Stop Reducing People to an Identity.
There’s been quite a bit of controversy surrounding author Jeanine Cummins and her latest novel, American Dirt. The story is about a mother and son who fled Mexico after a violent run-in with a cartel.
The book garnered much pre-release hype, with author Don Winslow calling it “the Grapes of Wrath of our time” and Oprah adding it to her Book Club. But critics panned the work for being too bland and unimaginative.
In an article for The Guardian, Kenan Malik says, “its plot is as obvious as a narco gangster’s threat, the characteristics flat and the dialogue has all the depth of an episode of CSI.”
The unimaginative writing was not enough to detract book buyers and the novel shot to #1. But the commercial success paved the way for accusations of cultural appropriation and lack of representation for tried and true Latino writers who cover similar subject matter.
Cummins is white. NBC News reports that some of the book’s critics;
…primarily consisting of Latinos and other people of color, have deemed the book opportunistic and racist and are questioning why Latino authors often don’t receive a similar level of support for their projects, which touch upon similar themes and are written from an insider’s perspective.
#DignidadLiteraria is a social movement spawned in the wake of American Dirt, calling for social media and real-life sharing of Latino stories. The campaign, started by writers Roberto Lovato, Myriam Gurba, and David Bowles, calls for greater inclusion of Latino voices within the U.S. Publishing industry.
As a writer pitching his first work of nonfiction, this should spell great news for me. I check all the Latino boxes:
- parents from Mexico
- the first person in my family to go to college
- didn’t learn English until 2nd grade
- drove a Chevy Silverado
- had a slew of Bud Light at my wedding, etc.
Yet I am annoyed and frustrated with some of Cummins’s critics who insist upon reducing everything to a matter of identity and race. And if we’re not careful, the very people trying to help Latino voices might wind up being the same people who set back a generation of writers.
One of my most significant issues with the controversy is that both sides of the argument continue to look at Latino writers as a category as if they can’t be more than one thing. Identity is complex and varies depending on where we are and who we are with. When I lived in Modesto, I identified with my high-school. When I moved to San Diego, I told classmates I was from Northern California. When I lived in New York, I introduced myself as being a California native. When I studied in Spain, I was known as “the American guy.”
I’m complex not because I’m special but because I’m a human being. Our identities are a complex web of contradictions and beautiful stories that neat, clean labels, can’t capture. Amongst the many ideas I have discussed with agents include but are not limited to books on:
- the 2010 Oakland Raiders
- UFC Fighters from The Central Valley
- how soccer explains my world
- Google’s Waze acquisition.
My diverse set of pitches and ideas reflect my complex and distinct character. I am more than just my last name. If anything, the identity I most strongly associate with is that of my hometown. I’m from the city that birthed a galaxy far far away.
Why is it that it’s always folks who think they are helping me, who want to file me and others under labels such as Hispanic, Latino, or the insufferable Latinx? In his seminal work On Identity, the philosopher Amin Maalouf writes, “for it is often the way we look at people that imprisons them within their narrow allegiance. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free.”
We need to view people as whole individuals and not reduce them (or ourselves) to silly, meaningless labels.
Look throughout history, and you’ll see countless examples of figures wrestling with their identities. Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica while it was still under Genoese control. His first language was Corsican, and his second language was Italian. Napoleon would struggle and be bullied for his poor French language skills throughout his adolescence. Yet in time, he would shed his ardent Corsican nationalism, rise through the French military, and proclaim himself emperor of France.
Pep Guardiola is one of the most storied soccer players and managers. He played for the Spanish National Team despite being from Catalonia, a region in Spain that has clamored for independence for hundreds of years. Yet that was never an issue for him.
Some of my happiest moments in life are when all my messy identities and allegiances coalesce into one being. A few years ago, I was back in Modesto for a long weekend. I ran into high school friends at the local watering hole, the same one we’d visit as newly minted twenty-one-year-olds more than ten years ago. It was a convivial evening, filled with laughter and nostalgia. I recall telling my buddy Matt I would have to decline his invitation for dinner the following night, for I was in town for a quinceañera. Matt looked at me and said, “oh damn, I forgot you were Mexican.” We all laughed and ordered another round.
Amy Trask was the first female CEO in the NFL. She was in charge of the Raiders organization for several years. In a documentary for NFL Films, she spoke about her former boss, the late owner of the Raiders Al Davis.
Al Davis hired without regard to race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. — I was a beneficiary of his wisdom — I shall always appreciate the opportunity of a lifetime he afforded me.
She described an encounter with Davis where he cursed in front of her. Another person in the room said something like, “Al, there is a woman in the room, do not swear.”
Al replied, “well, I swear at Amy, but I don’t consider her a woman.”
The way Trask recounts the story, it was a special moment. “Isn’t that our goal? Isn’t that you wish? Don’t we strive to and hope that we will be treated and evaluated without regard to race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and other such classifications?”
My friends didn’t look at me as a category, and Al Davis didn’t view Amy Trask as “just” a woman. I will repeat this until my voice gets hoarse: reducing people to simplistic categories does them a disservice because it disregards the complicated identities that comprise the individual.
Cummins’ critics argue she can’t or shouldn’t write about the immigrant experience since it is not her story to tell. They are missing the point that it is EXACTLY her story to tell since she wrote it. Anyone who does the work should be able to write about what moves them.
Kendrick Lamar did not need to be a woman to pen the beautiful “Sing of Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” and Steven Pressfield did not need to be from Sparta to have written Gates of Fire. Similarly, Cummins does not have to have Mexican blood racing through her veins to write about the immigrant experience.
Why should only Latino writers talk about immigration or crossing borders? Are we not forgetting how universal this theme is? One of the foundational texts in western literature is Virgil’s The Aeneid. The epic story is about a Trojan prince who leaves his war-torn country with a band of survivors to find a new homeland.
There are no new stories under the sun, what keeps us human and connected is finding new ways to tell these stories. And when we do an excellent job of this, we find new people with whom we can connect. I am not Cuban, but I can relate to Comedian Joey Diaz’s stories because they touch on a commonality we both have: we’re children of immigrants.
The controversy surrounding American Dirt is another checkpoint in the complicated conversation around identity and culture. As a society, we place too much emphasis on our “vertical” identities, namely ethnicity, race, and gender. As the historian, Marc Bloch wrote, “men are more the sons of their time than of their fathers.” Therefore, it is traits like socio-economic class, age, education, and interests that have more of a bearing as who we are as individuals.
But we can’t have that broader conversation if we continually reduce things to simplistic interpretations of identity. Imagine if I never read Hillbilly Elegy because a book about poor people in Appalachia isn’t my story. If that were the case, I would have never discovered how poor families face similar challenges anywhere in the world. “Poor” doesn’t discriminate. I don’t know the region, and I do not know J.D. Vance, but being from Modesto, I know about drug abuse and struggling to live paycheck-to-paycheck.
As noted, it is fair to criticize Jeanine Cummins’s execution. Judging from the material and critical feedback, she could have done more research and more farming for dissent (to quote my former employer’s culture deck.)But that would have been the same if she were Mexican or Mexican American or Modesto-Mexican-Latin-American.
Citing her skin color when discussing her work is to change the discussion from execution to something that doesn’t matter. I do not buy into the notion that being of a specific gender, race, or marginalized group solely qualifies you to write about certain topics.
I am a man, but that doesn’t equip me to write about testicular or prostate cancer. My ethnicity doesn’t qualify me to write about Mexican history or Mexican soccer. But you know what does? My genuine interest and research into those two fields.
According to Publisher’s Weekly, 84% of the book publishing industry is white. From the outside looking in and peering through my Silicon Valley lens, it seems obvious the publishing industry requires change. But not because only 16% of people in the industry are not white. Race is not indicative of diversity. A light-skinned man from Argentina who works as a plumber does not think the same as a light-skinned man from Bulgaria who works in venture capital.
There is a lack of diversity in publishing for the same reason there is a lack of diversity in other fields. The individuals who make up industries tend to come from the same social networks. They share the same cultural touchstones and debate the same ideas, preventing new ones from entering the fold. But that problem isn’t exclusive to the Publishing Industry.
Ultimately and perhaps more damaging is this conversation will make victims out of the very same people it’s trying to help. People who see themselves in the U.S. Hispanic demographic will think they can’t advance because of factors they cannot control. I am not saying discrimination doesn’t exist, but I am arguing it is not always due to race or ethnicity. It’s because climbing in any industry is challenging.
I was having a difficult time breaking into the startup world back in 2012. But it wasn’t because my parents were Mexican. It was because I was untested, I didn’t know anyone in space, and no one knew my work. But once I learned the rules of the game and once influential people started to see my work, the doors opened. Bit by bit, I was able to stitch a career for myself, going from an intern at Waze in 2012 to Marketing Manager at Netflix in 2018. It wasn’t linear, and it sure as hell was not easy.
I was lucky that my mentors, be it Stephen Key or Di-Ann Eisnor, never made me feel sorry for myself for supposedly being from a marginalized group. Instead of coddling, they instilled confidence in my unique circumstances and abilities.
So to kids just starting out in the publishing or in any industry, don’t believe the hype. Don’t buy into the notion that life is going to be hard because of circumstances (like race or gender) you cannot control. The road ahead in whatever you choose will be hard because anything worth doing is going to be an uphill battle.
Some people may have advantages over you. But you have advantages over others. The key is to find a way to combine your unique set of abilities and circumstances to create something worthwhile. Put your work out there, find mentors, read books, do whatever is in your power to put the winds at your back.
You might not get your dream job right away, you might not even care for the first opportunity you get. But trust me. I am proof positive that it can happen. I’m not saying you’re going to be the next literary star or the future founder of a mega-successful startup. But if you think like a victim, you will become one. And then you will have no shot. Life is not difficult because you’re Latino or from Modesto.
“Life is difficult,” wrote the psychologist M. Scott Peck. “This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once, we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
Eric M. Ruiz is an LA-based writer and marketing strategist from Modesto, California. Subscribe to his newsletter and receive long-form essays on race, identity, and culture.
