A Night of White Empathy at a Reading for American Dirt

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'This story could be happening anywhere. This could be Australia.' A night of white empathy at a reading for American Dirt, Oprah's controversial new book club pick

researched the subject to the best of her ability, traveling to Mexico and spending time on the borderlands over the course of four years. By her own admission, she came to the subject as an empathetic outsider.

It is clear from the first chapter that Cummins had a white audience in mind when writing the story of her protagonist, Lydia. Lydia and her husband are upper-middle-class citizens of Mexico with jobs that would be deemed respectable to an American audience: Lydia is a business owner and her husband is a reporter. They are the “good” kinds of brown people; they speak “excellent” English.

At the Barnes and Noble event, after her “Oscar moment” and a brief reading, Cummins agreed to answer pre-submitted audience questions. She chose them from at random from a pile of index cards collected by an employee, and the first few questions were softball.Which of the characters do you relate to the most?

Cummins looked uncomfortable, and her answer made me uncomfortable. She told the room that this was an “important” question that “we should all be asking ourselves.” She said she believed that her status as a white woman who is also Puerto Rican , as well as her economic status and motherhood, contributed to how she wrote the book. But as for how it was received, she said, she felt she couldn’t speak on it. “That’s not something I’m equipped to answer, nor do I want to.

 

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