Thread by @BermudezWrites

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.

First up, the lead character, Lydia, AKA "Mami." She's a middle-class, bookstore owner who starts her dangerous journey in a hotel w/ room service & a small fortune: thousands of dollars in inheritance; also an ATM card to access thousands more from her mother’s life savings.

Why is Lydia fleeing? Because while her husband, a journalist, was investigating a druglord, Lydia was flirting with that same narco.

Later, when "Mami" is running for her life, Lydia can't believe she's an actual migrant.

"All her life she's pitied these poor people."

She's wondered with the "detached fascination of the comfortable elite" how desperate they must be to think migrating is "the better option"

Lydia used to be “sensible,” “a devoted mother-and-wife.”

When she's weighing weather to hop on La Bestia with her 8-year-old son (the freight train that's cost immigrants their lives and limbs) she calls herself "deranged Lydia."

Immigrants are crazy, right?

At some point, when Lydia is looking for a migrant shelter in Mexico called Casa del Migrante, she finds it's shut down. A random woman walks by pulling a cart of groceries. She says:

"It's not the fault of the migrants, you poor people, but where you go, the problems follow."

Lydia's son knows a lot about geography. At the bookshop, she'd put him "like a puppet on a stool" to impress the gringos. "And, ay, Dios mío, these tourists couldn't get enough of Luca." They were shocked a Mexican boy could be so smart. "Do it again... give the kid some money."

Speaking of the tired trope of the great, white savior, you'll find it makes several appearances in #AmericanDirt. That's also what @jeaninecummins meant to be for us, this “faceless brown mass.”

She wanted to give “these people a face.”

At some point, Lydia seeks refuge with her friend Carlos. But it's his wife, Meredith, a deeply religious American woman with "eyes hard blue" and "spongy features" that gets to decide, in a great moment of suspense, whether Lydia and Luca will potentially live or die.

*whether

Meredith, a religious missionary, has a big moral dilemma. Saving Lydia & her son, 2 migrants on the run, means sneaking them past a military roadblock in a van filled w/ a bunch of white missionary kids she's hosting from Indiana. Oh-oh. Whose life could possibly be worth more?

"I'm sorry, it's too risky," Meredith says. "It's not fair to do that to the kids, to their parents in Indiana. This is exactly the kind of thing those families fear, sending their kids down here to Mexico. Do you have any idea what it takes to placate those fears?"

Because of course, in case you didn't know, Mexico and anything from the U.S. border down to the southern tip of Nicaragua is ay, ay, ay, super peligroso.

So Meredith, because deep down, she's a savior-kind-of-woman, decides to take the risk. Lydia boards the van full of teenage American girls with "gooey smiles" and French braids. One asks Lydia, "You like? French braids?" They giggle & take selfies and sing "Jesus Take the Wheel"

Then, as they approach a road block w/young boys w/ big guns, these giggly American girls start to have all sorts of emotions (similar, I imagine, to what any American woman reading this book might have felt )

.@jeaninecummings writes: "Secretly, in the sinful hidden chambers of their hearts, most of these girls had looked forward to experiencing a roadblock -- the exotic thrill of it, the wash of adrenaline, the stories they'd get to tell when returned home to Indiana!"

Can you imagine? All that sensational street cred these girls will gain for life from this one experience? After this, when they meet a Latino who came from down south, they can say, without question, that they can truly relate to what they've been through.

Back in the van, danger awaits: As the girls approach the soldier boys w/ "unthinkable weapons" they "feel sick with fright." Then, they remember: Wait a minute. We're saviors. "Some of them wish for the courage to witness to the boys, to save them by reminding them of Jesus."

Turning now to how Latino characters are depicted in #AmericanDirt. Let's start with how @jeaninecummins introduces one of her main characters, a migrant from Honduras named Soledad.

Soledad is “dangerously” beautiful.

A “vivid throb of color,” an “accident of biology.”

Even in the “most minor animation of the girl’s body … danger rattles off her relentlessly.”

I don't understand how @jeaninecummins would expect any Latinx reader to embrace or believe in this character, Soledad, when she robs her of her humanity from the start. Then again, it makes sense. Jeanine didn't write this book for Latinos. She had another audience to cater to.

In #AmericanDirt, @jeaninecummins takes us on a bizarre safari ride with Spanish, like Dora the Explorer teaching a toddler.

"Saludos, señora. ¿Comó va?" "Good, thank you"

"so guapo and happy"

"The boy jefe"

“Ay, Dios mío"

“¡Me gusta!”

Conchas, conchas, conchas

Cummins, as @parul_sehgal noted, also has an “excited fascination” with brown skin

Her characters are “berry-brown”, “tan as childhood.” There is also a reference to “skinny brown children”

About her book, she said:

“I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it.”

.@jeaninecummins preoccupation with different shades of brown may mean little to people who happen to be white.

But if you're Latino, it's painful given how society constantly measures our worth by where we fall on the perceived scale of brownness -- or blackness.

I could go on for days showing you how #AmericanDirt is profoundly flawed.

In the end, @jeaninecummins greatest accomplishment is that she delivered immigrants to the U.S. that way she and many others already see us:

- Small
- Brown
- Dangerous
- In need of a white savior

The book industry, including @oprah, put all its mighty force behind this bogus book, this imagined image of us, and critics nationwide ate it up.

"Heart-stoppingly brilliant"

"Dazzling"

"It’s the great novel of las Americas. It’s the great world novel!"

What's most baffling is the list of big-name Latinas who endorsed #AmericanDirt

Sandra Cisneros
Julia Alvarez
@reynagrande
@erikalsanchez
@YalitzaAparicio
@salmahayek
@MjRodriguez7
Gina Rodriguez

I would love to understand why.

*Salma & Gina backtracked

The uproar over #AmericanDirt isn't just about a book or one writer. It's not just about the question: Did a white person have a right to tell this story?

That's just the beginning of it

Read my @latimes commentary to get a deeper sense of the issues lat.ms/2RmMGaW

Please also read @lesbrains critique. She was the first person to speak on this issue, though she was initially silenced. @MsMagazine called her review "spectacular" but they couldn't justify publishing it because she was "relatively unknown" as a writer. bit.ly/3azKaFJ