*Content: Don't worry! No spoilers.
This was one of my favorite reads of 2020, and probably one of my favorite books period. The author manages to keep your heart pounding through 378 pages of tragedy, terror, heartbreak, and masterful suspense. American Dirt does what I believe all great stories do: it digs into the deepest parts of our conscious and promotes empathy, even for characters who are fictional. Have you ever put down a book and had to take a deep breath? That's what this book did for me.
This is a relatively new book so I don't want to give away too much information about what happens. Instead, I'll briefly go over the plot and focus more specifically on what enthralled me about this novel.
American Dirt is a book about a woman named Lydia and her son Luca, who are forced to flee Mexico after her husband, a journalist, publishes a work about the leader of the newest drug cartel in Acapulco. Unbeknownst to Lydia, she has already met this dangerous and elusive leader of the cartel several times before. Once Javier, or the jefe, makes the connection that Lydia's husband is responsible for ousting him to Mexico (and presumably the Mexican authorities), there is no doubt he will pursue Lydia and kill her. Lydia keeps only one thought in her mind: Luca. She must do everything she can to protect her son. Determined to keep them both alive, Lydia and Luca embark on a journey through Mexico and to the southwestern United States with little more than the clothing on their backs.
It's in this journey that Cummins shows us just how fragile ones comfortable existence really can be. Lydia and her husband live an affluent, middle-class life in a city that has yet to succumb to the dangers of the drug cartel. But Lydia is ripped from this world and into the world of a migrant, with all the tragedy and dangers that come with it. This is done in a way that could make even the most politically staunch supporters of border patrol consider the humanity of those who attempt to cross illegally.
In a time a when our last president fashioned his campaign partly around a promise to build the "biggest, best wall" anyone has ever seen at the Mexican border, Cummins manages to focus the lense in on who the people really are who are deciding to cross the border. Rather than center her story on the political vehemence on either side, Cummins sets the reader down to give them a glimpse into a truly devastating story of survival. The characters in American Dirt may be fictional, but the circumstances which surround them are not.
We see women fleeing sexual violence, men who are willing to literally risk their lives to flee their homes (because staying would be a death sentence anyway), and people who take the terrifying risk of jumping onto a migrant train, only to be beaten or stabbed to death by the horrors of human violence. Cummins forces her readers to look at the peril these characters are in and wonder how on earth they would possibly risk so much to leave their homes. As Lydia considers her own coming journey, she reflects on this:
"All her life she's pitied those poor people. She's donated money. She's wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite how dire the conditions of their lives must be wherever they come from, that this is the better option. That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn't even want them."
The way that Jeanine Cummins reflects on the juxtaposition of being privileged to suddenly becoming what you once looked at with a distant pity is a brilliant way of helping readers to empathize with migrants. Afterall, Lydia is a woman who is well-off. She's an upper middle class business owner and mother. She takes pleasure in books and has a deep connection to her family roots. She argues with her mother. She is any of us.
Cummins's description of the journey through the Mexican desert is harrowing and visceral. Just like in real life, there is no special mercy shown to even the most likeable of characters. She gives these characters exuberance and life but then can (and sometimes does) take them away just as abruptly. To me, this is what a great writer should do. Before reading this book, it had been a long time since I had felt so invested in the story I was reading and so attached to the characters.
Right now, I'm reading this novel in a book club with my college level ESL students, many of whom are from Latin America. In just our first meeting, I was told by one Mexican student that the events described in the book are realistic...this really does happen to people in such a horrifying way. Another student from Puerto Rico was brave enough to share her personal tragedy of seeing a man murdered when she was just 7 years old, and having to be carried out of her house by her brother, in fear that they may be seen by the men committing the murder. As a professor, and a very privileged person, it was difficult to know what to say other than thank you. Thank you for providing your personal experience in relation to a work of fiction, which resonates even more strongly with the real world than I thought.
If you're looking for an enticing read, one that is worthwhile and memorable, pick up American Dirt. Like any great piece of art, it might change you.
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