Source: Crazy Days and Nights

Jan 2020 – One thing the permanent A++ list celebrity likes to keep quiet is the huge amount of money she makes each year from a publisher, not to write for, but to promote their books.

So, it shouldn’t be a shocker about her most recent endorsement.

Flatiron Books

Oprah Winfrey

American Dirt

Publisher cancels ‘American Dirt’ book tour: ‘Serious mistakes’ and ‘concerns about safety’

When she set out to write “American Dirt,” Jeanine Cummins wanted to start a conversation about migrants at the border.

Instead, the writer’s fourth book sparked a very different debate — on equally fraught questions of identity, authorship and cultural appropriation — as a growing chorus of critics condemns the novel for what they say is its sloppy, stereotypical portrayal of a Mexican family fleeing gang violence.

Some of the backlash has gotten so heated, the book’s publisher said Wednesday, that it canceled the 13 events left on Cummins’s national book tour.

Citing “concerns about safety,” including unspecified threats of violence to Cummins and booksellers, Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan, instead plans to schedule town hall-style discussions between the author and her critics.

“It’s unfortunate that she is the recipient of hatred from the very communities she sought to honor,” Bob Miller, Flatiron’s president and publisher, said in a statement. “We are saddened that a work of fiction that was well-intentioned has led to such vitriolic rancor.” – Source

How Oprah’s Book Club pick ‘American Dirt’ went from industry darling to print pariah

Here’s the dirt on the most controversial book of the year so far — and no, we’re not talking about John Bolton’s upcoming tome that has rattled the impeachment trial.

It’s “American Dirt,” a novel written by Jeanine Cummins that hit shelves last week. The story follows a Mexican mother named Lydia and her son who flee to the U.S. after a drug cartel comes after their family. Publisher Flatiron Books hailed it as “a ‘Grapes of Wrath’ for our times” and “a new American classic.” Cummins was given a seven-figure advance after nine publishers bid on her book, the New York Times reported, and Imperative Entertainment, which produced the Clint Eastwood hit “The Mule,” has already acquired the movie rights.

It quickly became a bestseller on Amazon AMZN, -2.98%, Barnes & Noble BKS, , the New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly. Oprah Winfrey tapped it to become one of her coveted book club picks. The Weight Watchers WW, +2.51% spokeswoman said in a video posted to Twitter TWTR, -1.24% and Instagram FB, -2.50% that, “It woke me up, and I feel that everybody who reads this book is actually going to be immersed in the experience of what it means to be a migrant on the run for freedom.”

Yet the author is neither Mexican nor a migrant. She was born in Spain, but Buzzfeed notes that she identified as white in a 2015 New York Times essay, before then identifying as Latinx in a 2019 interview about her new book. And many people have taken issue with the author’s identity, including Latino readers and writers that have accused Cummins of cultural appropriation, perpetuating Latino stereotypes, and possibly copying the works of Latino writers such as Mexican-American poet and novelist Luis Alberto Urrea. – Source

Read more on these Tags: , , , ,