Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #AmericanDirt
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A #THREAD on #refugee and #migrant #fiction, #storytelling and reality: I finished reading #AmericanDirt by @jeaninecummins and it touched me. And I read some of the criticism and can empathise with the fact that voices from Latino writers struggle to be heard. /1 
But it strikes me as a typical "AND" rather than a "BUT" argument. In my work with @save_children I've met and listened to the stories of so many refugees and their children in the last ten years in many different countries. /2
Most of them want their story to be heard and told, by anyone who is listening. In our work, we try to give children and their families a voice. /3
Need to talk about something so I can get it out of my system and do the other stuff I have to do today. I want to discuss how white people think light-skinned-ness works in the Black community.
This was prompted by that blog post by Lela E. Buis on #AmericanDirt. I'm not gonna link it, it's not worth reading and she just wants clicks/attention. I will post the paragraph that summarizes everything wrong with this person's "contribution" to the conversation.
"Since Cummins is judged not-Latina-enough to write about a Mexican Latina character, maybe we should now have another look at who’s publishing as an #OwnVoices minority. For example, should we question Native American writer Stephen Graham Jones...
THREAD:
The way to win an argument by cheating is to willfully misrepresent an opponent's view to something objectionable. #DignidadLiteraria challenges systemic racism in the publishing industry but racism apologists insist we are mad at a white woman writing Mexican characters.
The way to win an argument by cheating is to willfully misrepresent an opponent's view to something objectionable. #DignidadLiteraria challenges systemic racism in the publishing industry but racism apologists insist we are mad at a white woman writing Mexican characters.
First of all, you are late. POC settled THAT argument years ago. Anyone can write anyone, but you need to:
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE
CHECK YOUR WORK W/ THE PEOPLE YOU WROTE ABOUT
which Jeanine Cummins didn't do+this is why we are in this mess.
buzzfeed.com/danieljoseolde…
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE
CHECK YOUR WORK W/ THE PEOPLE YOU WROTE ABOUT
which Jeanine Cummins didn't do+this is why we are in this mess.
buzzfeed.com/danieljoseolde…
#DignidadLiteraria
@djolder (previous tweet) wrote about it in 2104.
I weighed in in 2017.
ayadeleon.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/sen…
@alexanderchee added this in 2019
vulture.com/2019/10/author…
Once more for the racism apologists: no one is saying white people can't write POC characters.
@djolder (previous tweet) wrote about it in 2104.
I weighed in in 2017.
ayadeleon.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/sen…
@alexanderchee added this in 2019
vulture.com/2019/10/author…
Once more for the racism apologists: no one is saying white people can't write POC characters.
Jeanine Cummins: "I'll write #AmericanDirt, the greatest hamhanded appropriation of trauma ever!"
Colum McCann: "Hold my beer."
Colum McCann: "Hold my beer."
Colum McCann's new novel, #Apeirogon, out 2/25, is written in the voice of two men, one Palestinian, one Israeli. "When Bassam and Rami learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them and they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace."
"Both men have lost their daughters. Rami's thirteen-year-old girl Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber.... Bassam's ten-year-old daughter Abir was... killed by... the border police outside her school. There was a candy bracelet in her pocket she hadn't had time to eat yet."
They’ve been targeting Mexicans. Whole states have banned our books and classes in the last decade! “The banned books by mainly Chicano/Latino authors including author @Urrealism , came from a larger attack targeting the Mexican American Studies Program in TUSD...”
“This targeting of Mexican American Studies in TUSD led to the approval of the 2010 State of Arizona S.B. 2281 which outlawed classes or courses that:”
“(1) promote the overthrow of the United States government; (2) promote resentment toward a race or class of people; (3) are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or (4) advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
If you’ve been following the debate around #AmericanDirt, #ownvoices and #dignidadliteraria, this is a must-listen.
And as a Latina writer whose first book was published by @Flatironbooks, I have some thoughts to share. 1/
And as a Latina writer whose first book was published by @Flatironbooks, I have some thoughts to share. 1/
.@Flatironbooks was a brand new division of @MacmillanUSA when it took a chance on me, a novice book writer whose first language isn’t English, and published “The Fire Line,” where I write about people who are very different than me: firefighters who fight wildfires. 2/
I got a lot of support from @Flatironbooks as I wrote and as I navigated the skepticism of wildland firefighters—white men, mostly—who doubted a woman and an immigrant from Brazil could capture their world. I worked hard to prove them wrong and 3/
Serious question: I have spoken to people who attended #AmericanDirt book events last week, I have also seen videos of those events and have also spoken with #DignidadLiteraria. Nobody has told me about specific threats that @milleria of @Flatironbooks is claiming.
Wondering if @Flatironbooks could be share more about this, since right now, many think the statement is just playing up on the very tired trope that these events will be disrupted by a Latino "mob."
@Flatironbooks Like I have said before, #DignidadLiteraria organizers have said that they do not support the decision by @Flatironbooks to cancel the book events.
On #AmericanDirt and @flatironbooks statement regarding the cancellation of the book tour amid (bullshit) "threats of violence." I doubt that physical violence is really what's worrying Bob Miller or Jeanine Cummins. I've formed this theory based on over 20 years in this game.
In 2010 I wrote a blog post about white people feeling "unsafe" & what that boils down to. I would link to the post but it's very inside baseball, which may detract from the point. So here are the salient bits:
White convention-goers wrote to WisCon about feeling unsafe.
White convention-goers wrote to WisCon about feeling unsafe.
I happen to know one of the people (a published writer who is still in the business) who wrote to the concom, and in a discussion with that person afterward she told me that her unsafe feelings came not from physical discomfort and not from fear of POC ganging up on her....
OMG OK HERE WE GO BUCKLLLEEE UP 👂
this is an hour long lemme get comfortable. are you all ready?
It starts W/context to the convo for folks who have not seen it. @ lesbrains review going viral. the "narco novela" sentiment. the plot of the book itself. M.Hinojosa even references the previous comments made by Cummins about her race& how it is part of the convo now/THE deal
The latest diversity numbers in book publishing were released this morning. Figures show the industry is JUST AS WHITE as it was four years ago. This study includes 153 book publishers & agencies, including The Big 5 publishers, which control nearly 80 % of the market. @LEEandLOW
For insights on the study and the industry, follow this thread. You can find the full results of the 2019 survey here. blog.leeandlow.com/2020/01/28/201…
The 2015 study can be found here: blog.leeandlow.com/2016/01/26/whe…
The 2015 study can be found here: blog.leeandlow.com/2016/01/26/whe…
@LEEandLOW The figures come at a time when the book industry is facing a storm of criticism over #AmericanDirt, a novel promoted as the great immigrant novel of our times. Latinos say the book is inaccurate, riddled w/stereotypes -- the result of a tone-deaf industry that shuts out Latinos.
It is beautifully ironic that @DavidOBowles’s hit job on @jeaninecummins’s #AmericanDirt—in which he criticizes her book for cultural appropriation and poor Spanish dialogue—uses “Latinx” to refer to people from Latin America. nytimes.com/2020/01/27/opi… While Bowles is no doubt… /1
…a well-regarded Mexican-American author and translator w/the expertise to criticize Cummins’s work on the merits, it’s hard to take his complaints of “white saviorism” + bad Spanish seriously when he offers no evidence of it and himself uses a term almost no Hispanics use…/2
…to describe themselves. thinknow.com/blog/the-great… I sincerely doubt many of Bowles’s Latino/a neighbors in the Valley use "Latinx," regardless of their education, income or immigration status; at least that’s my experience here. Indeed, some Latinos view “Latinx” as itself…. /3
This past week, I read Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by Daniel Heath Justice (amazon.com/Why-Indigenous…) & came upon this excerpt where the author demonstrates of prejudice, bias and intolerance to his students by having them read a pulp romance novel in public.
Couldn’t screenshot all pages, but this line afterwards stuck with me:
“...what happens when an entire community is pathologized as having a lower degree of cultural achievement and is thus excluded from consideration of having any...merit at all?”
“...what happens when an entire community is pathologized as having a lower degree of cultural achievement and is thus excluded from consideration of having any...merit at all?”
And that, friends, is how prejudice, racism and bigotry work. People think they have to be actively involved in these things for them to be bigots, not knowing that simply participating in the system--even while sympathetic & esp while knowledgeable about its harm--is enough.
My response as an immigrant and journalist to a book crowned the great immigrant novel of our times: When Latinos are shut out of the book industry, you end up with 'American Dirt' latimes.com/entertainment-…
.@jeaninecummins book was called "Masterful", A ‘Grapes of Wrath’ for our times.” That's high praise for a cheap-thrill narconovela w/ the worst stereotypes & inaccuracies about Latinos. Most readers won't pick up on these moments because they only know us from reading headlines.
Let me walk you through a few moments that made my skin crawl as I read #AmericanDirt. Hopefully, by pausing to consider these scenes and descriptions through my immigrant/Latina view of the world, others may begin to understand why this book hurts.
A ver, con su perdón no me voy a quedar el coraje. Va aser un hilo largo lleno de #AmericanDirt y no sé cuánto dure. Vamos por orden.
En México no le decimos "quinceañeras" a las fiestas de quince años. La quinceañera es la festejada en cuestión. Y rara vez verás una con "un largo vestido blanco" ni que fuera boda.
Ni mi abuela ni mi mamá me han llamado "mija" jamás, algunas señoras mayores sí lo hacen, pero asumir que ese es el apelativo común es raro. Mi mamá JAMÁS se refiere su propia madre como "abuela" ¿por qué haría eso?
Okay, I want to talk a bit about the Irish immigrant experience in relation to #AmericanDirt
Mostly because this shit makes me unreasonably angry. Here’s a thread.
Mostly because this shit makes me unreasonably angry. Here’s a thread.
First, context: I am an Irish immigrant to Canada.
My sister is an immigrant in Minneapolis.
My brother-in-law, various friends: Sydney.
My sister-in-law: Bristol.
My father’s cousins: Boston.
My sister is an immigrant in Minneapolis.
My brother-in-law, various friends: Sydney.
My sister-in-law: Bristol.
My father’s cousins: Boston.
Other friends and acquaintances from college: Germany, Norway, Scotland.
Ireland is a nation with a culture of emigration to the rest of the world. We are constantly moving back and forth, going out to join the diaspora, returning with our experiences.
Ireland is a nation with a culture of emigration to the rest of the world. We are constantly moving back and forth, going out to join the diaspora, returning with our experiences.
I am an immigrant. My family fled El Salvador with death pounding on our door. The terror, the loss, the injustice of this experience shaped everything about me. I see no part of myself reflected in #AmericanDirt, a book white critics are hailing as the great immigrant novel.
What I do see: A book industry that’s so out of touch — that so rarely supports immigrants to tell our own stories — eager to make money off of our suffering with a cheap, stereotypical thrill. #ImNotAmericanDirt. Neither is any immigrant I’ve known in 17 years of journalism.
You don’t have to be Latino/an immigrant or write about immigrants. I’ve had white mentors who I respect because they’ve worked hard to see past their limitations, to understand the community. The problem is the book arena is ruled by white writers, agents, critics, gatekeepers.
Thread on #AmericanDirt fr a reader/ journalist who's scurried different parts of th migrant trail for 30 years. Where you see "profound achievement" the me who 1rst saw Salvadoran refugees bombed in the 80s & 90s sees profound ignorance & shallow opportunism. (pic I took in 91)
Where you find #AmericanDirt "thrilling and devastating," the part of me pursued by death squads on both sides of the border sees a cartoon, a simplistic, silly cartoon. lat.ms/2qNPQa0
Where many reviewers find #AmericanDirt "heart-pounding, page-turning" the part of me that's gone to gang hideouts in areas overrun with tanks and mass graves I find the book an insufferable, inaccurate & stereotypical bore. bit.ly/24IZ7x6
