The Grapes of Wrath played a part in the monstrous promotional campaign that helped American Dirt become one of this year’s biggest best-sellers.
But John Steinbeck’s classic is no longer part of the controversy that has befallen Jeanine Cummins’s novel about a Mexican mother and her son who illegally cross the border into the United States. American Dirt was exuberantly plugged in January by Oprah Winfrey for her book club and praised by a score of book reviewers as heart-poundingly suspenseful, unforgettable, important and timely, realistic, moving, a future classic, etc. etc. etc. Stephen King and John Grisham raved about it in their blurbs, and a line on the original book cover touted it as a modern-day version of The Grapes of Wrath.
Then, after American Dirt sold upwards of 200,000 copies, it was slammed by a wave of criticism for its political incorrectness and its stereotypical portrayal of Latinos. Oprah took serious heat for plugging the novel. The publisher, Macmillan-owned Flatiron Books, apologized for the excessive promotional campaign and removed the Grapes of Wrath reference from the cover. Citing “specific threats to booksellers and the author,” Flatiron chose to cancel Cummins’s book tour. Laura Miller’s piece on the controversy at Slate sums up the problem pretty well, posing the question “Will the American Dirt Fiasco Change American Publishing?”
Note to Author: “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck”
A reductive version of the complaints about American Dirt claims that the novel’s detractors believe a white woman shouldn’t write about the experiences of Latino migrants. In truth, nearly all of the considered criticism of the novel points out either inaccuracies or stereotypes which, according to “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck”—Myriam Gurba’s widely shared review at Tropics of Meta—betray Cummins’s lack of knowledge about her subject matter and her attempt to render a complex situation and culture into “trauma porn” palatable to an American readership envisioned as primarily white. Slate says that American Dirt‘s publisher went wrong by enthusiastically hawking a commercial novel as if it made “a contribution to a vital understanding” of the immigration issue when in fact the migrant experience was merely used “as a backdrop for an entertaining suspense story.”
In other words, when it comes to promoting a serious political message or pushing for sociopolitical change, The Grapes of Wrath it ain’t.
The controversy over American Dirt isn’t over yet. Starting tonight at midnight, Apple TV+ will live-stream a discussion taped last month that features Oprah, Cummins, and three prominent critics of the novel. The show, as The Hollywood Reporter puts it, will be a “debate about the marginalization of Latino voices, the lack of diversity in publishing, and the question of who is best suited to tell a given story.”
Image courtesy Slate magazine.
About Bill Steigerwald
Are the skeptics suggesting that John Steinbeck, a gnostic Jungian Episcopalian was unqualified to write the Grapes of Wrath? If so, their qualification standards are messed up. Steinbeck was a skilled and talented observer and this made him an excellent journalist and perhaps more qualified to write about the Okie experience than the Oklahoma dust bowl migrants. Just my opinion.
I can see why the publishers yanked the allusion to “Grapes.” But on reflection, I have to say, all writers commit acts of appropriation. That’s what it means to be a writer, from Shakespeare to Zadie Smith. The reason writers are so admirable is that they are willing to risk it, to try to see the world from someone else’s perspective and to put their necks on the line. Jeanine Cummins had every right to write “American Dirt.” It isn’t her fault that her publishers were so anxious to make money that no one told her she had more work to do, and that she needed to know more about her subject. Just one logically chosen outside reader’s report would have avoided the fiasco. Steinbeck had every right to put the Dust Bowl migration story on paper, and he did his research–something Cummins apparently did not spend enough time on. But even Steinbeck’s portrayals in that great novel have their limitations–the limitations of one human being’s struggle to know another. What lifts Steinbeck above most other writers, to my mind, is the humility with which he did his job, and his profession of a love for humanity that only deepened as he learned more and more. I feel sorry for Cummins. Less sorry for those like Stephen King and Oprah Winfrey who decided to promote the book without proper consideration. But then, we don’t live in a reflective or thoughtful time.