WHO IS ALLOWED TO TELL WHOSE STORY?

By Bonnie Stanard

If it weren’t for the seven-figure advance Jeanine Cummins received for her novel American Dirt, I’d feel sorry for her. Social media has been vicious. Myriam Gurba wrote, “the nicest thing I can say about Dirt is that its pages ought to be upcycled as toilet paper.” Ouch!

The plot revolves around a grief stricken Latino mother escaping Mexico and a drug lord who pursues her. Critics have accused her of cultural appropriation (she is white), a phenomenon flourishing in literary circles and fueled by a revival of segregationist politics. In other words, her detractors believe a white woman has no right to imagine a story about Latino migrants.

Laura Miller, in Slate, quoted a publisher: “I do think that in cases where there’s a mismatch between the identity of the character and author, the value of those books ... will be more closely scrutinized.”

This sounds like an injunction against writers portraying characters unlike themselves. Does this mean that we should write with restraint to avoid offending those who will identify with our characters?

Nesrine Malik wrote in The Guardian, “To demand that writers not encroach upon the experience of others is a death sentence that seeks to limit us not only by what we know, but also by our place in a hierarchy of inequality.” This puts minority writers to disadvantage as well, for they may well be restricted to telling stories that are “native.”

It is disheartening to see us move from a leftist political concern for the disadvantaged to a right-wing movement legitimizing censorship based on sex, religion, and/or ethnicity. When manuscripts are judged on the writer’s right identity as much as the quality of the work, will our novels be better for it? Will we be better people?

It’s taken a long time, but we whites are changing our attitude toward ethnic groups. It’s disappointing to see segregation reappear disguised as cultural appropriation. Identity politics causes discrimination. Most of us want equality for every color of skin. Many of us are dismayed by our history of cruelty and exploitation, especially of Native Americans and blacks. We have passed laws in an attempt to enhance equal opportunity. By no means is this meant to suggest the job is done, but we’re working on it.