Should We All Just Shut the %$&*#$% Up?
by Elizabeth Solar
In the final weeks of January, two of the biggest stories were about well, stories.
Story number one is a news story about a news story within a news story. It concerns a United States cabinet member who tried to humiliate esteemed journalist Mary Louise Kelly by challenging her to locate Ukraine on a map, after verbally flogging her. This event followed an interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. She asked him a question he didn’t want to answer. A question that has implications for our nation’s security.
Harvard and Cambridge University educated, Kelly, who anchors NPR’sAll Things Considered, has also covered national security at the network, and broke stories as a host and reporter for the BBC. So, she’s no slouch. Pompeo’s condescending treatment during the interview was bad enough, but his beratement of her afterwards set a new standard – and a low one at that - in civil discourse and drove one more nail in the coffin of free speech. Kelly was less concerned with Pompeo’s’ botched ‘geography quiz, and stated ina NYTimesop ed on January 28:
“There is a reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution… a reason it matters that people in positions of power — people charged with steering the foreign policy of entire nations — be held to account. The stakes are too high for their impulses and decisions not to be examined in as thoughtful and rigorous an interview as is possible.”
In other words, Kelly did her job. And because of that her colleague, Michele Kelemen was barred from a small pool of journalists traveling with Pompeo to Ukraine this past week. I say ‘small pool,’ as the president has winnowed the number of news organizations that are invited on official trips. Fewer journalists with less access cannot adequately cover, then report on complicated stories. Journalism requires thoughtful research and analysis of facts, and a tenacity to keep searching for the truth. Despite continued obfuscation, and bluster, Kelly stayed on topic, asked the difficult questions knowing she might not get answers, which also tells a story, and continued to provide light, rather than heat on the discussion.
Story number two follows a much-heralded book about migrant workers both publicly praised and denigrated to the point of making the author, white privilege, and the publishing industry rather than the plight of migrant workers, the story.
American Dirt author Jeanine Cumminswas awarded a million-dollar advance from Flatiron Books after a bidding war among nine publishers. Oprah had anointed Dirt as one of her annual book selections. Celebrities who received advanced copies posted on Instagram. Literary luminaries like Stephen King, Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros have endorsed the novel. Publicized as the definitive book about the migrant experience – which now sounds like hyperbole - some called it a modern ‘Grapes of Wrath.’
And there’s wrath a plenty coming from writers and critics, many who are Mexican or Mexican American. There are outcries from other circles, who were those who have read Myriam Gurba’s scathing essay on her blog Tropics of Meta. In it she charges Cummins with appropriating works by people of color and making them more palatable for ‘mass racially ‘colorblind’ consumption.’ And she said the book sucked.
Moreover, the book has been criticized among other things for promoting cultural tropes, hurtful stereotypes, and employing poorly translated Spanish expressions. Cummins, whose ethnicity has seemed fluid over the last several years, previously claimed white heritage, while Her new novel notes she is one-quarter Puerto Rican. In response to criticism the book does not accurately reflect the migrant experience, she said she researched the book for five years. She told Public Radio’s Rachel Martin the “whole intention in my heart when I wrote this book was to try to upend the traditional stereotypes that I saw being very prevalent in our national dialogue.”
And what a dialog it’s become, one filled with vitriol, defensiveness and one-eighty turns from those who loved, and now both the novel and its author. Many favorable four-star reviews of American Dirt have been downgraded to one star after readers checked out negative comments about the veracity of the novel’s details and depictions of the migrant experience.
Worse, the controversy has caused the publisher to cancel American Dirt’sbook tour due to death threats against Cummins and bookstores who would host her readings. Gurba has reported death threats against her as well. This is the very dark side of cancel culture, which breeds like a virus, infecting all of us with the last popular mainstream opinion so we can seem woke, signal our newfound virtuousness, or add our own gasoline to the fire.
What? Death threats to writers? The last time I remember this happening was when a fatwa was taken out on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses. So, is this where we are?
There are a lot of mediocre books written, published and feted. In the end, American Dirtmay be one of them. The publishing industry, now contracted to a few major houses, and several smaller ones traditionally promote writers who are white and male. If our dialogue can provide more light than heat, we can make inroads for writers of all races, cultures, gender identification, class, religion, ideology, and yes, the unknown.
Publishing is a business and seeks to market to particular audiences generally in pursuit of profit. Think of all the celebrity memoirs or vanity projects that have been published. Hence, an extensive list of forgettable tomes.
Flatiron has apologized for the way it promoted the book. And perhaps this will open a discussion on publishing practices. In the meantime, the message is ‘when it comes to writing about people, stay in your own lane.’ Does that mean rather than meander into the world of imagination, aka fiction, we should all shut up? Hell no. But until we continue to build walls, not bridges with our words, we will forego meaningful conversation to speak to power if not progress.
Although I found what Gurba – and a few other critics – said overly harsh, I better understand their frustrations. Critics also have the right to express their opinion.
The First Amendment exists for the fair and free exchange of ideas. I like to think of this right as a ‘first, do no harm’ situation. Our freedom to express ourselves may come with consequences, often in the form of public criticism, but it should never lead to abuse. What’s often overlooked is it does not only exist to protect your speech. It protects that of ‘the other.’
Cummins, as she said, may not have been ‘the right person’ to write this story. I just started reading the book, so I can’t judge. It starts with an adrenaline shot of action, and engaged me. It is said to contain inaccuracies, stereotypes and awkwardly phrased Spanish, despite being examined by editors and sensitivity readers. Still, Cummins can write whatever she is moved to write. That’s the artist’s prerogative. We write to explore, to discover to empathize. Good writers research, question, and create a narrative that resonates emotionally. We may fall short in our intent, and through the eyes of others. If that literature moves people, provokes conversation, and more deeply to connects us to humanity, both our own and ‘the other,’ even better.
I have wondered why we are more engaged and outraged over a story about a work of fiction than in Kelly’s story. Are we indifferent to the journalists who risk their lives and reputations to provide the free flow of information that empowers our participation and voice in a free society? A free press provides the basis for democratic discourse, making it possible to have this robust discussion about American Dirt. Let’s not screw that up by resorting to vitriol and violence.
As a writer and former journalist, I am dismayed not just by what has been said, but the way it’s been said. Dispensing anger, humiliation, or contempt, whether attacking a reporter, or fiction writer, keeps us separate from each other. Can we find within ourselves the will to reach out, seek and really see ‘the other?’
Because we are all ‘the other
Note: Finer minds have written thoughtful and opposing pieces on each of these stories. Here are links to a few of them.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/24/799164276/american-dirt-author-jeanine-cummins-answers-vocal-critics
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/opinion/mike-pompeo-kelly-interview.html
