Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.

Moms don't have time to read books.

Hi, every so often, I read one of my own essays on this podcast, and I wanted to read one because I feel so strongly about what I wrote in this piece

that I just have to read it. It's called In Defense of American Dirt and Just Being a Nice

Person. This has gone too far. I am truly baffled by the controversial response to American

Dirt, the stunning debut novel by Janine Cummins. And by the way, she'll be in my podcast soon.

Janine's book is absolutely sensational. I couldn't put it down. And as the host of a literary podcast, moms don't have time to read books. I read more than 150 books a year, so that's really saying something. This book simply stands apart. I don't care that Janine wasn't a Mexican refugee herself or even Mexican. That's entirely beside the point.

I don't care what her race, gender, or nationality is. What I care about is her book, how it makes me feel, what it makes me think about, how I stayed up late at night flipping pages in the dim

bedside light as my husband slept beside me because I couldn't bear to put it down. Did I miss a memo?

Since when do authors have to actually be like the characters they portray in fiction? Isn't that the whole point

of fiction? That writers can conjure up entirely new people, new scenes and new places that somehow

take us readers out of our own minds and into other worlds? American Dirt is a once-in-a-lifetime read.

The language is absolutely captivating. The characters are so real I felt like I would recognize them if they walked in my

living room. The scenery was depicted so vividly I could feel the hot sun scorching me as I

walked through the desert. The story transported me and gave me insights into a life experience

I most likely will never live myself. So why are so many

people absolutely livid? Perhaps Janine's seven-figure advance has the haters jealous, perhaps seeing

others succeed in any way at any cost, Royals' anger, but why does it make it okay to be this mean?

As a mom of four children, I try all the time to teach my kids to be kind to others,

to put themselves in other people's shoes, and to treat people the way they would want to be

treated. I tell them that if they don't have something nice to say, they shouldn't say anything

at all. And yet, as I flip through the newspapers in the mornings, as we all inhale our breakfast,

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