves for whoever wants to read that story,” said Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree.
“To call it the novel of Las Americas and to put this much attention on a book that is actually erasing the politics at the border, I think, does more harm than good,” she said.
And all the hype surrounding the novel’s release – including a seven-figure advance for Cummins – has raised questions about which stories about migrants get attention, and which ones don’t.