I was pointed at this paper by Laura Atkins: What’s the Story?: Reflections on White Privilege in the Publication of Children’s Books. She’s asking for comments on the paper to be posted on her blog: here.
Among other topics she touches on the Justine Larbalestier Liar controversy (by the way, a new cover has now been agreed for this book) and relates this to her own experiences of publishing multi-cultural children’s fiction.
Liar
So, who’s been following the recent debacle about a Bloomsbury book with the cover image of a white girl to illustrate the story of a black girl? Liar by Justine Larbalestier was due to hit shelves in November with the cover image of a white teenage girl (left). One problem: the protagonist is black.
The news appeared in July on industry blog Editorial Anonymous where commenters were outraged by the decision. One commenter pointed out that this sort of whitewash is nothing new: “Reminds me of the old-school sci-fi covers I’ve seen. On Octavia Butler’s (whose protagonist’s are always black women) book ‘Dawn’, the original cover was a pale woman with long, blond hair. They corrected it in the next edition (or printing), but still. Completely incongruous with the actual story.”
Larbalestier made a post on her blog and told her readers the sad truth already known to those of us in the trade: “Authors do not get final say on covers. Often they get no say at all.”
Publishers Weekly picked up the story on the same day (Justine Larbalestier’s Cover Girl) where Melanie Cecka, publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s Books USA and Walker Books for Young Readers did not cover herself in glory with the following comment: “The entire premise of this book is about a compulsive liar. Of all the things you’re going to choose to believe of her, you’re going to choose to believe she was telling the truth about race?” The suggestion that this decision was made deliberately is even more alarming than the idea it was unintentional.
Boing Boing also posted an article about the story. Cory Doctorow wrote Race and book covers: why is there a white girl on the cover of this book about a black girl? pointing out that this cover choice was not made in isolation and that all over the publishing industry authors are protesting against the same thing happening to their own books. White children are mainstream. Black children are urban fiction.
There’s supposedly a happy ending to this modern fairytale. Bloomsbury have decided to postpone publication until October and create a new cover. (Reported in Publishers Weekly: A New Look for ‘Liar’.) But the statement the company has issued is not exactly an apology:
“We regret that our 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. In response to this concern, and in support of the author’s vision for the novel, Bloomsbury has decided to re-jacket the hardcover edition with a new look in time for its publication in October. It is our hope that the important discussions about race and its representation in teen literature continue…”
Does anyone believe the part about the whitewash being a symbolic reflection of the character’s psychology? Well done to whatever marketing bod thought that up but it sounds profoundly unlikely doesn’t it? Can you envisage a cover meeting where someone said: “You know, I think it would be a really good idea to show this child as white even though she’s black, that would really convey the psychological aspect of her being a liar.” Surely any modern children’s publishing person would respond with cries of “dear lord no!” or at the very least “that could be problematic”.
So while there is cause for celebration in this cover change, those who should be celebrated are the internet bloggers (amateur and professional) who didn’t allow this story to go away, who demanded a response from the publishing company and who stated publicly that this is not okay. I’d like to be able to praise Bloomsbury too but I don’t think you get cookies for backing off from a racist act, not unless you issue a full and heartfelt apology and a promise to do better.
And we can do better. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to a vision of the future in which white people are not the default, the mainstream and the uncontested image of everyman. We can ‘be the change’. The only thing stopping us is not seeing it as important.
In my home office I have several book shelves. The one closest to my desk is my reference works shelf. This is where I keep my standard reference works (those I often refer to) and specific works I have consulted while writing particular books. This is a short piece about the reference works I have. All links are to LibraryThing and by visiting my reference works collection page on LibraryThing you can find out more about each book.
This is what my shelf looks like: (from 3 photographs photoshopped together)
On the right hand side are the more standard reference works. You can see the Collins dictionary of the English language, the The Penguin Dictionary of First Names (useful for naming characters), The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Roget’s Thesaurus, and various other useful tomes. It’s not all serious stuff. I have Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss and Red Herrings And White Elephants by Albert Jack. I also have The New Oxford Book of English Verse which is strictly speaking a poetry collection and should really be with my other poetry books. But this is a really useful reference to have if your characters are given to quotation. I suppose I could keep my collected Shakespeare here as well but it’s a pretty big book and the shelf is not infinite. I do have The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations to hand.
To the left of those you can probably spot the Italian dictionary and the book of French sayings. My other French books are at work where I last left them after taking some classes in French. My modern languages are not very good but that’s what the reference works are for. I would advise that you don’t attempt creating a character who speaks a foreign language fluently unless you’ve got a pretty good grasp of that language yourself though!
The Marketing Genius book is for my other job (in Marketing and Communications) but is also useful for an aspiring writer. More specifically for writers are How Not to Write a Novel by David Armstrong and Research for Writers by Ann Hoffmann (no relation). Every writer should have a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook but I’ve either lent or given my most recent copy to someone else. Nonetheless it’s a big yellow book and you will need one.
I’ve also got some books about culture and society here. I have Communities in Cyberspace, Tomorrow’s People: How 21st Century Technology is Changing the Way We Think and Feel, Former Child Stars: The Story of America’s Least Wanted, and Why Do People Hate America?. These are some of my particular choices which relate to my interests and my writing but there are some I particularly recommend for everyone. For example Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum, a really excellent introduction to some of the issues, perceptions and false perceptions that cluster around the concepts of race, identity, division and alliance. I also have two books by Terri Apter, someone I know personally and whose work I particularly admire. The two books I have are psychological studies of friendships between girls and relationships between girls and their mothers.
Because I am primarily a science fiction and fantasy author, I have a number of books about writing in that genre as well as a lot of reference works you can see on the far left of the shelf: the Dictionary of Imaginary Places, the New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction by Edward James and The History of Science Fiction by Adam Roberts.
I have been recommending for years How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. It’s a very good intro to the basics of effective plotting in an alien world. I have a lot of other books in a similar vein and I recommend scrolling through the list on LibraryThing. Deconstructing the Starships by Gwyneth Jones is advanced reading, in that it expects you to be familiar with certain genre classics. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland also expects a certain familiarity of fantasy tropes and serves as a humorous guide to genre clichés.
The other books currently on these shelves either relate to Roundabout, a contempory teenage fiction novel about travellers I published with Macmillan a few years ago, or to Ghost of a Chance, my forthcoming teenage supernatural thriller for Oxford University Press. If you’re interested in the kind of books I read as research, these are pretty good examples. For example, the collection I’ve amassed for Ghost of a Chance includes: Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History, A Country House at Work: Three Centuries of Dunham Massey, What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem, The Big House: The Story of a Country House and Its Family, Keeping Their Place: Domestic Service in the Country House, The Music Room and Truly Weird: Real-Life Cases Of The Paranormal. As you can see, I am referring to information about history, architecture, social history, servant culture, aristocratic culture and one book about the paranormal. I have also written a book about the paranormal for which there were an earlier set of reference works, now shelved elsewhere, which is why there’s only one book of this type although the novel will be a lot more supernatural in tone and subject. Handle with Care: An Investigation into the Care System is a reference work for another potential novel, as is The Parenting Puzzle: How to Get the Best Out of Family Life.
There are currently 61 reference works on this shelf and this does not include those sitting on my too read pile or the four new books that arrived through the post today. If you’re viewing the library thing page in a couple of months you may see a shift in what’s collected here.
At a later date I’ll write about how I use fiction for reference, but for that we’ll need to explore and catalogue the 10 shelves of my science fiction and fantasy collection and I’ve not yet listed them all on LibraryThing.
I hope that’s been useful and interesting as a tour through one writer’s collection of reference works. If you’d like to explore what else I’ve catalogued online with LibraryThing or to link to me there, please feel free. Some books have my ratings and comments attached and you can also use my tags to find out what books I have in certain categories or genres. Start by visiting my reference works collection page on LibraryThing and then explore from there.
1) What author do you own the most books by?
Ursula LeGuin or Steven Brust. That’s a close call.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Peter Pan
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No. But that question got a bit meta, didn’t it?
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
It won’t be secret if I tell you!
I used to be not-so-secretly in love with Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, also with Armand from Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice and with Andry from Melanie Rawn’s DragonStar.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The Changeover by Margaret Mahy (probably).
7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Worst? As in the one I liked the least, right? This is a terrible value judgement question. I honestly don’t think I’ve read any books in the past year I really disliked. But I didn’t like the latest John Grisham. I think I’m burned out on Grisham. I’m giving all my Grishams to Oxfam. Oh, and I hated We Need To Talk About Kevein by Lionel Shriver but I read that last year.
8 ) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Not counting re-reads or the Arthur C. Clarke award list it’s probably Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. Alternatively The Female Man by Joanna Russ. Both very different books.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Bad Blood by Rhiannon Lassiter. Oh, you mean by someone else? Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
I don’t know who’s in the running.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Tanglewreak by Jeanette Winterson.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
The Left Hand of Darkness by LeGuin. It would be butchered by any studio that took it on.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I was Morgan in The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley and I was at the court of King Arthur engaged in a political power battle with Vivian who was also someone I know in real life.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I’m not wild about how this question is loaded. I will read anything from the back of a cereal packet to Shakespeare. I have read Jackie Collins novels and Freya North – are those low brow enough for this question?
15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
Difficult? Anathem was very long. The longest single volume book I’ve read, I think. But Incandesence was very short and involved some really complicated concepts. How about The Sparrow. That was very painful to read. If this question is looking for something high-brow(TM) how about Ulysses by James Joyce?
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
According to my father, A Winter’s Tale.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
French poets, Russian authors.
18) Roth or Updike?
Neither.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Eggers.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare, but I’d rather pick Webster.
21) Austen or Eliot?
Eliot – although I do enjoy Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Not enough world literature, all very Euro-centric.
23) What is your favorite novel?
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.
24) Play?
The Applecart – George Bernard Shaw.
25) Poem?
Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love – Auden
26) Essay?
Macbeth and the Metaphysic of Evil – G. Wilson Knight
27) Short story?
The Nine Billion Names of God – Arthur C. Clarke
28) Work of non-fiction?
Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being – Ted Hughes
29) Who is your favorite writer?
Ursule Le Guin. Big surprise, right?
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
There are some really negative questions in this quiz but this one is particularly hard to judge. Rated by whom? Overrated how? Probably JKR or Shakespeare because of the sheer weight of people who believe that theirs is the best writing ever. But that’s an answer by the numbers. It’s hard to think of an honest answer that isn’t prejudiced or offensive.
31) What is your desert island book?
Something very long with lots of ideas to think about. I’m prepared to take nominations. The Complete Works of Shakespeare until I think of something better.
32) And … what are you reading right now?
Just finished Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. About to read a non-fiction book abut an EcoHouse.
I am now on Twitter!
You can find me by going to the Twitter site here: http://twitter.com/rhi_lassiter
Follow me and I shall drop all sorts of bird crumbs for you… Although with the character limit they will be crumbs, not loaves of wisdom.
I had my hair cut a couple of weeks ago and have now finally completed the second-half of the process. Here’s a picture that should show the detail of the cut and colour.
It’s multiple layers, with a base colour of auburn red and some streaks of vibrant red and copper in it. It’s what I think of as ‘tiger stripy hair’ and is the second time I’ve had this style and colour.
This time it was cut by Anne Veck of Anne Veck Hair in Oxford and Bicester. I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out.
Borderland
Borderland has been reissued by OUP with a new jacket.
If you missed it the first time around, now’s your chance. Two of the sequels, Shadowland and Outland will also be reissued later in the year.
Making friends doesn’t come easily to newcomer Zoë. She’s always been the outsider, watching the ‘in’ crowd from afar and longing to be part of it. So when beautiful, popular Laura Harrell notices her, Zoë is desperate to impress. Soon Laura lets Zoë into a secret. In the woods behind her house there is a hidden doorway to another world; a world Laura and her brother Alex treat as their playground. But Zoë quickly realizes that what’s going on in the city of Shattershard is no game. War is about to break out-and it appears that Alex is supplying weaponry from their own world. After a chilling warning to away from Laura, Zoë is forced to question Laura’s true reasons for bringing her to Shattershard. Caught between the opposing sides, Zoë no longer knows where her loyalties lie or who to trust. As her old life slips further away, she is starting to see that getting into Shattershard was easy . . . but getting out may not be possible.
Cristy Burne is the winner of the first Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award.
(story from the Times Online)
The inaugural Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is for an unpublished book for eight to 12-year-olds that reflects cultural diversity either through the story content or the ethnic origins of the author. The first award went to Cristy Burne for Takeshita Demons, in which a Japanese girl whose family has moved from Osaka to London takes on the yokai (demons) of her grandmother’s stories. Takeshita Demons will be published by Frances Lincoln in summer 2010. Meanwhile, any author over 16 who has not previously published fiction for children can enter for the 2010 award (closing date 26 February 2010) . For more details contact diversevoices@sevenstories.org.uk or telephone Helena McConnell on 0845 271 0777.
Borderland has been reissued by Oxford University Press. The new edition has a cover by Christopher Gibbs, the same artist who designed the cover of Bad Blood.
Borderland
Reissue 7 May 2009
A whole new world of possibilities…
Zoe’s used to changing schools, trying to fit in and make friends, But now she has to find her way in a completely different world…
Her new friends, Laura and Alex, treat the city of Shattershard as their playground. Zoe isn’t so sure. Who is Jhezra and why are her people preparing for war? Who are the sinister strangers who’ve just arrived at court. And why does Morgan, the only other person from Earth, warn her against Laura?
Is it right for them to be there at all? Perhaps they shouldn’t get involved. They could be putting themselves – and everyone else in Shattershard – in terrible danger…
See the Amazon.uk page for this book.
Last night at the Clarke award a nice young woman with a video camera asked me the following question:
If you could live in any science fiction universe which one would you choose?
Immediately my head was filled with places I definitely do NOT want to live such as Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn universe. I stammered out an answer about Tanith Lee’s Drinking Sapphire Wine world but that’s a worryingly hedonistic answer. So I’m throwing it open to my readers. If you could move anywhere in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, where would you like to live?
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