7 moments from the Oprahs Book Club Apple TV on American Dirt

The highly anticipated, already controversial American dirt episode of Oprahs Book Club Apple TV + fell on Friday and just like Oprah promised in January, it brought people together from all sides to talk about this book and who can publish what stories. In the two-part special shot in front of a live audience in Tuscon, Oprah gave a platform to author Jeanine Cummins, Latinx voice critics of the book and members of the DignidadLiteraria movement, academics and volunteers specializing in trauma to migrants, publishing guards, migrant mothers and people living in America under DACA. Here are the highlights of the two-part episode.

Oprah gives opening remarks.
Oprah opens the episode by addressing the crowd with the following monologue about her beliefs about artistic freedom and how she listened to the conversation about who can tell what stories:

My belief is that reading allows people to feel more deeply all aspects of the human experience. So basically I fundamentally believe in anyone's right to use their imagination and skills to tell stories and to empathize with another story. To write and to act, to sing to create to play, whatever they choose. And if an artist, an author, in my opinion, is silenced, were all in danger of the same thing. So the fury around American dirt has raised a number of questions about who has the right to tell which stories, which books are chosen to be published, which voices of the authors are amplified, who are still struggling to be heard. And I hear and respect this dialogue, and I am looking forward to having this conversation today.

There is a montage on social networks.
For members of the public who may be less online than others, Oprah invites American dirt author Jeanine Cummins on stage and immediately seated him through a montage of tweets and comments, positive and negative, on his book, read aloud by comedians as if they were letters from the Civil War in a documentary by Ken Burns. Cummins stays stoic while tweets like some stories are not yours and HARD PASS flashes on the screen above it.

Cummins is held responsible for some of the most objectionable terms in his book.
Namely, Oprah asks Cummins to explain her reasoning behind the authors' note in which Cummins vaguely acknowledges her privilege and writes that she wishes someone a little browner than what 39; she had written. Cummins responds, I think its indicative of my own struggle with identity in these pages. I never wanted to suggest that people had not already written their stories of migrants. I think it was a very awkward sentence. I regret not having used it. Cummins also explains that she was afraid of being wrong in telling this story, but that she was inspired to continue it a week before the 2016 presidential election following a death in family.

A panel of three Latin writers who had all published articles criticizing American dirt and her selection for Oprahs Book Club are invited on stage to share their opinions and concerns.
Author Reyna Grande explains: When we approach an editor with our stories, what we are told is that our stories do not count, our stories do not sell well, because readers are not interested in it kind of stories, and they make us ashamed of our experiences and notes of immigrants the double standard, marketing budget, resources and fanfare given to the white perspective of Cummins, by contrast. Writer Julissa Arce explains how stories like Dirt should not be seen as representative of the full spectrum of migrant experiences, and calls for more platforms for the stories of dreamers who end up in limbo because this administration has canceled the DACA, applicants for asylum, families separated at the border and people in detention.

The panel also tells of President MacMillan and American dirts Flatiron editor to their faces.
We must congratulate Oprah for keeping her promise to create a space where the two parties can interact. The third Latin writer on the panel, Esther Cepeda, directly calls Don Weisberg, president of MacMillan, and Amy Einhorn, American dirts the publisher Flatiron, which is part of the audience. When Weisberg looks at what he learned from the reaction, saying that they have hired strategists and consultants, Cepeda immediately responds: Did they tell you to hire more Latinos? The women on the panel also express their disappointment at the offensive language that Flatiron used in their statement canceling the book tour, which framed it around an image of angry Latin violence.

Oprah visits the border wall.
In the second part of the special, Oprah visits the border wall of Nogales, Arizona, accompanied by Luz Maria Garcini, a trauma specialist in the Latinx migrant communities, who was herself a migrant mother from Mexico. As they walk along the barbed wire wall, Garcini explains the irreparable and lifelong trauma faced by those who travel and face violent altercations and separations under the US Border Patrol, and points out that those who attempt to cross the border do so out of the need for shelter and security.

Real migrants tell their stories.
Oprah then spends the rest of the episode letting migrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala share their stories. A woman in the audience now lives in Arkansas and shares stories of sexual violence she faced during the border crossing process. A man in the audience explains the brutal and frightening treatment he faced when he was a child at the border and how he lives under stress and fear that it is very likely that DACA will be canceled, under this administration and the current Supreme Court, and the uncertainty that the nine justices of the Supreme Court will decide our future. He also has this to say for American dirt: I am on Oliver twist was not a perfect book for the time. The episode ends with a segment where anonymous mothers of migrant shelters on the Mexican border were asked about their experiences of traveling thousands of miles to the border with children. This part of the episode is much more enlightening, moving, urgent and tragic than the speech of the book in the first part, illustrating how powerful it can be when institutions give migrants a platform to tell their own stories. stories.