The life of ideas. In the America of 2020, could William Shakespeare, white author creator of a black Othello, have he been able to tell the unhappy loves of a Moor and a young Venetian? Not so sure, if one believes the recent controversies mixing defense of minorities, suspicion of racism and "Political correctness" that stir the American literary community.
Jeanine Cummins is undoubtedly not a new Shakespeare – some critics nevertheless compared her to John Steinbeck for her description of social misery -, but this American author now embodies, against her will, a form of tribalism which n not spare the creative world. His novel American dirt (Flatiron Books, not translated), which traces the attempts of a Mexican woman and her son to enter the United States illegally, has aroused a wave of criticism such as its publisher, evoking "Targeted threats against bookstores and the author", has canceled its promotion tour.
That one of her grandmothers is Puerto Rican (albeit from a wealthy family) and that she spent several years investigating migrants apparently did not suffice to give this author of three other books sufficient legitimacy to write a fiction on this political and identity subject. The fact that she freely drew inspiration from Mexican authors to work on her novel even signed her crime: an attempt at cultural appropriation.
While several publishing houses had fought to publish it, the novel had received a good reception in the press and that negotiations were launched to draw a film from it, criticisms emanating from writers and journalists of origin latina cut short the fairy tale. Myriam Gurba, American writer of Mexican origin, quipped at her sister who, using "Social justice as a cover-up", claims "Give voice to the voiceless" : “We wrote these same stories. But nobody pays attention to it because we are not white. " Not without irony, Jeanine Cummins had specified in a note: "I wish someone a little darker than me wrote this book. "
"Racist jumble"
In the name of defending minorities, others also highlighted the difficulties of Latin authors to find an audience to tell their own story, denounced a station novel not without stereotypes, noted inconsistencies in descriptions of Mexico or dramas experienced by applicants for immigration. In short, a naïve work written by a white American for an audience of white Americans.