Image The cover of “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins. An email later appeared in my inbox, and when I read it, I thought of “American Dirt” and its intended white audience:You are an excellent speaker and clearly very sincere. We need all the voices we can get, within and outside our community — perhaps especially from outside our community. When I read “American Dirt,” I didn’t know the back story — the bidding war, the seven-figure advance, the proclamation that this was the immigration book of its time. I had seen Ms. Cummins as a writer who could speak with us, not for us.

Source: New York Times January 30, 2020 20:37 UTC