POD: Book Clubs

American Dirt

Incredible or insulting

When American Dirt came out, it was an Oprah’s book club pick and became The Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. It was optioned for a film adaptation by Clint Eastwood and was lauded by many as the ‘great immigration novel’. However since then it has received harsh criticism, particularly from many Latinx writers for what they felt was its stereotypical portrait of migrants from Mexico and Central America. The controversy caused Jeanine Cummins to cancel her book tour and all events due to death threats and more.

There’s so much to discuss about this novel, so in addition to reading the book why not enrich your book club meeting by exploring the US/Mexico crisis further with podcasts and videos from the frontlines and discussions about the potential consequences of telling a story that is not your own.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

PODCASTS

Interview with Jeanine Cummins

(36 mins )

Jeanine Cummins discusses her book with the Moms Don’t Have Time To Read Books Podcast.

Play

Digging Into ‘American Dirt’

(53 mins)

The novel American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins was released this January with much anticipation. Oprah selected it to be part of her book club, writer Don Winslow called it, “a Grapes of Wrath for our times” and celebrated Latina author Sandra Cisneros called it “the great novel of las Americas.” But its release was met with a large backlash. Many Latinx writers felt the book furthered a stereotypical view of migrants from Mexico and Central America. For this episode, Maria Hinojosa engages in dialogue with voices central to the controversy: Myriam Gurba, Sandra Cisneros, Luis Alberto Urrea and Jeanine Cummins.

Play

The Out Crowd

(1 hr 6 mins)

Listen to real reports from the frontlines of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy. We hear from asylum seekers waiting across the border in Mexico, in a makeshift refugee camp, and from the officers who sent them there to wait in the first place. This episode won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting, the first ever given for audio journalism.

Play

VIDEOS

Riding ‘the beast’

(4 mins)

A short video showing the conditions migrants experience on the ‘La Bestia’ freight train.

Watch

The U.S.-Mexico migrant crisis. What is really happening at the border?

(7 mins)

The humanitarian crisis along America’s southern border is a reality, but it is not so much due to the volume of migrants, but rather the demographic shift in the people U.S. border agents are intercepting. Since 2000, the number of migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. as dropped drastically. So what is leading to the current crisis?

Watch

What’s so controversial about ‘American Dirt’?

(25 mins )

The newly published novel – written by an author who is neither Mexican nor a migrant – is now at the centre of a debate over who gets to tell the stories of historically marginalised people and the issues that can result from a lack of diversity in a white-dominated US publishing industry. Cummins says the intent of the book was to humanise the US conversation around immigration. But, critics online say the book is rife with Mexican stereotypes and cultural misrepresentations. This episode discusses reactions to the book and what the publishing industry should do to highlight the stories of underrepresented communities.

Watch

ARTICLES

Why Is Everyone Arguing About the Novel American Dirt?

A good summary of the controversy. By Rebecca Alter for Vulture.com

Read Article

Book Club Questions for American Dirt

Great questions for your book club, covering all the key plot points as well as the public outcry surrounding this novel. From bookclubchat.com

Read Article

XTRA

Jeanine Cummins website

Where the Crawdad

Striking and evocative

Where the Crawdads Sing is an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heart-breaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising murder mystery all in one. Delia Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

With themes of abandonment, loneliness, resilience and the power of nature, there’s plenty to discuss about this book. Find out more about the author, her story and the landscape of the marches in the resources below.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

The Nickel Boys

Heartbreakingly good

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The Nickel Boys, his follow up book, won Colson a second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2020. He brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. The book was named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best fiction books of the decade.

Th story is set at a time when the civil rights movement was spurring change, but progress was slow and certainly didn’t infiltrate the book’s fictional Nickel Academy where much of the story takes place. The Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school for boys, is based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

My Dark Vanessa

A darkly, compelling debut

My Dark Vanessa is the harrowing tale of fifteen year old Vanessa Wye’s relationship with her forty five year old English teacher, Jacob Strane and the lasting impact it has on her life. Kate Elizabeth Russell resists the insistence on black and white in sexual dealings – instead inhabiting the mind of a vulnerable teenager, offering insight into how black might feel like white, how abuse may be taken for romance – and how this lie could be desperately clung onto into adulthood. My Dark Vanessa reveals a slow journey towards a different understanding

Although this book seems very current, with its themes of manipulation by an older man, Kate Elizabeth Russell actually took 18 years to write this novel that has been labelled Lolita for the #MeToo society. Like American Dirt, this novel too has courted controversy: a seven figure advance, allegations of plagiarism that got it dropped from Oprah’s book club, and questions about whether the novel was based on Russell’s own experience and the implication that she needed to prove her credentials for writing about sexual trauma. It is somewhat ironic that in writing a book about a woman who doesn’t want to come forward about abuse, she is then forced to reveal her own trauma. As she says on her website, “my greatest wish is that My Dark Vanessa will spark conversation about the complexity of coercion, trauma, and victimhood, because while these stories can feel all too familiar, victims are not a monolith and there is no universal experience of sexual violence”. See her website (link in Xtra) for the complete piece.

Stephen King described it as ‘A hard story to read and an even harder one to put down … a package of dynamite’. See what you think.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series. View

American Dirt

Incredible or insulting

PODCASTS

(36 mins )

(53 mins)

Kindle Paperwhite

(1 hr 6 mins)

VIDEOS

(4 mins)

(7 mins)

(25 mins )

HelloFresh meal plan offers

ARTICLES

XTRA

Jeanine Cummins website

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