g

Join us in celebrating the release of the short story collection  A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope! Local author Nalo Hopkinson will be in conversation with the anthology's editor, Patrice Caldwell.

American Dirt, highlighted in last month's newsletter, is a book I hoped would spark myriad discussions on the Latin American refugees coming up along our southern border. Now, it has birthed another discussion that's related, but not the one I anticipated. For those unfamiliar, writer Myriam Gurba gave a response to Cummins's novel which stirred heated conversation in and out of the Latinx literary community. The crux of the debate is whether American Dirt is, as I thought, a book that gives flesh and countenance to the issue at the border, or an "appropriating, inaccurate" book about Mexico. And Cummins, who has long claimed to be culturally white, has indeed written the stories of Latinx people. Her work is being published and promoted in the place of (for example) a Chicana who hasn't been and may never be afforded the same opportunity. Are Cummins's portrayals of Latinx people realistic? Should writers write within the domain of just their own experiences? Does the publishing industry give white authors a much better chance than authors of color? (This last question is, at least historically, a resounding yes. There is much more work to be done there.)