YA Whitewashing redux? (an open letter to Harper Teen)

[alanajoli]

Dear Harper Teen,

Do you remember the controversy that surrounded Justine Larbalestier's Liar? It had a white girl on the cover of a book that was about a mixed-race teen. Bloomsbury withdrew that cover with apologies and changed it to one that more accurately represented the novel's heroine after fans spoke out against the whitewashing of the cover. That was in 2009.


Then in 2010, Bloomsbury did the same thing with Magic Under Glass by Jacelyn Dolamore. Probably because people were still watching Bloomsbury, there was further outcry -- debut novelist Dolamore didn't have the pull of Larbalestier, but there was enough criticism that it got a beautiful new cover featuring a dark skinned girl who looks like she's from the "Far East" (which reflects the character).


I'm asking you to remember this because I'm really afraid of what's going on with Cindy Pon's new novel, and the rerelease of her earlier book, Silver Phoenix. Cindy has released the new cover image on her blog, and while it's pretty, it has a white girl on it. The main character in the book, Ai Ling, is not. I understand that repackaging happens, and while I don't particularly care for the new look of the cover -- it looks the same as a lot of other YA covers right now, so obviously the trend is working even if it's not to my taste -- the look isn't what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about this trend in YA and YA fantasy to put white girls on the covers of books that are about girls of color.

Bloomsbury, troubled though the path was, eventually made a valorous choice in representing the characters on the jackets. I sincerely hope that Harper Teen will consider that same route. We want more multicultural fantasy to be published. We also want those characters to be represented in the cover art.

Sincerely,
Alana Abbott
author, reader, and buyer of books






--

Edit: dpeterfreund below in the comments notes that she did not assume the new cover model was white, but did assume she was Chinese. I'm glad to hear a dissenting voice to my own take on this scenario -- and I wonder what it says about me, as someone looking at the new image, that I assumed the model was white. Perhaps she's not! I do think, however, that when there is room for that question, the issue is still worth discussing.

Comments

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

Oh, ugh. That's a damned shame.
I personally couldn't get into Silver Phoenix at the time I tried to read it, but I thought it had a stunning cover. The repackaged one is so... eh. Generic, and I hate the way the girl has no face.

The repackaging suggests -more- than whitewashing, it seems to suggest to me that what the audience supposedly wants to see is a faceless, generic, non-entity of a cover model. Body parts without an identity. So not only is the cover stripping the girl of her ethnicity, but it's taking away her unique identity as well.

And THIS is what works in marketing?

Pfaugh. Give me the first cover anyday.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Wow, the objectification angle totally deserves an academic paper. Maybe it's about being able to insert yourself as the heroine, which a partial body view allows, while a full image is more distinct?

It is a weird trend, though, and I'm getting tired of it.

[tltrent.livejournal.com]

I'd seen the second cover, but not the rejacketing of the first. This is very worrying. Very worrying indeed. Thank you for such a smart letter. It's really good to keep this issue front and center.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Tiffany. Even if I'm wrong (see Diana's comment below), I do think it's good for publishers to know that readers are at least *thinking* about these issues.

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

Wow, I remember the Bloomsbury SNAFU hitting the fan - you would think in this real-time social media age, most publishers would have gotten that message by now - The Public, the ones who're paying attention, aren't going to sit still for that kind of crap. And since "the ones who're paying attention" very often coincides with "the ones who're paying for books"... Yeah, I'm surprised. Someone at Harper needs to start paying more attention.

Good post!

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

It's nice that we live in an age where responses on the internet and via social media have the potential to make a difference!

[dpeterfreund.livejournal.com]

I gotta say, I don't see it this time. The lower half of the face on the girl on the FURY OF THE PHOENIX cover looks exactly like the lower half of the face of my sister in law, who is Chinese. In fact, when I first saw it, I sent a pic to my brother to ask if his wife was posing for book covers. The chin, the nose, the line of the mouth and cheekbones -- it's totally her.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Wow, Diana, thanks for the dissenting voice. It's easy to get caught up in the internet hubbub with things like this -- I still feel the covers are misrepresenting the books, but maybe the assumption of mine (and many others) that the cover model is white says something about us, rather than about Harper Teen.

[dpeterfreund.livejournal.com]

I know whitewashing is a real problem, but I wonder some times in our attempts to address it we may not be jumping on the wrong targets. I feel weird saying anything too much because I am a Harper author (though I think that the girls on my covers could be Astrid -- on perhaps her best hair and make up day EVER).

I loved the original cover of SP and am happy I own it and that it will be the version I someday give to my daughter to read. I agree with you that I, personally, like the old concept more than the new, but I also think that if new people pick up this book because it looks more like Blue Bloods or Vampire Academy -- and I think they will-- then it's also good for SP.

Separate from that lies the issue of race representation. I think it's really hard to tell when you only see a chin or whatever. I have seen the full face of the woman whose chin and body is on the cover of my first two novels. She looks neither the age nor the ethnicity of my main character, but no one has ever mentioned it because when you only see her chin, she could be a white bread college student. (I even got one email saying they thought she looked like she was 12, which is funny, because the model was in her 30s!)

[lyster.livejournal.com]

dpeterfreund has a point about the second cover. While the suggestion of the eye visible beneath the e in 'the' on the cover looks non-Chinese to me, the jawline and mouth are very Maggie Q (Maggie Q herself is half-Vietnamese by extraction, not Chinese, but the face shape is common enough on the mainland), though admittedly with collagen injections. The slight cleft in the chin and the nose on the first of the new covers, though, scream Christina Hendricks, who's about as non-Chinese as you can get.

The costuming gives me the most pause. I haven't read the books, but the excerpts on the internet are Jin Yong-esque medieval Chinese Fantasy. If so, what the heck is the main character doing wearing a low-cut blouse (in the first cover) or a rhinestone-studded dress in the second? I've seen Tang dynasty lingerie with necklines more conservative than the first cover, and as for the second, it's not even trying. Here are a few resources for Ming Dynasty clothing, for comparison.

Errr, that got off topic. But anyway - when a character is so centrally represented on the front of a book, the editors and marketing folks should make sure that they look more or less the way they do inside. If I were in the mood for a book about murder at the High School Prom and picked up book 2 only to find a quest story featuring martial arts, invading barbarians, corrupt local officials, and ancient secrets, I'd be upset.