Update Jan 21st: Bloomsbury is changing the cover!

It’s 2010, the new millennium. 2010. Swapping out a protagonist’s skin color in a book cover shouldn’t even cross our minds. You’d think, as a nation, we’d have grown up by now. At this point, there’s just no excuse. But then, there never was.

What am I talking about? The Bloomsbury YA book covers for LIAR by Justine Larbalestier and MAGIC UNDER GLASS by Jaclyn Dolamore. For in-depth coverage of MAGIC, read the timeline at Chasing Ray, Ari’s open letter to Bloomsbury, and Jaclyn’s response.

There’s also a petition in motion. Feel free to sign.

The covers of doom

And the million dollar question is…

Why?
How is this ok?
How does it continue to go on?

Several bloggers (see links above) have already addressed the fundamental devaluation of people in this issue. So I’ll just say, they’re right.

It’s also fundamental devaluation of the stories and the authors themselves. Think about it, a publisher must have little value for an author and his or her work if they completely rewrite the protagonist’s image. Sorry, your character isn’t really someone we think deserves to be on the cover of your book.

If the publisher can’t stand behind the story enough to show the protagonist on the cover, then why exactly did they publish the story in the first place? What’s the point?

If a story is worth printing, isn’t it worth printing the actual story? If a character is worth reading an entire book about, isn’t he/she worthy of representing his or her own journey?

Don’t we hold these truths to be self-evident?

Seriously? We’ve had 234 years to figure this out.
The answer is yes.

Related Posts

1. Books: boys and angels

   THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie had me laughing from the first paragraph. Sweet, sad, true. Junior is flat-out irresistible. And yet…it’s hard for me to gauge my overall reaction to the book,…

2. Contests: Linger, queries, and marketing

   If you haven’t yet, you should check out this week’s Teaser Tuesday. (Speaking of Grapemo, I’ll have to get some serious writing done tomorrow–I’m two days behind!) There’s also some great contests floating around the web this week,…

3. Books: Verse and fantasy

   I follow Lisa Schroeder’s blog, so when I saw CHASING BROOKLYN, at Borders, I snagged it from the shelf & peeked in.
   Novel-in-verse? Not my thing. Put it back.
   But hey, I like her blog right?…

Metainfo

For some reason I don’t find this all that surprising. Maybe that’s because I know too many people who are prejudiced and discriminate against anyone who is not a white male who was born and raised in America and don’t hold much with “them foreigners.” Ok maybe there’s really just the one that is that bad but it’s still too many.

One would think that publishing companies would be a little more conscious of their image if nothing else.

---

Comment RSS feed. TrackBack URL