American Dirt

Submission 10,785

About

American Dirt is a novel by Jeanine Cummins which tells the tale of a Mexican family attempting to cross the border to America to escape a drug cartel. Though the book was released with a large amount of hype, it drew criticism from reviewers who felt that Cummins, a white woman, did a poor job representing Latino culture. This was parodied in the Writing My Latino Novel snowclone on Twitter, which imagined a white person writing an inauthentic novel about Latino culture by littering the work with clichés about Latino people.

History

Jeanine Cummins American Dirt^[1] was published on January 21st, 2020. Prior to its release, the book also received high-profile endorsements, including being selected for Oprah's Book Club. One critic compared it to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.^[3] Cummins reportedly signed a seven-figure contract and a movie deal for the book. In the afterword of her novel, Cummins wrote that she wanted to give a face to the "faceless brown mass" Americans see immigrants as and that she was conflicted about taking on the subject matter, she felt she had the capacity to be a bridge between Americans and Mexican immigrants.

Reception

During the pre-release hype for the book, it also received backlash from critics for poorly representing the Latino experience. One particularly scathing piece by Myriam Gurba,^[2] who wrote "Dirt is a Frankenstein of a book, a clumsy and distorted spectacle and while some white critics have compared Cummins to Steinbeck, I think a more apt comparison is to Vanilla Ice." In an interview with The Washington Post, Gurba pointed to several scenes that illustrated her issues.

For instance, she said, Lydia, the protagonist, is shocked to discover a skating rink in Mexico City, even though a middle-class character like her should be well-acquainted with such an attraction. In Acapulco, Lydia’s bookshop is frequented more by American tourists than Mexican residents.

Upon release, the book continued to see more negative criticism. The New York Times^[4] Book editor Parul Sehgal wrote that more than anything, the book was clumsily written and that the Cummins had a bizarre fascination with brown skin. Another Times critic, Lauren Goff,^[5] seemed more conflicted about the book, saying it was written with good intentions even if it wasn't a wonderful book.

Online Presence

Writing My Latino Novel

On January 21st, 2020, Twitter user @JPBrammer^[6] indirectly parodied the book in a tweet that started "Writing my Latino novel" and featured a passage that was rife with clichés about Latino culture. The tweet gained over 1,900 retweets and 15,000 likes (shown below).

This was the first of several tweets wherein people parodied American Dirt by writing Latino-clichés in prose. Other popular examples include tweets from @Zlikeinzorro,^[7] which gained over 180 retweets and 1,500 likes (shown below, left) and @mathewrodriguez,^[8] which gained over 480 retweets and 4,000 likes (shown below, right).