She wraps her fingers around two of the thick red posts, and leans her forehead against the bars, and she can see very clearly then that the fence is only a psychological barrier, and that the real impediment to crossing here is the technology on the other side. There's a dirt road over there that follows the jagged landscape wherever it leads. The road is worn smooth by the regular accommodation of the heavy tires of the United States Border Patrol. Soledad cannot see them, but she can sense them there, just out of sight. She sees the evidence of their proximity in the whirring electronics mounted on tall poles that dot the hillsides. She doesn't know what those contraptions are – cameras or sensors or lights or speakers – but whatever they are, she can sense that they're aware of her presence. She sticks her hand through the fence and wiggles her fingers on the other side. Her fingers are in el norte. She spits through the fence. Only to leave a piece of herself there on American dirt.
I'm reviewing American Dirt about a week after its release date and I feel like I can't really begin without addressing the controversy surrounding it first: It has been announced that in the wake of a compelling and passionate groundswell of complaint by the Latinx community (led by Mexican-American writer Myrium Gurba), and “specific threats to booksellers and the author”, publisher Flatiron Books has decided to cancel the remainder of Jeanine Cummins' book tour promoting her novel about migrants from the south and their dramatic efforts to cross the border into the United States. Now accused of cultural appropriation and indulging in “trauma porn”, Cummins seems to have been aware of the controversial nature of her project as she was working on it, and in an afterword to this book, she explains why she felt compelled to write about the topic, the extensive research she engaged in over the five years it took to write, and includes a message she received from the chair of the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at San Diego University that said, “We need as many voices as we can get, telling this story.” It would seem that the biggest complaint against the very existence of this book is that, with a seven figure advance, Cummins has taken a big chunk out of the finite publishing resources that might have gone to People of Colour to tell their own stories, but even PEN America counters, “As defenders of freedom of expression, we categorically reject rigid rules about who has the right to tell which stories. We see no contradiction between that position and the need for the publishing industry to urgently address its own chronic shortcomings. If the fury over this book can catalyze concrete change in how books are sourced, edited, and promoted, it will have achieved something important.” So, perhaps, controversy is a good thing; perhaps this debate will lead to readers sourcing out similar books by those with actual, relevant, lived experience. As for American Dirt itself? I didn't think it was actually very good: totally melodramatic, suffering from mediocre writing and little redeeming literary merit, this book was just okay.
When the idea first occurred to her as she squatted in the shade of the Oficina Central del Registro Civil, it occurred as camouflage: they could disguise themselves as migrants. But now that she's sitting in this quiet library with her son and their stuffed backpacks, like a thunderclap, Lydia understands that it's not a disguise at all. She and Luca are actual migrants. That is what they are. And that simple fact, among all the other severe new realities of her life, knocks the breath clean out of her lungs. All her life she's pitied those poor people. She's donated money. She's wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite how dire the conditions of their lives must be wherever they come from, that this is the better option. That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn't even want them.American Dirt opens in a hail of bullets (this is a bit of a spoiler, but it's the first thing that happens): Lydia is accompanying her eight-year-old son to the washroom during a family party at her mother's house in Acapulco when a gang of assassins mows down everyone in the yard. Understanding that the hit was in retribution for her journalist husband's exposé on the local cartel's jefe, Javier “The Owl” Fuentes, Lydia knows that she and Luca are in mortal danger, too; that Javier's gang won't rest until they've also been found and murdered. Knowing that the cartel has reach throughout all of Mexico, Lydia's only choice is to join the throng of desperate migrants making their way north. As Lydia and Luca ride the top of la Bestia, stop at intermittent migrant centres, and try to locate a reliable coyote, they meet other migrants, from a wide variety of situations, and as Cummins had hoped to achieve, there is an obvious effort to treat each of these people as individuals with unique circumstances and motivations for attempting the life-threatening journey. Yet, with a lot of melodramatic and noncredible plot points, no matter how well-seeming Cummins' intentions may have been, this comes off more as a wannabe thriller than social commentary:
Lydia feels her mind slipping. Surely this is the worst moment of their lives. Wait, no. All their family was murdered. Nothing can ever be worse than that. Once again, she and Luca seem about to escape the horrific fate of everyone around them. How does this keep happening? When will their luck run out? Will it happen right now? Will he recognize her, pull up her picture on his phone, give her a forehead bullet from Javier? Her breathing feels rapid and shallow.I will say that I was shocked by Cummins' representation of gang violence in Acapulco (as she states, that former tourist haven has become the murder capital of Mexico; a google search brings up lurid corroborative headlines) and I wish she had made the decision to get more political in this book: it is totally understandable why Lydia and her real-life counterparts would want to flee to somewhere safer but no argument is ever made for why the United States should let them in; no explanation for why the United States tries so hard to keep them out. The migrants want to go to el norte, they know they're not wanted, so they risk murder, rape, robbery, falling off the tops of moving trains, kidnap/torture/ransom from federales, mothers risk being separated from their children at border detention facilities, everyone risks being shot by American vigilantes in empty desertscapes, but nothing is written about the politics of the situation, from either side of the border, and that's just one of the factors that make this story feel lightweight. I wouldn't go so far as to call this trauma porn – I do believe that Cummins' intentions were good – but I can't believe this was worth a seven figure advance.
