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

Hamnet

Tender and moving

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a fictionalised account of the short life of Shakespeare’s 11 year old son. Winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the chair of judges Martha Lane Fox said O’Farrell’s novel was a “truly great” work of fiction and an “exceptional winner”.

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down.

Part of our ‘Beyond the Book’ Series View

Midnight Express

Gripping prison epic

Midnight Express is the true story of Billy Hayes, an American college student who was caught smuggling drugs out of Turkey in 1970 and thrown into prison. First released as a book in 1977, it quickly became a worldwide best-seller. The story was made into a movie in 1978, directed by Alan Parker, produced by David Puttnam and written by Oliver Stone. It went on to win two Oscars in 1979 for Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

In more recent times, Billy has travelled round the world with a one man show Riding the Midnight Express, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013. He has written two sequels to his original book both published in 2013: Midnight Return (Escaping Midnight Express) and The Midnight Express Letters – from a Turkish Prison, 1970 – 1975, a collection of letters written to his friends and family from prison. In the same year, the story was made in to a ballet, which was the subject of much speculation when the lead dancer, Sergei Polunin, left the show one week before opening. In 2016, the story was the subject of a documentary, Midnight Return: The Story of Billy Hayes and Turkey.

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 )

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ARTICLES

XTRA

Jeanine Cummins website

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