Review: 4 stars
With work winding down before my second mat leave, I took the chance to sneak in some reading after putting my toddler to bed. Cummins’ ‘American Dirt’ was one of 2019’s most anticipated reads, and after its induction into Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, it experienced a surge of controversy. I ordered it off Indigo.ca in hopes of forming an opinion for myself - I was actually quite curious to see how Cummins, as a white woman, would be able to walk in the shoes of Lydia, a widowed Mexican mother.
The novel follows a mother and son duo - Lydia and Luca - as they flee Acapulco following a mass murder of their family. With the Los Jardineros cartel in hot pursuit, the shell-shocked pair rapidly adapt to their new reality, donning the grim, dusty, weatherworn visage of the Latin American migrant. Lydia’s survival and protective instincts keep them alive at every turn, just out of grasp of their hunters. Some of the most poignant scenes are those when Lydia pauses and inhales the scent of her son or palpates his skin to feel the quiet devastation seeping through his body. The novel definitely pulled at my personal heartstrings, as I asked myself what I would sacrifice and what lengths I would go to, to protect the life of my son.
As they strive to make the 1,000 mile journey to ‘el norte’ - the United States - Lydia and Luca undergo drastic physical and mental changes. It becomes commonplace to hurl themselves onto the rooftops of accelerating trains, to shelter in migrant housing with downtrodden and often dangerous strangers, and to cover their tracks with each turn.. Along the way, they encounter Soledad and Rebeca, two Honduran sisters whose double-edged beauty become their downfall. The bonds that forge this foursome together hold strong throughout the novel, and the luck and tragedy that each encounters emotionally entangles the reader.
As a non-Latina, I enjoyed the pounding plot line and Cummins’ spotlight on the travails and circumstances of a highly vulnerable population. It was not a perspective that I had sought nor understood previously, and her ability to build empathy and rapturous attention from the first pages fo the books for the migrant experience is highly effective.
Controversy aside - I felt that ‘American Dirt’ was a highly readable, pulsating work of fiction that well deserves the pop culture dialogue it has incited.