Analysis American Dirt VS As God Looked On (2016}
My name is Amy Call, and I am Jim Harris’s editor. My name appears in his novel As God Looked On as assistant editor. I know his novel well, and I have read Jeanine Cummins’ novel American Dirt. I am here to tell you that Jeanine Cummins has stolen Jim Harris’ plot line and claimed it as her own. Without As God Looked On, there could have never been American Dirt. Jim Harris’ novel weaves many plot lines together and converges all these plots at the end of his novel. His chapters are titled, not numbered. I will refer to the plot line that Jeanine Cummins has stolen from Jim Harris as the migrant plot.
The Main Characters and General Plot Summary
Jim Harris’ characters are an aunt who is not named and a six-year-old boy named Pablo. Both characters are Mexicans and have been kidnapped by the cartel. Later in the migrant plot, the aunt and Pablo will flee from the cartel and escape to the United States.
Jeanine Cummins’ characters are a mother named Lydia and her eight-year-old boy named Luca. Both characters are Mexicans and are fleeing the cartel by escaping into the United States to avoid being kidnapped or killed.
Analysis
The only thing that Jeanine Cummins changes in regards to the two main characters are the female’s relationship to the boy, his name, and his age by merely a two-year difference.
The Opening
Jim Harris’ opening chapter that begins the migrant plot is titled “Pablo.” The opening scene begins with Pablo standing over the toilet in his aunt’s bathroom:
Pablo didn’t want to go anywhere. He was six years old and his belly was usually full and his mother and his uncle had just put in the greatest thing you could put in a tin-sided, cement floored two-room house on the side of a hill in southern Mexico—a cuartode bano interiors—an indoor toilet.
When Pablo first pooped in that toilet he stood over it and watched the water swirl and shortly it was gone just like that. He stood there smiling.
His aunt yelled at him to wipe his butt with a corncob like so (she gestured), then told Pablo to pull his pants up (18).
Jeanine Cummins’ opening chapter, Chapter One, begins with Luca standing over the toilet in his grandmother’s bathroom:
One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing” (1).
Before Luca can zip his pants, lower the lid, climb up to look out, before he has time to verify the source of that terrible clamor, the bathroom door swings open and Mami is there (1).
Analysis
In both scenes, the boys are in the toilet with a caring female family member right outside the door. The boys are both standing and are in the process of either getting ready to zip or pull up their pants.
I’d like to note an article from Vulture that cited what Oprah Winfrey tweeted about Cummins’ opening: “’From the first sentence, I was IN ….’” https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/american-dirt-book-controversy-explained.html
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