In defense of Jeanine Cummins

I haven't read American Dirt yet.

You know, the novel about a Mexican women who, fearing for her life, makes her way to the United States with her son to join the ranks of undocumented immigrants.

You know, the novel that got a 7-figure advance and is going to be made into a movie.

You know, the book the Oprah sealed with her approval.

You know, the book that got blurbed as The Great American Novel, a transformative work, the 21st century's Grapes of Wrath.

You know, the book with the barbed wire cover art, which has inspired fan-girls to have their nails done in imitation of. And which inspired the folks running one book party to tastefully include barbed wire in their centerpieces.

I haven't read American Dirt yet. But I probably will. And I suspect I'll find it a good read, even if it's not all that great.

There's been a ton of blowback about this novel. Plenty of it is legitimate literary criticism. And plenty of it is the argument that Jeanine Cummins had no right to write about Mexican immigrants because she's white, and escaping druglords is not her "lived experience."

I call BS!

Fiction is not memoir. Cummins is not pretending that this novel is based on her experience. It's work of her imagination, creativity, empathy, research. And she's got the right to write about whatever and whoever she wants to.

Cummins isn't, of course, the only writer who's come under fire for "cultural appropriation". If you're straight, you can't write from the viewpoint of someone gay. If you're white, you can't write from the viewpoint of someone who's black. If you're not Jewish, you can't write from the viewpoint of a Holocaust victim. The only authentic voice is an authentic voice. You're supposed to stay in your lane.

There are plenty of great writers who have stayed in their lane. A couple who come to mind are John Cheever and John Updike, who much of the time wrote in the persona of an upper middle class WASP male who screwed around with the wives of his suburban neighbors. But, you know, John Updike got out of the suburbs, in wonderful novels like The Coup.

And there are plenty of great writers who jump into whatever damned lane they want.

I worship at the altar of novelist Stewart O'Nan. He's a white guy. Among other things, he's written brilliantly from the perspective of African-Americans (Everyday People), an elderly widow (Wish You Wer Here, Emily Alone), and the manager - Hispanic, I think - of a Red Lobster (Last Night at the Lobster).

And why shouldn't he have?

Reading fiction can be for pure escapist entertainment. We want an a page-turner, an exciting plot. We don't expect anything but a good read. But if you're reading literary fiction, you're probably looking for more. Characters you can empathize with, identify with, learn from. Situations that help us better understand the human condition. That let us know that we're not alone in our experiences, our reactions, our hopes, our thoughts, our fears, our aspirations.

I'm pretty sure Kafka was talking about literary fiction when he said, "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."

Good writers can give us that axe. And it doesn't matter whether they've ever actually been stranded in an iced-in lifeboat on a frozen sea. If they can imagine it, it's theirs.

So critice American Dirt all you want. Heap scorn on the 7-figure deal. Bemoan the fact that we may not be hearing from enough Latinx voices.

But get off Jeanne Cummins' back. She's got every right in the world to put herself in the head of a Mexican immigrant.