American Dirt

Chapters 5-7 describe the escape from Acapulco to Chilpancingo. Cummins employs imagery and foreshadowing to enrich the reader’s understanding of Lydia and Luca’s predicament. For example, water features prominently in Chapter 5. When Luca wakes up from a bad dream at the hotel in Acapulco, Lydia insists he drink water, holding the bottle for him as if he were an infant. This gesture emphasizes the maternal bond between Lydia and Luca, a theme that runs throughout the novel. Lydia also explains that water helps with grieving: “Someone once told me that the only good advice for grief is to stay hydrated. Because everything else is just chingaderas” (38). Staying hydrated takes on greater significance later in the novel, notably when Lydia and Luca cross the desert. There, water becomes more than a convenient distraction in the midst of grief, it keeps them alive.

The use of imagery and foreshadowing is equally effective in Chapter 7. Lydia imagines tiny AK-47 icons marking the location of roadblocks on the map she studies during the bus ride to Chilpancingo. These diminutive weapons are exactly those the sicarios used to kill her family. In addition, the AK-47s allude to the dangers that await, not just on the road to Mexico City where the roadblocks are located, but also further north into the US. The dangerous roads stand in sharp contrast with Lydia’s recollections of trips she and Sebastián took to and from Mexico City in their youth, before the cartels moved into Acapulco. Like others in the region, Lydia and Sebastián moved about freely until fear of the cartels curbed their ability to travel. For women, the threat of sexual violence added an additional layer of fear: “Lydia allowed her driver’s license to expire almost two years ago. They seldom left Acapulco now, and Lydia, like most women in Mexico’s more precarious states, never travels alone by car anymore” (56).

The entwined themes of betrayal and guilt come to the fore in Chapter 5. Lydia views the murder of her family as a personal betrayal. She is wracked with guilt for having befriended Javier but not recognizing the danger he presented: “She knew this man. She knew him. And yet she’d failed to appreciate the danger he presented; she’d failed to protect her family” (43). Guilt, grief, and fear gnaw at Lydia. The feelings are so intense they alter her face, a condition Luca worries is permanent: “It’s as if seven fishermen have cast their hooks into her from different directions and they’re all pulling at once. One from the eyebrow, one from the lip, another at the nose, one from the cheek. Mami is contorted” (38). The imagery of fish unwittingly getting caught by fishermen alludes to Luca and Lydia’s plight as they struggle to escape from Javier’s hooks.

Cummins fleshes out Luca in Chapter 6. In the preceding chapters, he is presented as a traumatized boy who reacts viscerally to the death of his relatives. Despite flashes of maturity, most noticeable when he comforts his mother, Luca remains flat. It is not until a flashback in the middle of Chapter 6 that the reader encounters a different Luca. The boy is a wunderkind with an aptitude for geography. He speaks English fluently, having learned the language on YouTube and by watching television. Last, he is an extroverted child, as evidenced by his interactions with foreign visitors to Lydia’s shop. In short, the old Luca is nothing like the timid, frightened boy that appears in earlier chapters. Trauma fundamentally alters his personality, just as it changes his mother’s face.