Jeanine Cummins, AMERICAN DIRT

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I was absolutely thrilled to interview Jeanine Cummins for my virtual book club. When American Dirt came out, it was an Oprah's book club pick, landed on the best-seller list, was optioned by Clint Eastwood…. and yet caused an enormous controversy, one that caused Jeanine to cancel her book tour and all events due to death threats and more. I wrote an article defending her work and a novelists’s right to create fictitious worlds. I felt compelled to write it because of how much I adored story. How much it moved me. How beautifully written and powerful it was. Just like a good book should be. After months of speculation about her feelings, I could finally speak to her directly about what happened and the unheard story about her writing the book itself. We spoke more about the important part —the book, her relationship with her dad and her devastating loss of him—than the controversy, but it was all relevant, inspiring and informative. Jeanine is a passionate advocate for borderlands migrants and is matching donations up to $100K until July 31st for anyone who wants to give here. I hope you’ll find our discussion as moving as I did.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Libby Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
0:07.0	I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology,
0:12.2	which you should run out and buy called Moms Don't Have Time to a quarantine anthology.
0:16.8	All proceeds of that book go to COVID-19 vaccine research.
0:20.4	And I'm the editor-in-chief of M don't have time to write a new publication on Medium.
0:25.0	And we're accepting submissions.
0:26.8	So please send your personal essays there.
0:29.1	And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens.
0:32.9	And my website is Zibby Owens.com.
0:34.8	Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
0:40.6	Today's episode is the recording of my recent event with the Temple Emanuel Stryker Center, in which I interviewed Janine
0:45.3	Cummins, author of American Dirt. As you may know, if you've been following my podcast and
0:50.2	listening along for, I don't know, a year or so, or more, it's been three years now,
0:55.1	I interviewed Janine over the summer with my book club for the first time, and that was really
1:00.3	interesting, and I got to know her thoughts and feelings a little more then, but now that it's
1:05.1	been over a year since the whole controversy surrounding American dirt happened, I got a chance
1:10.7	to really dig deep and talk to
1:12.3	Janine about not just the controversy, but about her writing and all the great things that people
1:17.0	should have been asking her from the beginning, but instead were completely blindsided and
1:22.9	distracted by the controversy surrounding the book. So this is a chance to hear from Janine herself what it was like to having death threats
1:32.1	and all the rest when her book came out because of all the drama, how she handled it,
1:36.9	what it was like writing American dirt to begin with, what she's working on now, how she
	...

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