The problem with black faces and books

written by Anti-Racist Parent editor Tami Winfrey-Harris; originally published at What Tami Said

[Editor's note: Sorry for the late post today!]

Why would a young adult (YA) book about a black girl with features that reflect her African ancestry and hair that is short and natural have a young, white girl with keen features and flowing tresses on the cover? Folks around the Web (Read this great summary at Chasing Ray) are asking that question about the US release of Australian author Justine Larbalestier’s latest book, Liar, a thriller about a teenage pathological liar.

The answer, according to Bloomsbury, the book’s publisher, is certainly one we’ve heard before: Black faces don’t sell, particularly dark ones framed by nappy hair. Beauty sells and black faces are not beautiful. In a post about the controversy on her Web site, Larbalestier mentions a positive review of Liar that brands Micah, the protagonist, “ugly,” though there is nothing in the book that describes her as such. Apparently, it is her blackness and nappiness that offends.
The author (who, btw, is white) writes in her post about fighting for a different book cover and losing the battle. Though several images of young girls were considered, and not all of the faces were white, none actually resembled the protagonist. Larbalestier is disappointed, not just with her experience, but with the fact that this cover bait-and-switch is not uncommon:

Every year at every publishing house, intentionally and unintentionally, there are white-washed covers. Since I’ve told publishing friends how upset I am with my Liar cover, I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA—they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section—and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all. How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white? Why would she pick up Liar when it has a cover that so explicitly excludes her?

The notion that “black books” don’t sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them4 Until that happens more often we can’t know if it’s true that white people won’t buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with “black covers” don’t sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with “white covers.” Read more…

It is not just black girls whose faces are deemed inadequate, Trisha at The YA, YA, YAs points out:

My first reaction to the Liar cover controversy: That’s shameful. An eye-catching cover, to be sure, but to use the picture of a white girl who blatantly does not match the narrator’s description at all? So. Wrong. Even more so now that I’ve had a chance to read the book.

My second reaction to the Liar cover controversy: Well, hell, it’s not as if it’s unusual for Asian-American characters to have their race obscured on book covers. Granted, not whitewashed like this, but hidden nevertheless. This might sound really callous and I sincerely don’t mean to diminish the importance of the original discussion or of Bloomsbury’s deplorable actions, but there you go. Read more…

I was once a young, black girl with a voracious appetite for books. I still love them and I try to instill a bit of that bibliophilia in my nieces and nephews. Books are so powerful. They can uplift, teach, entertain, save…There is a reason that books and the ability to read have historically been withheld from oppressed peoples. Books can damage, too. If I hand a copy of Liar, with its cover that implies black physicality is “less than,” to a young, black girl, already struggling with her self-worth because of a society that is still race and gender-biased (and because, you know, that’s what teens do), –what will that do?
My first instinct is to call for those of us who believe in anti-racism to boycott books with cover art that disrespects people of color. But what good would come of that? Soon, publishers would be saying that books featuring protagonists of color won’t sell even when their covers are emblazoned with acceptable-looking white folks. And also, authors like Justine Larbalestier, who actually makes an effort to write inclusive books with characters of color (see below), will suffer. That’s not fair. It seems the best thing we can do is what we are doing now. Talking about the inequity loudly so that everyone can hear, and writing to publishers to let them know that we notice what they are doing and we don’t like it. And here is the important part–all this talking, complaining and taking to task can’t be done solely by parents of color, or parents of children of color. We desperately need the voices of white allies–those good people who publishers think find black faces distressing and off-putting. We need you to be vocal. but here’s the other thing–we need you to actually buy good black literature, and literature featuring other people of color, for yourselves and for your children. We need to prove to the publishing industry that they are wrong for thinking the worst about people who read and buy books.
Larbalestier concurs:

But never forget that publishers are in the business of making money. Consumers need to do what they can. When was the last time you bought a book with a person of colour on the front cover or asked your library to order one for you? If you were upset by the US cover of Liar go buy one right now. I’d like to recommend Coe Booth’s Kendra which is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Waiting on my to be read pile is Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger, which has been strongly recommended to me by many people.

Clearly we do not live in a post-racist society. But I’d like to think that the publishing world is better than those many anecdotes I’ve been hearing. But for that to happen, all of us—writers, editors, designers, sales reps, booksellers, reviewers, readers, and parents of readers—will have to do better.

While visiting Larbalestier’s blog, be sure to read her wonderful post, “Why my protags aren’t white.”

I’ve been asked a few times why none of my protags are white given that I am white. (So far that question has only come from white people.) I thought I’d answer the question at length so next time I get that particular email I can direct them here.

I don’t remember deciding that Reason, the protagonist of the Magic or Madness trilogy, would have a white Australian mother and an Indigenous Australian father. I don’t remember deciding that Tom would be white Australian or Jay-Tee Hispanic USian. But I made a conscious decision that none of the characters in How To Ditch Your Fairy would be white and that Liar would have a mixed race cast. Why?

Because a young Hispanic girl I met at a signing thanked me for writing an Hispanic character. Because when I did an appearance in Queens the entirely black and Hispanic teenage audience responded so warmly to my book with two non-white main characters. Because teens, both here and in Australia, have written thanking me for writing characters they could relate to. “Most books are so white,” one girl wrote me. Read more…

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Comments

  1. Heather wrote:

    This angers me on so many levels. Even as a white mom, raising three white children, I have to go out of my way to stock a multi-racial library so to speak. I want my kids to have books that reflect the world around them. It shouldn’t take paying $20+ on half.com to get a rare copy of Joshua’s Night Whispers to complete the series of board books that features an African American family. To my kids it’s just a family like ours. To me it’s a reminder, as is this post, that there is so much still very wrong with publishing and perceptions.

    Posted 28 Jul 2009 at 2:45 pm

  2. siphronia@yahoo.com wrote:

    i often disagree with what is said at this site, but i must say, i whole heartedly agree with these comments.

    this is really one for the books!!!

    Posted 28 Jul 2009 at 3:58 pm

  3. Duffy wrote:

    You should try stocking a middle school classroom library with diverse YA books! I also had a chance to be disturbed by books with people of color on them. Two of my students, Latino sisters, read a series of books with black characters on the front. I asked to see one of them to see if I wanted them for my classroom. They were smut. I guess publishers find it OK to put people of color on the cover if they are fulfilling negative stereotypes.
    On a brighter side, both Christopher Paul Curtis and Walter Dean book covers typically feature accurate portrails of they characters.

    Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 8:20 am

  4. Jackie Horne wrote:

    When I worked in children’s book publishing in the 1980s and 90s, the Marketing director did a study of our front and backlist, and came to the conclusion that books that featured “multicultural content” were selling better than books that could not be grouped under this heading. If I remember correctly, though, this related primarily to picture books, as we did not publish anything in the way of middle grade or young adult fiction with anything other than white protagonists. Why is it so much easier for us white folks to embrace “multiculturalism” for little kids, but not for middle graders or teenagers? My theory is that multiculturalism for younger grades focuses primarily on celebrating “other” cultures, while discussing race in the older grades would have to bring in the power dynamics that underlie race relations in our country. We’re all so very happy to celebrate “otherness” as long as our white privilege is not called into question…

    Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 8:43 am

  5. dejamorgana wrote:

    This just plain sucks. I’ve come to expect whitewashing in movies and TV (the recent examples of “Prince of Persia” and “the Last Airbender” are only the latest offenders), but you kind of expect more from the guardians of literacy. You at least expect them not to be quite so crass.

    I would think Larbalestier could sue to have the book pulled, and then submit it to another publisher. It ought to be easy to show that the publisher has grossly misrepresented her work.

    Then again, that would probably get her branded as a “difficult” author, cause her a good bit of financial stress, and there’s no guarantee that another publisher would buy the book. So, maybe not. It’s a sticky situation for her.

    I wonder if there’s any version of the book with a more appropriate cover? Maybe an Australian or British release that we could buy instead of this one? I’m sure that would send a message.

    Got to check on that.

    Meanwhile, I wonder how many other good books I’ve not bought for myself or my daughter because a publisher decided that black faces don’t sell. Because personally, I feel exactly the opposite: there are far too many stupid YA books out there about white girls discovering their inner cool and feuding with the local Queen Bees, and not enough stories from minority viewpoints. If I saw Liar on the shelf with that cover, I would totally ignore it. Has this been done to me before? Now that I think about it, I’m sure it has.

    I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover… Sorry, I had to say it.

    Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 10:14 pm

  6. Jane wrote:

    Thank you for this thoughful and well-informed commentary on this critical issue! I wanted to share some information about a newly established non-profit organization called “Kids Like Us” that is trying to address these very real inequities. A group of teachers in Chicago and St. Louis, frustrated with the lack of access to high-quality children’s literature for their students (because publishers don’t market them and bookstores don’t carry them), decided to take matters into their own hands. See http://www.kidslikeus.org for more info. Teachers are reviewing books this summer and adding many more titles to the collection in the coming weeks. Many of the recommended concept books, picture books, and short chapter books have been posted and are available. For those of you looking for middle grades and high-quality YA literature featuring characters of color, upper grades titles will be posted soon.
    Hope it helps–
    Jane

    Posted 30 Jul 2009 at 9:21 am

  7. Lily wrote:

    I wonder what would happen if they tried print on demand for these type of titles, with a choice of covers?

    Would they be able to track how the buyer gets to the site? Would people who hear of a title from somewhere like this blog choose a different cover picture than those from another site?

    It would be very interesting to find out whether children the book is written for would choose a different cover than their parents, or their teachers, or librarians.

    In this day and age it’s certainly not necessary for all copies to have the same pictures, and it would be almost no work to provide a number of covers, say, the publisher’s choice, the author’s choice, an educator’s committee’s choice, covers suggested by children who have read the book.

    This would be an interesting concept for size issues, and ability issues, and “attractiveness” issues, also….

    Posted 02 Aug 2009 at 1:28 am

  8. Cindy wrote:

    The book has a new cover! I work in publishing and this whole issue really bothered me. It has been a topic of discussion here at work. I’m so glad the publisher (not the one I work for) has decided to change the cover.

    http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6675065.html?nid=2788

    Posted 07 Aug 2009 at 10:02 am

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