Thanks, Jesse, for taking a look at this. From my perspective of a writer, I was so irritated by all this that I promptly bought "American Dirt" for my Kindle, so I could read it myself (though I haven't, yet).
Re these lines from your piece, "If any detail from Cummins’ fictional book doesn’t match real-life Mexico, that’s bad. If a detail matches real-life Mexico too closely, that’s also bad, because she is supposed to make up stories from scratch (at which point she’ll be accused of inauthentically rendered depictions of Mexico)."
This, it seems to me, is the "gotcha," the ludicrous Catch-22 of almost all "cultural appropriation" (and related) kerfuffles I've read about. In the YA fiction hubbub, writers seem to be attacked for either a) having the temerity to include characters who do not share their various identities or background or b) writing only about people like themselves and therefore "erasing" all others. There is literally no way to win.
As I say, I haven't read "American Dirt." But only recently has it become a fad to assume that writers (or filmmakers, musicians, any artist) should "stay in their lane" and refrain from writing about anyone who doesn't precisely mirror their own background. Taken to its logical extreme, no artist should ever create art that is not, fundamentally, of, by and about themselves — a world of solipsistic, masturbatory art. Let's "cancel" Shakespeare, Faulkner, hell, any writer of color who has ever written about a white character, and on, and on.
Incidentally, searching "American Dirt" on my Kindle, I see 69 references to "abuela," virtually all from the viewpoint of Luca, who is referring to his grandmother. I don't actually find one where Lydia, his mother, refers to "abuela." But if she does, that would not be in the least bit surprising. My sister refers to "Grammy" when speaking of our mother to her sons, after all.
While you didn't bring this up, I also want to push back against the idiotic notion that there is a codified, approved, correct version of People X's experience. I notice that Salma Hayek, born and raised in Mexico, was bullied into questioning her previous endorsement of Cummins' book. But isn't that, in itself, "erasing" someone's "live" experience? To Hayek, the novel was authentic enough that she praised it — why does some random critic get to trash her because her understanding of her own Mexican-ness led her to appreciate the novel?
I am, like you, a liberal. But man, as a writer and a skeptic, it's really distressing to witness the lunacy that some on the "woke left" and idiot Twitterati are trying to force-feed us these days.
Kat Rosenfield had a good article about this on Arc Digital. According to her, the main issue appears to be that the publishing company hyped the book to such enormous degrees (the 7-figure sum, the comparisons to Grapes of Wrath) as an Important Seminal Novel that they were practicality begging for a Twitter Backlash.
One thing I've noticed about all the Outraged pieces, whether they're about a book, a movie, a tv show, or a videogame, is that every single one of them inevitably invoke Trump. When he won in 2016, it's like a moral panic was unleashed among culture writers. Suddenly all art must be Capital-W Woke or else it risks empowering him and his supporters. Meanwhile, all this outrage only increases the book/movie's popularity (see also Joker).
Bottom line: Trump will win again if all this stuff persists. People really, really don't like being scolded all the time for enjoying things.
David Bowles is the author of a Mexican kaiju novel called LORDS OF THE EARTH. For some reason, I kind of doubt he's "never lived even within 500 miles" of a gigantic, magma-breathing lizard, and doing a Mexican take on Kaiju could be viewed, by someone who actually applied these principles consistently, as appropriating Japanese culture for his own personal gain.
For what it's worth, the book is a mostly fun read with some truly clunky and didactic dialogue, and I don't begrudge the guy anything he's done in the novel.
I'll make some educated guesses at what's going on.
Based on the current economics of journalism and people's normative/moral commitments, your main goal as a journalist is to write a "hot take" that goes viral and generates as much outrage as possible about some social issue. Outrage or anger is usually better at motivating people to take action or change their thinking than positive emotions or well-constructed arguments.
Publishing is very competitive, with even more competition (and more white readers and white middle class authors) in young adult fiction and sci-fi/fantasy. People want to both increase the number of minority authors getting their work published and get more books published in fiction that take pre-approved cultural and political stances, while discouraging publications by white authors who have said or done something objectionable or publications that are "problematic" or insufficiently committed to some political/social/idpol perspective. YA and sci-fi/fantasy get heightened scrutiny because there are fewer minority authors. In the case of sci-fi/fantasy, there's less economic demand for specifically "woke" storylines because fans prefer more pulpy entertainment, which is why there's a politicized focus on sci-fi-as-literature and attacking traditional sci-fi fandoms while promoting sci-fi that appeals to a broader audience to increase the potential demand for "woke" storylines. If you haven't been paying attention to Internet drama, the "fans = racist misogynist shitbags" line helped turn the culture war into a complete dumpster fire even though people who got harassed were mostly innocent bystanders.
The facts that some of the marketing the publisher used was sensationalized and mildly "problematic" and Cummins is ostensibly a white woman writing about immigration mean that the publisher was "asking for" fanatical criticism/condemnation from the culture writers. My guess is that trade publishers use "sensitivity readers" because they want to avoid negative reviews and increase the likelihood of positive reviews in publications, so the readers suggest modifications like making minority characters more oppressed or rewriting a minority character as a gay or trans minority character.
Many thanks for this and your additions, though I do have a bone to pick (with or without hot sauce) with one of your additions:-
“It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Cummins to include the word ‘Irish’ somewhere in this excerpt so as to dispel any potential confusion about the situation.”
So, Irish people DO count for less in the bizarre mathematics of political correctness. I'm sorry to see you back off on that one, Jesse.
Thanks, Jesse, for taking a look at this. From my perspective of a writer, I was so irritated by all this that I promptly bought "American Dirt" for my Kindle, so I could read it myself (though I haven't, yet).
Re these lines from your piece, "If any detail from Cummins’ fictional book doesn’t match real-life Mexico, that’s bad. If a detail matches real-life Mexico too closely, that’s also bad, because she is supposed to make up stories from scratch (at which point she’ll be accused of inauthentically rendered depictions of Mexico)."
This, it seems to me, is the "gotcha," the ludicrous Catch-22 of almost all "cultural appropriation" (and related) kerfuffles I've read about. In the YA fiction hubbub, writers seem to be attacked for either a) having the temerity to include characters who do not share their various identities or background or b) writing only about people like themselves and therefore "erasing" all others. There is literally no way to win.
As I say, I haven't read "American Dirt." But only recently has it become a fad to assume that writers (or filmmakers, musicians, any artist) should "stay in their lane" and refrain from writing about anyone who doesn't precisely mirror their own background. Taken to its logical extreme, no artist should ever create art that is not, fundamentally, of, by and about themselves — a world of solipsistic, masturbatory art. Let's "cancel" Shakespeare, Faulkner, hell, any writer of color who has ever written about a white character, and on, and on.
Incidentally, searching "American Dirt" on my Kindle, I see 69 references to "abuela," virtually all from the viewpoint of Luca, who is referring to his grandmother. I don't actually find one where Lydia, his mother, refers to "abuela." But if she does, that would not be in the least bit surprising. My sister refers to "Grammy" when speaking of our mother to her sons, after all.
While you didn't bring this up, I also want to push back against the idiotic notion that there is a codified, approved, correct version of People X's experience. I notice that Salma Hayek, born and raised in Mexico, was bullied into questioning her previous endorsement of Cummins' book. But isn't that, in itself, "erasing" someone's "live" experience? To Hayek, the novel was authentic enough that she praised it — why does some random critic get to trash her because her understanding of her own Mexican-ness led her to appreciate the novel?
I am, like you, a liberal. But man, as a writer and a skeptic, it's really distressing to witness the lunacy that some on the "woke left" and idiot Twitterati are trying to force-feed us these days.
Kat Rosenfield had a good article about this on Arc Digital. According to her, the main issue appears to be that the publishing company hyped the book to such enormous degrees (the 7-figure sum, the comparisons to Grapes of Wrath) as an Important Seminal Novel that they were practicality begging for a Twitter Backlash.
One thing I've noticed about all the Outraged pieces, whether they're about a book, a movie, a tv show, or a videogame, is that every single one of them inevitably invoke Trump. When he won in 2016, it's like a moral panic was unleashed among culture writers. Suddenly all art must be Capital-W Woke or else it risks empowering him and his supporters. Meanwhile, all this outrage only increases the book/movie's popularity (see also Joker).
Bottom line: Trump will win again if all this stuff persists. People really, really don't like being scolded all the time for enjoying things.
David Bowles is the author of a Mexican kaiju novel called LORDS OF THE EARTH. For some reason, I kind of doubt he's "never lived even within 500 miles" of a gigantic, magma-breathing lizard, and doing a Mexican take on Kaiju could be viewed, by someone who actually applied these principles consistently, as appropriating Japanese culture for his own personal gain.
For what it's worth, the book is a mostly fun read with some truly clunky and didactic dialogue, and I don't begrudge the guy anything he's done in the novel.
I'll make some educated guesses at what's going on.
Based on the current economics of journalism and people's normative/moral commitments, your main goal as a journalist is to write a "hot take" that goes viral and generates as much outrage as possible about some social issue. Outrage or anger is usually better at motivating people to take action or change their thinking than positive emotions or well-constructed arguments.
Publishing is very competitive, with even more competition (and more white readers and white middle class authors) in young adult fiction and sci-fi/fantasy. People want to both increase the number of minority authors getting their work published and get more books published in fiction that take pre-approved cultural and political stances, while discouraging publications by white authors who have said or done something objectionable or publications that are "problematic" or insufficiently committed to some political/social/idpol perspective. YA and sci-fi/fantasy get heightened scrutiny because there are fewer minority authors. In the case of sci-fi/fantasy, there's less economic demand for specifically "woke" storylines because fans prefer more pulpy entertainment, which is why there's a politicized focus on sci-fi-as-literature and attacking traditional sci-fi fandoms while promoting sci-fi that appeals to a broader audience to increase the potential demand for "woke" storylines. If you haven't been paying attention to Internet drama, the "fans = racist misogynist shitbags" line helped turn the culture war into a complete dumpster fire even though people who got harassed were mostly innocent bystanders.
The facts that some of the marketing the publisher used was sensationalized and mildly "problematic" and Cummins is ostensibly a white woman writing about immigration mean that the publisher was "asking for" fanatical criticism/condemnation from the culture writers. My guess is that trade publishers use "sensitivity readers" because they want to avoid negative reviews and increase the likelihood of positive reviews in publications, so the readers suggest modifications like making minority characters more oppressed or rewriting a minority character as a gay or trans minority character.
That's when the cannibalism started.
Many thanks for this and your additions, though I do have a bone to pick (with or without hot sauce) with one of your additions:-
“It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Cummins to include the word ‘Irish’ somewhere in this excerpt so as to dispel any potential confusion about the situation.”
So, Irish people DO count for less in the bizarre mathematics of political correctness. I'm sorry to see you back off on that one, Jesse.