Bloomsbury Puts White Model On Cover Of Book With Protagonist Of Color

salon.com:

The same publisher has done it again, releasing Jaclyn Dolamore's "Magic Under Glass" -- the protagonist of which is clearly described as having brown skin -- with a young white woman on the cover. Bloomsbury's fear of losing the white market was evidently greater than their embarrassment over the "Liar" debacle -- unless, of course, what they chiefly learned from the "Liar" debacle is that you don't need to put as much money into publicizing a novel if its packaging is sufficiently controversial (in which case, you're welcome, jerks).

Read the whole story: salon.com

Comments

[Obert Madondo]

07:52 PM on 01/22/2010

If it's true, Bloomsbury USA should not shoulder all of the blame for perpetuating racism and stereotypes in fiction. Readers who prefer white over dark skin on the cover of a book are the problem. The same goes for white readers who will not buy a book with a black person on the cover.

Such readers are still trapped in the pre-21st century, white-superiority, mentality.

The good thing is that these readers are fighting a losing battle. The acceptance of the person of color as an equal - in fiction and real life - is an irreversible revolution. And the person of color's cruise to the top is unstoppable. Case in point: Barack Obama. The US' first African-American President has not only reached the top already. He's currently the most powerful person on earth!

[BebeLush]

03:04 PM on 01/21/2010

Ruby from Cold Mountain turned white in the film. Still don't know how that happened.

[Zathras42]

12:27 PM on 01/20/2010

Having worked in bookstores and/or libraries since the early 80's, I can tell you that this is nothing new. On the one hand, you can't say for certain how much (if any) information the Artist received about the book. Of course that's assuming they were even given more than a small sample or chapter to work from in the first place!

From Mystery novels with covers depicting a completely incorrect time period or locale, to a seemingly random pick from the publisher's stack of "Generic Romance Covers", not to mention innumerable Fantasy novels with a 'dragon on the cover': but not a single dragon in the book!

I recall being at the Northwest SciFi Convention (NorWesCon) years ago when Steven Barnes (A HuffPost Blogger) was amused/surprised/just plain glad to have the whole thing settled, as he announced that the new edition of his novel "The Kundalini Equation" was finally going to have a cover with an accurate depiction of his main (African-American) character.

And don't even get me started on the TV Mini-Series "Earthsea", where a few characters had their racial makeup changed to 'better suit their roles' or some such nonsense.

At times like this I try to remember one of my favorite pithy "Laws", it goes as follows:

HANLON'S RAZOR:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

It's amazing how far that simple saying goes when confronting things like this!

P.S. It works for Politics as well.

[binarystar]

02:05 PM on 01/20/2010

Yeah they've been doing this to Ursula LeGuin for years and she's been very vocal about it. When they made that Earthsea movie I was stunned.

[ESerafina42]

10:01 PM on 01/20/2010

I was going to say the same thing. It has annoyed me for years that either illustrators (not necessarily their fault) or whoever commissions the covers of many books obviously don't have a clue to what the contents are.

These are particularly egregious examples, but they're nothing new.