When Jeanine Cummins’s novel American Dirt, about a mother and son’s perilous odyssey from cartel-ravaged Mexico to the United States, was named an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Cummins must have felt bulletproof. Not only had she gotten a seven-figure advance and a film deal, but her book had also received rapturous blurbs from Stephen King, John Grisham, Sandra Cisneros, and Julia Alvarez. Now her book’s jacket would sport, like a gleaming sheriff’s badge, the golden “O.”

If you’ve been online in the past three weeks, you may have an idea of what happened next. Ms. magazine killed an incandescently angry review by Myriam Gurba, who then published it on Tropics of Meta under the title “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature.” The broadside, accusing Cummins of stereotyping, cultural appropriation (“appropriating genius works by people of color” and “slapping a coat of mayonesa on them”), and trafficking in “trauma porn,” doomed the hapless author, who, following days of la tostadura on social media, has canceled her book tour, citing concerns for her safety.