Dear Oprah Winfrey,

As writers from diverse backgrounds, we deeply appreciate your support for books, and your lifting up of voices and authors. You have been and are a powerful force for good, a champion for justice, change, and literature. Thank you.

In light of all the good that you have done, we believe that American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins should not be honored as your book-club pick. The book club provides a seal of approval that can still, we hope, be changed. As you might know by now, there has been a widespread outcry from many writers—including Mexican American and other Latinx writers and thinkers—about the lack of complexity of this immigration story, and the harm this book can and will do. Others have already written many critiques that very persuasively lay out the problems inherent to this book; there will be many more. One of the earliest critiques is written by Myriam Gurba, and can be read here. Parul Sehgal also outlined her concerns about American Dirt in her recent review in the New York Times.

Many of us have firsthand experience with migration and its difficulties and traumas; some of us are Mexican immigrants, and have even more direct experience with the migrations Cummins purports to represent in American Dirt. Cummins’s book is, yes, a work of fiction. Many of us are also fiction writers, and we believe in the right to write outside of our own experiences: writing fiction is essentially impossible to do without imagining people who are not ourselves. However, when writing about experiences that are not our own, especially when writing about the experiences of marginalized people, still more especially when these lived experiences are heavily politicized, oppressed, threatened, and disbelieved—when this is the case, the writer’s duty to imagine well, responsibly, and with complexity becomes even more critical.

In the informed opinions of many, many Mexican American and Latinx immigrant writers, American Dirt has not been imagined well nor responsibly, nor has it been effectively researched. The book is widely and strongly believed to be exploitative, oversimplified, and ill-informed, too often erring on the side of trauma fetishization and sensationalization of migration and of Mexican life and culture. In addition, there are now accusations of heavy use of other Latinx writers’ work.

We, the undersigned, do not see a faceless brown mass. We, ourselves, are not faceless, nor are we voiceless.

As Cummins puts it in the author’s note to American Dirt: “At worst, we perceive [migrants] as an invading mob of resource-draining criminals, and, at best, a sort of helpless, impoverished, faceless brown mass, clamoring for help at our doorstep. We seldom think of them as our fellow human beings.” A painful, central question arises: who is this we imagined by Cummins, who is this them? We, the undersigned, do not see a faceless brown mass. We, ourselves, are not faceless, nor are we voiceless.

This letter is not written to attack Cummins, a fellow writer whose intentions we can’t know. But good intentions do not make good literature, particularly not when the execution is so faulty, and the outcome so harmful. Here is one example of ill-considered execution: already, at a celebratory American Dirt book party hosted by the novel’s publisher, with Cummins at the table, barbed-wire centerpieces were displayed as decorations, the machinery of US immigration used as festive adornment. Cummins publicized these photos herself, with evident delight. These images are difficult to look at, and for those of us who have undergone migration they are callous and insensitive. We can only imagine how many more such parties will take place if this novel continues its life as an Oprah book-club pick.

This is not a letter calling for silencing, nor censoring. But in a time of widespread misinformation, fearmongering, and white-supremacist propaganda related to immigration and to our border, in a time when adults and children are dying in US immigration cages, we believe that a novel blundering so badly in its depiction of marginalized, oppressed people should not be lifted up.

We are asking only that you remove the influential imprimatur of Oprah’s Book Club, as you have in the past upon learning that a book you’d championed wasn’t what it first seemed to be. Your openness to changing your mind, to incorporating additional information, has been inspiring and powerful. We speak to that openness now.

The undersigned alphabetical list includes many prominent, bestselling, prizewinning writers. All of us know you to be a public figure who believes in change and empathy. We write with dismay, but also with long-standing admiration, and with hope.

Thank you for listening.

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Chantel Acevedo, author of The Distant Marvels

Xhenet Aliu, author of Brass

Eloisa Amezcua, author of From the Inside Quietly

Alice Bag, author of Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story

Jennifer Baker, editor of the short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life

Rosebud Ben-Oni, author of turn around, BRXGHT XYXS

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge

Chaya Bhuvaneswar, author of White Dancing Elephants

Sara Borjas, author of Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff

Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man

F. Douglas Brown, author of ICON

David Campos, author of Furious Dusk

Sara Campos, writer, lawyer, co-director of The New American Story Project

Jennine Capó Crucet, author of Make Your Home Among Strangers

Joseph Cassara, author of The House of Impossible Beauties

Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay

Cathy Linh Che, author of Split

Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

Kirstin Chen, author of Bury What We Cannot Take

Chiwan Choi, author of The Yellow House

Nicole Chung, author of All You Can Ever Know

Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine

Naima Coster, author of Halsey Street

Rachelle Cruz, author of God’s Will for Monsters

Carolina De Robertis, author of Cantoras

Anjanette Delgado, author of The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho

Juli Delgado Lopera, author of Fiebre Tropical

Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls

Omar El Akkad, author of American War

Tongo Eisen-Martin, author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes

Patricia Engel, author of The Veins of the Ocean

Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime

Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Sabrina & Corina

Chris Feliciano Arnold, author of The Third Bank of the River

Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard is True

Katie Ford, author of If You Have to Go

Caribbean Fragoza, author of Eat the Mouth That Feeds You (forthcoming)

Ru Freeman, author of On Sal Mal Lane

Denice Frohman, co-organizer #PoetsforPuertoRico

M. Evelina Galang, author of Her Wild American Self

V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Love Marriage

Ángel García, author of Teeth Never Sleep

Suzi F. Garcia, author of Dear Dorothy: A Home Grown Fairytale, executive editor at Noemi Press

Amina Gautier, author of The Loss of All Lost Things

Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning

Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name

Michelle Cruz Gonzales, author of The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band

Estella Gonzalez, author of upcoming 80s East Los

Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman

Jean Guerrero, author of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir

Jasmine Guillory, author of The Wedding Date

Myriam Gurba, author of Mean

Juan Luis Guzman, organizing committee member of CantoMundo

Daisy Hernandez, author of A Cup of Water Under My Bed

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Children of the Land

Brandon Hobson, author of Where the Dead Sit Talking

Mitchell Jackson, author of Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family

Michael Jaime-Becerra, author of Every Night Is Ladies’ Night

Luis Jaramillo, author of The Doctor’s Wife

Randa Jarrar, author of Him, Me, Muhammad Ali

Stephanie Jimenez, author of They Could Have Named Her Anything

Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckonings

Zeyn Joukhadar, author of The Map of Salt and Stars

Laleh Khadivi, author of A Good Country

Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album

Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms

Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State

Angie Kim, author of Miracle Creek

Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me

Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

Mary Ladd, author of The Wig Diaries

Stephanie Land, author of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive

Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

Alberto Ledesma, author of Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer

Christine Lee, author of Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember

Aya de León, author of Side Chick Nation

Muriel Leung, author of Bone Confetti

Ada Limón, author of The Carrying

Kenji C. Liu, author of Monsters I Have Been

Roberto Lovato, author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Revolution and Redemption

Valeria Luiselli, author of the novel Lost Children Archive

Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

MariNaomi, author and illustrator of Turning Japanese

Terese Mailhot, author of Heart Berries: A Memoir

Lauren Markham, author of The Far Away Brothers

Caille Millner, author of The Golden Road: Notes on my Gentrification

Fatima Farheen Mirza, author of A Place for Us

Tomás Q. Morín, author of Patient Zero

Nayomi Munaweera, author of What Lies Between Us

John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry

Jennifer Nelson, author of Aim at the Centaur Stealing Your Wife

Beth (Bich Minh) Nguyen, author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner

Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the novel The Sympathizer

Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee

Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew

Achy Obejas, author of The Tower of the Antilles

Daniel José Older, author of Shadowshaper

Daniel A. Olivas, author of The King of Lighting Fixtures

Tochi Onyebuchi, author of War Girls and Riot Baby

Tommy Orange, author of There There

Wendy C. Ortiz, author of Excavation: A Memoir

Daniel Peña, author of BANG: A Novel

Frances de Pontes Peebles, author of The Air You Breathe

Isabel Quintero, author of My Papi Has a Motorcycle

Luivette Resto, author of Ascension

Joseph Rios, author of Shadowboxing: Poems & Impersonations

Gabby Rivera, author of Juliet Takes a Breath

Lilliam Rivera, author of Dealing In Dreams

Melissa Rivero, author of The Affairs of the Falcóns

Suzanne Roberts, author of Almost Somewhere

Ivelisse Rodriguez, author of Love War Stories

Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree

Elizabeth Rosner, author of Survivor Café

Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, author of Barefoot Dogs

Raquel Salas Rivera, author of lo terciario / the tertiary

Aida Salazar, formerly undocumented child, author of The Moon Within

Steven Sanchez, author of Phantom Tongue

Carina del Valle Schorske, author of The Other Island

Alex Segura, author of Miami Midnight

Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy

Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift

Rebecca Solnit, author of Whose Story is This?

Analicia Sotelo, author of Virgin

Susan Straight, author of the In the Country of Women

Pitchaya Sudbanthad, author of Bangkok Wakes to the Rain

Natalia Sylvester, author of Everyone Knows You Go Home

Tanaïs (née Tanwi Nandini Islam), author of Bright Lines

Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People

David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles

Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels

Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

Azareen van der Vliet Oloomi, author of Call Me Zebra

Jose Antonio Vargas, author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

Vickie Vértiz, author of Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut

Oscar Villalon, Managing Editor of Zyzzyva

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, daughter of formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants, author of Beast Meridian

Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias

Naomi Williams, author of Landfalls

Desiree Zamorano, author of Amado Women

Javier Zamora, emigrated from El Salvador when he was nine, author of Unaccompanied

Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks