Film critic pally: “This would seem to fit into your cultural Khmer Rouge narrative.”
HE: “In dumb person language, can you explain what this is about? Because I don’t get it. American Dirt is a sympathetic saga of an educated, middle-class Mexican mother and her son fleeing for their lives after her journalist husband has been murdered by a drug cartel. So what’s the rumpus?”
Film critic pally: “The Dirt haters are lefties who are accusing the book of cultural appropriation, and of basically using torture porn to dramatize the immigrant crisis. They are also objecting to the author, who, despite having a Puerto Rican grandmother, is a white woman by most classifications, and therefore, in some minds, incapable of grasping the nuances of the situation.”
HE: “Okay, check.”

“Citing ‘Peril,’ Flatiron Cancels ‘American Dirt’ Tour, Apologizes for ‘Serious Mistakes’“, posted by Claire Kirch for Publishers Weekly on 1.29.20:

“Flatiron Books, publisher of American Dirt, the much-hyped novel about a Mexican mother and her son trying to make their way to the U.S. to escape a drug cartel, announced today that it is canceling the rest of the 40-city national tour by the book’s author, Jeanine Cummins, which launched in Washington, D.C., on January 22.

“Cummins made only five stops, the last one on Saturday evening, before the tour was officially ended today. Besides Washington, D.C., the tour had already stopped in New York City, Boston, Madison, Conn. and Nashville.

“In a prepared statement announcing the tour’s cancelation, Bob Miller, Flatiron’s publisher, disclosed that the remainder of the tour was canceled due to ‘specific threats to booksellers and the author’ which in some cases included ‘threats of physical violence.’ Miller added that ‘we believe there exists real peril to their safety.'”