Bloomsbury backs down over book cover race row
Publisher revises cover for Justine Larbalestier's Liar following storm of protest about 'whitewashing' book
Alison Flood in the guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 August 2009
Publisher revises cover for Justine Larbalestier's Liar following storm of protest about 'whitewashing' book
Alison Flood in the guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 August 2009
Australian author Justine Larbalestier has won a battle with her American publishers to feature a black girl on the cover of her new book, after the original jacket featuring a white girl provoked controversy from bloggers and commentators across the internet. The original cover design
Larbalestier's new novel, Liar, is about a short-haired black girl called Micah, but the advance reading copies sent out by Bloomsbury Children's Books used a photograph of a long-haired white girl on its jacket, prompting a wave of criticism. "It's bad enough to misrepresent the character in other ways, but changing the race on the cover of the book just seems wrong," blogged a librarian. "I am appropriately stricken. And outraged, nauseous, flabbergasted ... I wish I could say I can't imagine what they were thinking, but in fact I do have a guess. I just can't imagine why they thought no one would notice," wrote a children's book editor.
"I was very upset. Both my agent and I requested that it be changed," said Larbalestier, who was flooded with messages of support after laying out her concerns about the cover on her blog. "Are the big publishing houses really only in the business of selling books to white people?" she wrote. "That's not a very sustainable model if true."
Bloomsbury has now bowed to the pressure and will publish the hardback of Liar this October featuring a black girl. The publisher told US trade magazine Publishers Weekly that it regretted that its "original creative direction for Liar – which was intended to symbolically reflect the narrator's complex psychological makeup – has been interpreted by some as a calculated decision to mask the character's ethnicity". Australian publication – with a text-focused jacket – is also lined up for October, but UK rights in Liar have not yet sold.
Larbalestier's new novel, Liar, is about a short-haired black girl called Micah, but the advance reading copies sent out by Bloomsbury Children's Books used a photograph of a long-haired white girl on its jacket, prompting a wave of criticism. "It's bad enough to misrepresent the character in other ways, but changing the race on the cover of the book just seems wrong," blogged a librarian. "I am appropriately stricken. And outraged, nauseous, flabbergasted ... I wish I could say I can't imagine what they were thinking, but in fact I do have a guess. I just can't imagine why they thought no one would notice," wrote a children's book editor.
"I was very upset. Both my agent and I requested that it be changed," said Larbalestier, who was flooded with messages of support after laying out her concerns about the cover on her blog. "Are the big publishing houses really only in the business of selling books to white people?" she wrote. "That's not a very sustainable model if true."
Bloomsbury has now bowed to the pressure and will publish the hardback of Liar this October featuring a black girl. The publisher told US trade magazine Publishers Weekly that it regretted that its "original creative direction for Liar – which was intended to symbolically reflect the narrator's complex psychological makeup – has been interpreted by some as a calculated decision to mask the character's ethnicity". Australian publication – with a text-focused jacket – is also lined up for October, but UK rights in Liar have not yet sold.
The full report in The Guardian.
1 comment:
The stuff up with the cover of 'Liar' is hard to comprehend. The arrogance of thinking it would be Ok to put a white girl on the cover of a book about a black girl shows the lack of commonsense (among other less savory attitudes) is still aive and kicking and that makes me very sad.
Maureen Hume www.thepizzagang.com
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