Less than a week after canceling Jeanine Cummins' entire "American Dirt" book tour and acknowledging "deep inadequacies" in its launching of the bestseller, the publishing company appears to be making changes.
A group of Latinx activists met on Monday with officials at Macmillan, the international parent company of Flatiron Books, which published "American Dirt," to deliberate steps the publisher could take to increase Latino representation in the industry.
After the meeting, #DignidadLiteraria and Presente.org, an online Latinx organizing group, released a statement detailing the "unprecedented commitments" Macmillan made after the two-hour meeting.
According to the release, the publisher made commitments to "substantially increasing Latinx representation across Macmillan, including authors, titles, staff and its overall literary ecosystem" and "developing an action plan to address these objectives within 90 days." Macmillan also said it would "regroup within 30 days with #DignidadLiteraria and other Latinx groups to assess progress."
This week, #DignidadLiteraria and its allies also will be organizing action forums in several cities across the country, including one Thursday at Culver City's Antioch University. The purpose of these panels is "to continue the conversation on Latinos and the publishing industry," said Roberto Lovato, a writer and co-founder of the hashtag and group spawned by the outcry.
Flatiron Books and Macmillan did not immediately respond to the Los Angeles Times' request for comment.
Cummins' migrant tale "American Dirt" sparked a raging storm of controversy weeks ago. Published on Jan. 21, the book has been accused by critics of being a harmful act of cultural appropriation, riddled with cultural inaccuracies and stereotypes about Mexico and the struggles of migrants. It inspired snarky parodies on Twitter and spurred discussions about how far the publishing industry still had to go to represent the diversity of the Latino experience.
Still, the novel was warmly received by prominent notables, including Stephen King, John Grisham and Sandra Cisneros, who reaffirmed her support of the book in an exclusive interview last week.
Among the meeting attendees were Bob Miller and Don Weisberg, presidents of Flatiron Books and Macmillan, respectively; Amy Einhorn, the editor of "American Dirt"; representatives of Oprah Winfrey; and authors and #DignidadLiteraria founders David Bowles and Myriam Gurba. Gurba's negative review of the book became the catalyst of the controversy.
#DignidadLiteraria is "a network of committed Latinx authors formed to combat the invisibility of Latinx authors, editors, and executives in the U.S. publishing industry and the dearth of Latinx literature on the shelves of America's bookstores and libraries," according to its founders.
It's also a movement fueled by the publishing world's lack of representation. Latinos are the largest minority voting group in the U.S. and the largest nonwhite demographic, but in 2018 they made up only 3% of the publishing workforce, according to a Publishers Weekly study from last year.
Though Bowles called the commitments "a clear victory" in a video posted on Twitter, #DignidadLiteraria emphasized that the publishing world had a long way to go, urged government officials to investigate the "homogeneity" of the industry and encouraged the public to demand more Latinx voices in books.
Monday's announcement "is just the first step in what must ultimately be a sea change in publishing," the group said in the statement. "This campaign is not simply about Flatiron Books, or Macmillan USA. It's about seeking change that reverberates through the entire industry so the shelves of U.S. bookstores and libraries reflect its people."
Now that Latinos have the publishing world's attention, Lovato believes that the public is "watching the beginning of the end of the folkloric industrial complex in Latino literature."
