Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - American Dirt

When I first read this book, I came into it blind. I had no idea what it was about and just seemed like an interesting cover. I read via audiobook in Spanish. The narrator was phenomenal, which made a massive difference in how I perceived the story. While listening I really enjoyed the story, it felt very thriller-esk. I was intrigued the whole time and rooting for main characters the whole time.

My original rating was 5/5 as I was very engrossed in the novel and enjoyed it at the time. However upon reading more about the Author and the inaccuracies depicted in this book, I bumped it down to 1/5. There area a lot of harmful stereotypes within this book. The author is also a White woman (her grandmother is Puerto Rican but she was never in touch with that culture). It is so important for white authors not to appropriate others cultures. This is seen in so many novels when the MC is a person of color but written by a white person. This is super problematic as it takes away from more authentic stories written by people who are actually sharing their culture. I feel that it could have been appropriate for Cummins to write about the Puerto Rican plight and have her grandmother be a source for the novel. However, she chose to write about something’s that she is completely removed from.

My family immigrated to the States from Colombia in 2001, I was just 5 years old. While I still hold a lot of my heritage and culture, I am still a product of the American school system. I speak Spanish conversationally and have no difficulty understanding (aside from certain dialects having different words). Most of my knowledge of Mexican Culture comes from my high school best friend whose Parents immigrated to the States while they were pregnant with my friend.

While listening to this book, I took it as a work of fiction and was (and still am) very uneducated regarding the cartel in Mexico. Since I listened to this book in Spanish I did not experience any of the inaccuracies that have been brought up in other reviews.

I want to thank David Bowles for his review on Goodreads to educate those who are interested in this book.

Content Warnings

twin1's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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beccadamb's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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domtheknight's review

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dark tense slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

I feel that I can't rate this book because I'm extremely conflicted about many things. I read it because someone picked it for a book club I'm in; otherwise I would not have picked it up based on description. If I hadn't felt that I should finish it in order to participate in book club, I would have put it down almost immediately, and at many additional times throughout the story. This book was not for me.

As for whether it's for anybody... from a technical writing standpoint, like in terms of making good sentences with words that sound and feel a certain way, Jeanne Cummins has skills. It's bare and factual for the most part, but every paragraph is screaming in grief, underneath. Grief, and horror and desperation. It's creepy in that way, and sometimes that's good and what is right for the story. But given the subject matter and the author, it honestly crossed the "violence for violence sake and not to further the story" line many times.

The point of this story, having sat on this review overnight, seemed to be everything that can go wrong will be more awful than you can imagine. I don't know why you tell that story. There's no character growth. Is the point to generate sympathy for immigrants? Is the point to just be horror? I think there's too much grief to be horror, but it's not really a grief book either. It didn't feel like a horror book and it wasn't marketed as horror, but that's the ultimate end story I get from it. I never cried, I just felt numb.

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