Book rant: American Dirt

⭐0/5

También de este lado hay sueños. *sigh*

What can I say about this book that hasn't been said already? In spite of the publicity debacles and the negative reviews from my peers, I still wanted to form my own opinion about this book. I firmly believe that you can't accurately critique something if you haven't experienced it, so I knew I'd have to make myself read this book. I put it off for a year, cause I knew it would be hard to digest.

Welp, as someone who lived through the cartel wars while Ciudad Juárez was the most violence-stricken city in the world, I could not get past the first fifty pages. Triggering doesn't even begin to describe the first chapter. Mexican-American author and champion of the #DignidadLiteraria movement, David Bowles, said it better: this book is trauma porn.

The melodramatic tone, the poor prose, and the stereotypical commentary of Mexico just reminded me of the hot pile of garbage Narco-Media is. And don't get me started on the misuse of Spanglish. These characters are supposed to be Mexican natives, so the linguistic inaccuracies just feel like lazy writing and white editing.

What possessed Cummins to write this story? There are plenty of articles and interviews excusing her choice to write this book. They state she didn't want the people from the border to feel like a "faceless, brown mass". She decided to be our savior and give us a face.

No. Just no.

There are plenty of #OwnVoices books, poetry, memoirs, and art in general already doing this work. This just sounds like an excuse to capitalize on the industry’s fascination with Cartel Wars.

So am I saying that authors who identify as white and are just beginning to discover their Latinidad shouldn’t write about Latinx characters? Absolutely not! Authors can write outside their race, ethnicity, identities, and so on. They can absolutely do it, provided they do your research first and hire professional sensitivity readers. Now, I don't know if Cummins got sensitivity readers for this book, but from the first few lines, I highly doubt it.

And some people may say, “Aren’t you being too harsh? It’s just a book, it’s fiction.” I get it’s a fictitious story, but it is based on real-life pain and violence.

The point of writing Fiction is to deliver a message. As a writer, you weave the truth through your story with the hopes of making an impact on people’s minds. Big-name authors that have the amount of publishing back up as Cummins did have the ability to reach millions of people. And with great reach, comes great responsibility. Your words, your message, and your misconceptions will get imprinted on every reader that picks up your work.

Did Jeanine Cummins deliver the face she thought we needed? No. She delivered stereotypes, armed Mexican men acting like animals, and manicured violence for a True-Crime-obsessed culture.

This book and the controversy around it just make me think that there are some stories, some words, and some experiences that are not for us to tell. When it comes to race and ethnicity, sometimes, the best thing we can do to help is to check our privilege and be quiet.