The OTHER American Dirt Issue: Is Fear of Appropriation Fomenting a Culture of Censorship?
I was recently at the NPR studios in New York for their popular interview show, 1A, participating in a panel discussion titled, “What The Controversy Over ‘American Dirt’ Tells Us About Publishing And Authorship.” The raucous debate that sparked just as the book was hitting the marketplace was not only in full-bloom, but metastasizing, and we were there to talk about it.
Seated in the studio with me was Vox culture writer, Constance Grady, and from two remote locations we were joined by Mexican-American translator, poet and author, David Bowles, and K. Tempest Bradford, a writer and the instructor of “Writing The Other” workshops.
All three had distinct and individual takes on the persistent controversy over American Dirt, and the conversation, led by host Todd Zwillich, was framed by two main issues: the publishing industry’s lack of diversity in both opportunity and representation of Latin voices (diverse voices in general), and the pushback against authors taking on stories and characters outside their own cultures.
Why was I there?
As the author of The Alchemy of Noise [She Writes Press, 2019], a novel centered on an interracial relationship struggling under the weight of culture clashes, familial pushback, and the devastation of a violent arrest, my publishing experience had some relevance to the issues at hand: I was a white author diving into and exploring the lives of several and varied characters outside my own culture.
The bulk of the 1A conversation pushed in three directions: the lack of representation of Latinx writers in the publishing world, the hyperbolic support of a white author telling a Mexican story while Mexican writers are disproportionately excluded from those rarefied publishing opportunities, and the opinion of many Latinx writers that “she got it wrong,” with stereotypical characters, inaccurate depictions of both country and culture, in a story written “for the white gaze,” as one Latinx author put it.
Those angles, widely covered in a wide range of media, still rage today. Just this week, David Bowles put out this call on Twitter: “If you’re Mexican, Mexican American, or otherwise intimately familiar with Mexico, I’m hoping you’ll ‘sign up’ below to look closely and critically at a single chapter,” rejecting the notion “that we’re blowing up a couple of inaccuracies to condemn the whole book.”
I, however, was brought in to talk about the second issue of the debate: is the demand for #OwnVoices equity and the fear of “appropriation” fostering an atmosphere of censorship, leading to a growing concern amongst authors that they cannot venture anywhere outside their own cultures? To me, that’s as important an issue as the first, with the potential to have sustaining impact on the artistic freedom of all writers.
The questions asked of me specifically had mostly to do with my experience as a white author pushing a novel with diverse characters, one, I made clear, that was wildly divergent from that of Jeanine Cummins, the author of American Dirt. Not only was there no bidding war, no seven-figure advance; no intense publicity campaign, A-list endorsements, or Oprah pick, but even with two well-received and previously published (albeit, self — ) novels, even with a story considered topical and relevant, even with accolades from a wide range of industry-connected readers, I could not — to use a phrase relevant to my story — get arrested. In a nutshell, I was repeatedly told, not by one but many agents from topline literary agencies, that I would be unable to get my book published:
1. “Your whiteness is kind of a problem,” one agent wrote: “This is a well written and serious novel that could not be more current but there may be an issue of whose voice gets to represent race.”
2. Another admitted she “didn’t have the courage” to take on a book that “might stir controversy.”
3. A third stated that her rejection was strictly “because of all the concerns about ‘cultural appropriation’ these days. These are brutal times in fiction,” she wrote, “and I’m not comfortable representing a book, no matter how good or worthy, in which that issue is present.”
4. A fourth (a white male) felt the black male protagonist “didn’t sound black enough.” I’ll just leave that one there…
But the overriding message was clear: I was a white author; I could not include black characters in prominent roles in my book and expect to be published. At a writer’s conference I attended in 2018, I heard that same admonition repeated to countless white authors with diverse characters and storylines in their novels. Not only did I find that appalling, but it was daunting to me on a personal level, having spent years writing, researching, interviewing, and fine-tuning a book that was vetted by a wide swath of writers, activists, readers, and opinion leaders from both the black and white communities, and deemed “right.”
Luckily for me, The Alchemy of Noise was ultimately picked up by innovative publisher, Brooke Warner, of She Writes Press. Going with a hybrid publisher that fiercely curates their acquisitions but requires authors to co-invest meant that not only was I not gifted an advance (much less one in seven figures!), but I went out of pocket so my book could see the light of day, with the promise of higher royalties when it did. It was a deal I was willing to make, committed as I was to the story I’d written, and unwilling to further wrangle with fainthearted, stonewalling gatekeepers.
But the question asked — whose voice gets to tell stories of race? — was left unanswered, and I wanted to answer it:
Everyone’s voice.
From our individual, unique, and creative points of view, we each have a stake in chronicling the world in which we live or one we imagine. Our cultures, our diverse experiences, the spectrum of characters we create cannot be monotone, homogenized, or “one cultured.” Our world isn’t; why should our stories be?
My journey also differed from Cummins’ in the genesis of my story; Alchemy’s fictional narrative was extrapolated from personal experience: Years earlier, I’d been in a long-term relationship with a man of color, intimately involved with the people in his life and the caustic experiences he endured. I possessed learned-perspective, a unique angle from which to dig into pervasive issues of race, and, given our culture’s continuing battles with white privilege, police profiling, and social injustice, the story sustained its painful relevance. I created characters to whom I gave many of the obstacles we’d faced in real life, and told a story as authentically, honestly, and sensitively as I could.
Did I “get it right”? I think so; I hope so. The response from readers within the black community has been uniformly positive. But I did not get the same scrutiny, the same intense, microscopic examination Cummins has. Then again, my book wasn’t an instant, widely disseminated, ecstatically promoted bestseller either! If it was, would I have experienced something of the same?
Which brings me to the title prompt of this piece.
Several of those who weighed in on American Dirt stated categorically that white authors — or any authors, for that matter — should not be limited in who and what they can write about, but if they do venture into cultures outside their own, they’ve got to get it right: Do the work, check the work, vet the work; honor the nuances and sensibilities they’re writing about. This stance has been stated by many of the Latinx writers who took umbrage with Cummins (who they felt didn’t get it right), as well as countless diverse authors who’ve also addressed the tilt toward censorship in the drive for greater inclusivity and the right to tell their own stories.
Will the publishing industry make a commensurate promise? Will they pledge to judge each book, each writer, based on the quality of the writing and the merit of the story, regardless of creed, color, culture, gender or orientation? Or will they continue to hide behind “fears” of getting caught up in American Dirt-sized controversy?
Even Flatiron Books (the publisher of American Dirt) acceded to making mistakes in how the book was rolled out; will other publishing companies also recognize the frustrations of both underrepresented writers and those being censored and shut out? Will they accept that publishing’s lack of inclusivity cannot be solved by excluding other voices (which is just lazy thinking)?
No writer of any demographic should feel stymied in their choice of content, theme or character. No writer of any demographic should be systemically excluded from opportunities offered another subset of writer. All work, all writers should be judged individually, uniquely, and based on the quality, authenticity, and excellence of what they have written.
If that can honestly and enduringly happen, if the righteous demand for equitability finds its way to a real solution; if antiquated systems of patriarchy and white privilege in the industry can be broken down and abolished, inciting change in the way we do things, then this moment of literary evolution, however painful and confusing, will have netted positive results.
Let’s hope it does.
Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash
Visit www.lorrainedevonwilke.com for details and links to LDW’s books, music, photography, and articles.
