American Dirt

I know that American Dirt, a story about a woman from Mexico who has to flee her home with her young son, has been controversial. And I have a whole host of thoughts about it, some of them contradictory. So here they are in no particular order:

On a literary level: I found the narrative to be absolutely riveting. It's gripping, and I sprinted through it in a way I haven't in months. I didn't think any of the characters were flat, I thought the villain was well developed, and it had a twisty story that didn't feel too manipulative/cliche. And on the author, the simple fact that a white lady wrote a story about migration isn't inherently bad, otherwise all of fiction would be limited to merely the author's own experiences (more on this below).


Cultural: all of the critiques of the publishing industry, and how a white lady ended up getting the biggest book of the year about migration, seemed pretty fair to me. I didn't feel like it was “trauma porn” like some people have said, but it does feel somehow off. This is heightened when the author shares anecdotes about how her husband was undocumented for a time, and she has a Puerto Rican grandma. It would have been fine for her to say, “these experiences made me realize how different my experience would have been with immigration if I wasn't white, so I wanted to explore that in fiction,” but the way she rolled out the tidbits instead came across like she was trying to claim personal credibility on the issue that she didn't quite have. This also comes across when most (but not all) of the Latina/x reviews I've seen have mentioned that she uses lots of stereotypes. I didn't see that in this, but also I don't know anything about what those stereotypes might be. I will say, a lot of critiques emphasized how she treated the US as a perfect haven for her; especially while America is in the middle of perhaps finally reckoning with its racist history, that feels resonant right now. However, I thought she struck a decent balance of recognizing that the US wasn't always kind to its immigrants, but also she knew it was better than taking her chances with the cartels.


On the whole, I resonated with critiques of the publishing process that led to this book being pushed so hard, but I didn't resonate with the critiques of the book itself as much. I've certainly thought more about how inhumanely we treat immigrants, and how the US has a responsibility to help a region that we've destabilized over and over. And that's a good thing. However, the world shouldn't need white authors to speak to white readers about the experiences of non-white migrants; a more equitable world would let those people have their own microphone. The US is ~60% white today; by the 2040s that number is expected to dip below half. I hope publishing houses will move to better represent the country. A few years ago I saw a reading challenge to aim for 50% of your books each year to be written by people besides white men; it was very eye-opening for me to see how narrow a perspective I was getting across multiple genres (especially if you like sci-fi and fantasy). I encourage all my fellow white readers to try something similar, or at least keep an eye on your proportions. If anyone has recommendations of Latinx literature, I'd be glad to hear it.