As a Latina author of political romantic suspense, I have been fascinated by the unfolding controversy around the novel American Dirt, the story of a mother and son who flee to the US, escaping Mexican drug cartel violence. The book has come under fire because the author—who is neither Mexican nor an immigrant—received a seven-figure deal for a story that has been called “immigrant trauma porn.” There has been a proliferation of essays about race and representation, as well as the lack of racial equity in the publishing industry. There are also wide implications for this book in the ongoing feud between literary and genre fiction.
According to Oprah, who selected the book as her January book club pick: “From the first sentence, I was in.” Here is the opening line of American Dirt: “One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing.” Any thriller writer can recognize our genre: open with one of the main characters in a vulnerable location and imminent danger.
LatinoUSA ran one of my favorite features about the book. Because it’s an NPR radio platform, listeners hear not only words of the interviewees, but also their tone. Host Maria Hinojosa interviews Myriam Gurba, a Chicana feminist author who was the first to offer harsh criticism of the book. In the interview, Gurba calls American Dirt “a romance thriller.” Gurba’s tone throughout the segment is (understandably) outraged and contemptuous, so her pronouncement of the book as genre fiction is equally dismissive. I write thriller romances, but I wasn’t offended because of the context. Later in the segment, Hinojosa interviews celebrated Chicana novelist Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros has come under fire as an early endorser of the book. When confronted by angry folks in the Latinx community, Cisneros doubled down. She refers to the following literary context: “People are reading books like spy novels and other trash that you see at the airport.” Cisneros argues that American Dirt can present a migration story to an audience that literary novels can’t reach.
The history of the literary vs. genre divide is centuries old. The modern American divide dates back to the early 1900s when many of the publishing houses were founded by children of the captains of industry who made their fortunes during the industrial revolution. These wealthy heirs wanted to build lives of social relevance although they didn’t have to work for a living. This particular group decided to become patrons of the arts and to fund presses. The writers they selected would be writing great works of art and meaning, and the wealthy heirs would get to pal around with them. Like so many institutions founded by the wealthy, explicit conversations about money were considered impolite. Euphemism, vagueness, and lack of transparency about finances continue in the industry to this day.
In the early decades of 20th century book publishing, the houses were subsidized by these fortunes. So while the books were for sale, they would never be required to actually make a profit. They could be the “great books” that people of leisure would read or that would be taught at universities. Some would make money. Most wouldn’t. But none would be required to do so.
Meanwhile, there was also a long tradition of popular and often scandalous literature that was written for the masses and sold exclusively to make a profit. These stories didn’t need to be well-written, or even to seem believable. Even those purported to be true could be greatly exaggerated or even falsified. These tales are often grisly and shocking. Myriam Gurba argues that American Dirt falls into this tradition. “Violence is the main character,” she says in the interview. Many critics—particularly those who have authentic connections to Mexico—have said that they found the book to be lurid and filled with Mexican stereotypes, or they have called it “trauma porn.” All of this falls solidly into the tradition of what has been called “trashy” literature. A century ago, these dime novels were cheaply but widely distributed. Pulp fiction derived its name from the fact that the books were literally returned to the factory where the pulp of the paper was recycled into the next generation of books with a short shelf life.
According to Latina crime fiction author RV Reyes, “The Crime/Mystery genre (which includes Thrillers) is one of the most popular categories of books sold in the USA with annual sales of $728.2 million, a number only eclipsed by another genre, Romance, with $1.44 billion in sales. “Mystery, thriller and crime genre is the leading book genre in the U.S., as nearly half of American consumers prefer this genre.” To be sure, there are poorly written books in every genre, including literary fiction. But there are also brilliant books in every genre, which is a huge part of genre fiction’s popularity.
Yet for the better part of a century, the literary industry has continued to operate as a virtual apartheid system of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” literature. There were also niche presses that would publish books by more marginal communities, dedicating their list to people of color, feminists, LGBTQ folks, or leftists, among others. In the 1980s and 90s, however, two things happened. First of all, the original endowments that had supported these publishing houses could no longer do so. Suddenly these companies had to make money. Second of all, corporate culture took over the literary industry. Large corporate publishing houses bought up many of the smaller presses. The corporate ideology was that to acquire smaller companies would mean fewer competitors or more profit. But in some ways the corporate ideology was miscalculated. Books simply aren’t that profitable. Small presses had been run by people with a willingness to work hard for the love of literature and the communities they served. Now the industry was organized into few large corporate publishing houses that had inherited both streams of the apartheid system plus the niche publishers: they needed to make a profit, but they also wanted to publish “great literature” that might not make money, but would bring prestige and accolades to their houses.
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Enter the search for the “upmarket” book. According to SheWrites Press, “Upmarket fiction is used to describe a book that has a literary feel with commercial appeal. It means that the writing is outstanding, but accessible…Literary fiction can often be considered highbrow, but stuffy. Sophisticated, but slow. It often isn’t considered as ‘sellable’ to the general public. Commercial fiction on the other hand is considered less refined, but … total page-turners. These books are frequently the ones you’ll find in airport bookstores….Though both have the potential to be so much more than their classification would suggest, the term ‘upmarket’ is the bridge that unites the two.”
While “upmarket” generally refers to writing style and plot structure, there are other implications of the term. Upmarket books generally appeal to white, middle class women readers, and their book clubs. Two of SheWrites’ examples of upmarket books are Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: “these books are written in beautiful prose, contain haunting and unforgettable characters and, yes, manage to sell a whole heck of a lot of books with can’t-put-down plots.”
Upmarket fiction might have been an opportunity to expand the public’s understanding of what makes literature valuable. But instead, the industry continues to exploit the popularity of genre fiction but refuses to raise the status of genre fiction as a whole. Genre writers like RV Reyes point out the duplicity of this approach: “Genre fiction can not be vilified as trash while at the same time using some of its best-selling authors (Stephen King, John Grisham…) to sell, via blurbs, literary fiction.” So the popular authors’ endorsements are sought to entice readers to buy books that are considered more serious and important.
Yet another factor in the making of an “important” book has to do with its timeliness and political content. In this context, it’s no surprise that Jeanine Cummins’ book about immigration from Mexico was sold at auction for seven figures.
According to NPR, in April of 2018, “U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered prosecutors along the border to ‘adopt immediately a zero-tolerance policy’ for illegal border crossings. That included prosecuting parents traveling with their children as well as people who subsequently attempted to request asylum.”
American Dirt was sold in late May of that year.
So, in the aftermath of the 2016 election, the liberal, white, book-reading public was attempting to come to terms with the deep racism that had been exposed and empowered in the new President. The most graphic and brutal of his administration’s policies had just been rolled out, was being exposed daily in the press, and American Dirt was the topical upmarket book at the right time in the right place.
All of the charges that have been leveled at American Dirt are commonplace in publishing. Books with racist stereotypes, gratuitous violence, inaccurate depictions of marginalized communities, and poor character development abound in all genres. Few of them receive this level of hostile response from the public. But they are not billed as anything more than entertainment. They stay in their lane. So it was the combination of the huge money paid and the incredible grandiosity in how the book’s positioning that most offended the Latinx community. Sandra Cisneros called it “the great novel of las Americas” and “the international story of our times.” Don Winslow called it “a ‘Grapes of Wrath’ for our times.” A huge part of the marketing of the book was luring white people (or at least non-Mexicans) into the welcome fantasy that the book belonged in a category of highbrow literary resistance to Tr*mp, instead of simply devouring an inauthentic genre read that exploited the border crisis for entertainment. Or as Myriam Gurba put it: “promoting it as if it’s a novel of political protest when it’s actually a romance thriller.”
The problem with American Dirt is that, despite its liberal, do-gooder intentions, it isn’t actually subversive.I believe it is possible to write books that are romance thrillers and novels of political protest. But the problem with American Dirt is that, despite its liberal, do-gooder intentions, it isn’t actually subversive. By many critical accounts, the narrative views Mexico with a white American gaze, and reinforces stereotypes of Mexico as a savage and unintelligent nation, even as it ostensibly sympathizes with characters as they migrate to the US.
I write books that I hope are both—romance thrillers and subversive novels. I have a literary fiction pedigree: an elite undergraduate degree, an MFA, and I teach creative writing at a top university. But I prefer writing genre fiction. And even though my Justice Hustlers series has won awards, it’ll never be “upmarket.” Because I write about poor and working-class women of color. I write about sex workers and sex trafficking survivors. My books are also marketed to people who don’t read literary fiction, but those readers are decidedly not middle-class white women. My publisher—Kensington Dafina—targets younger poor and working-class women of color. Plenty of more privileged white women read my books, and I welcome those readers, but my writing’s woman-of-color gaze doesn’t cater to the white middle-class.
I would be thrilled to get a fraction of what Cummins got for her advance or her marketing budget. But I am unlikely to get that kind of money when I write about crews of women who rob from the 1%. My characters are often battling against the class of people that founded those publishing houses a hundred years ago, and my books don’t cater to the tastes of the people who work in those houses today. Maybe in the future I’ll write a book that gets more attention or resources or big accolades or a major advance. But meanwhile, I’ll keep hanging with the lowbrow crowd. I bought my ticket for the cheap seats in the publishing industry. And I like the view from here just fine.
