July 9th, 2007
by
Naamenblog
I’ve been reading the Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks and I have to make an observation. In all the recommendations I’ve gotten for this series and in all the reviews I’ve read, I’ve not seen this issue brought up. This does not mean it hasn’t been brought up elsewhere I simply haven’t seen it and would love to get links to places it was discussed.
This post will contain very minor spoilers and quotes from the book in connection to a characters physical appearance.
Zanja na’Tarwein is depicted throughout the series as a Person of Color. She is described very specifically. Some quotes from Fire Logic and Earth Logic include:
“…dark-skinned where the Shaftali were fair, with eyes and hair black as obsidian…” (FL pg.6)
“‘Look: it is a very small person made of shadow.’”
(EL pg. 67)
“…her dark skin covered with a patchwork of scars…her coarse black hair…” (EL pg. 150)
“She had black hair, black eyes, skin of such deep brown it would disappear into shadows…” (EL pg. 192)
“Dark skin. Black hair: straight, coarse, long as a horse’s tail. Eyes the color of their skin.” (EL pg. 359; it should be noted that this quote refers to Zanja’s people in general and not her specifically)
“Her skin, even the skin that was never exposed to the sun, was brown, almost black.” (EL pg.362)
Now with all this evidence can someone explain this cover to me?:
That is not the Zanja described in the books. It’s not the first time a Woman of Color character has been portrayed on the cover of a F/SF book as white. Some of the early editions of Octavia E. Butler’s novels had covers that depicted her characters as white or in such a way that the race of the person on the cover was ambiguous. There are many examples of this including Mind of My Mind and Imago as well as Dawn:
Or Emily Deveport’s Larissa (sorry about the blurriness of the image):
The reasoning for this is that publishers believe that white F/SF fans cannot bring themselves to identify with a character of color. So they try to pull a bait-and-switch and hope that readers will either a) become connected to the character before they find out she’s not white or b) be too lazy to return the book to the store if they have a problem with the deception.
I have yet to find an example of this happening to a Character of Color that is male. It’s possible it’s out there but I think it’s not nearly as prevalent as whitening up WoC characters. To the publishers mind they have to give their white male audience something to identify with, the main character must must either be male or if she’s a woman she must be white.
Heroes in book and film are often made male because it’s believed that men can’t identify with a heroine. He (the hero) is made white because it’s believed that white fans cannot identify with a Person of Color. To have a Female Character of Color breaks these rules and so she must be made more presentable to the audience, and is portrayed as white.
This creates a vicious cycle where we are told that we should have no interest in these things, for our purposes F/SF, because we see nothing of ourselves and so we don’t make our voices heard, and so the publishers can continue to think that all their fans are white men. Those of us who do read F/SF despair of ever seeing ourselves simply because too often we don’t exist in the fantasy worlds created but also because when we do exist we’re whitewashed. That sea of white faces in F/SF aisle of your local bookstore hides more than one brown person.
Note – I appreciate all authors who write PoC as main characters and do not at all blame them for this trend. I know that all too often an author has little control over the image on the cover of her book.
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Filed under Art & Graphics, Books & Literature, Race & Racism, female characters | Comments (33)
I know!! I think Mely’s got a few comments on the covers (http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/tag/a:+marks+laurie+j.). She also noted that Marks has had this happen with another COC cover as well, grrr.
I have yet to find an example of this happening to a Character of Color that is male.
Ged, in Wizard of Earthsea. The front cover of the Puffin edition (the one I read when I was a kid) shows Ged as a white boy in a wizard-style robe. (Okay, we’re looking backwards 30 years, but it did happen.)
You know, I never even noticed. Partly this is because I have prosopagnosia and never look at faces or see them in my mind (no matter how well-described)and partly because, although book covers may influence me unconsciously, the only part of them I consciously notice is the typeface.
What you describe — and show well — is egregious. It also illustrates the clash between progressive writers and the commercialism they have to negotiate.
It is a long and very sorry tale, in which Ged is perhaps the most prominent character. But we might be winning. Go take a look at Tobias Buckell’s Ragamuffin.
Oh, hang on a minute. The skin color is right, but what’s with that cleavage?
-sigh-
Naamen, it’s interesting that you identify this as more of a female character problem than a male character. I think, because I read so many books with female protagonists, I don’t have a clear sense even of what the picture is for male protagonists — are the characters more, or less, diverse than female characters (in the text)? And whichever, it seems like you’re saying that you think the text/illustration discordance is more common for female characters. Hmm. I wish I had more to say on this b/c it’s very interesting but all I can do is say “hmm” and wonder. (we should do something on this in the wiki too — to collect examples, write about it in detail ….)
Oyce – Thanks for the link! She does mention it happening to another Marks book, The Watcher’s Mask, where the same thing occurred. I share in the grrr sentiment.
Yonmei – Thanks for bringing up Earthsea, I’ve actually never read it but I did think about the movie versions as I wrote this and the whitening up that happened in both cases (live action & animated). I should have realized it probably happened with the book too.
Kestrel – I think the clash is a very interesting point, I really wonder how the progressive authors react when they see the covers?
Cheryl – I sigh with you about the cleavage. I might pick up the book, I’ve heard some really good things about Buckell.
Laura – I do think it happens to WoC characters more but I’m only going from my own experience. I primarily read female protagonists as well but when I did read a lot of male protagonists I don’t recall ever having run across the issue or discussion of the issue for that matter. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there though, as Yonmei pointed out above it happened with early versions of Earthsea.
We should do something about this on the wiki, that would be awesome. I kind of have to learn how to wiki first but I’ve always been a quick learner.
Why yes, I did notice that about the cover. *seethes*
I actually tried to calm myself down by telling myself that at least she wasn’t in a chain mail bra. My god, how they lower our expectations.
Some years ago, I read an interview of Octavia Butler– probably in MZBFM– in which they brought up a cover of hers with a green woman. The artist or publisher decided black wasn’t right, she knew white was wrong, and so they went with green. It is apparently better to be an alien than to be black.
Have you not read Robert Heinlein? Rod Walker (Tunnel in the Sky) and Eunice Branca (I will fear no evil) were both black and Juan Rico (Starship Troopers) was Latino, but you won’t see that on the covers of his books (including, I believe, paperback reprints done in the 21st century.)
Robert Heinlein was himself so coy about Eunice Branca’s race that I had read the novel half a dozen times before it occurred to me that Heinlein was dropping shy little cues that she was black.
(And Rod Walker’s race, likewise. Heinlein wasn’t exactly upfront about writing non-white characters: I think the only time he spells it out is in Farnham’s Freehold, in which he gets to play again with his cannibalism fantasies while blandly attributing them to black supremacists. Yuck.)
Rico’s race and nationality are both carefully avoided in the first half of Starship Troopers, and then dropped with a great thump about two-thirds of the way through. This seems to have impressed a teenage Samuel Delany, and at least Heinlein does make clear (if awkwardly) that he is writing a non-white character.
I liked Isaac Asimov’s more subtle comment in The Currents of Space, where a black character comments that the white-skinned fair-haired inhabitants of a certain planet stand out from the racial “type” of Empire much as he does: and only then you realise that in Asimov’s vision of a human galactic Empire, the standard galactic “race” is brown-skinned. But then Asimov could write about racial discrimination from the inside, where Heinlein was looking at it from the outside and prodding a bit, much as he vaguely tried to write about gender discrimination.
Notes: Johnny Rico was Filipino, it’s mentioned on like the last page of the book.
It never occurred to me that Eunice might be non-white. Huh. Gonna have to re-read that again…
Vito – Lowered expectations is right because when I realized Zanja was of Color all I could muster was a ‘Humph, they did it again.’ it’s such a shame because we should expect more. We should expect women not to be in a chain mail bustier and for PoC to be accurately represented but we get so beat down by these constant disappointments.
Diatryma – Thanks for the author perspective, I always wonder about that. And I wish I could say I was surprised by the idea that they think it’s better to be an alien than of Color. Unfortunately I expected as much.
Barbara – No, I’ve actually not read Heinlein. I read something of his, a short story?…I can’t even remember what it was but I do know it offended me so much at the time that I never picked up any of his stuff again. Thanks so much for the info on other covers where this has occurred, I appreciate it.
I noticed that Zanja’s description didn’t match with the woman on the cover of Fire Logic, and Karis wouldn’t be wearing warrior gear, so my conclusion was that it must be Norina then. That did make me wonder why she would be on the cover though, since she’s only a secondary character in the story.
I’ve read about what happened with LeGuin’s Ged from Earthsea, but that was a long time ago. This book was published in 2004 though. Why does this still happen now? Don’t those publishers and cover artists understand that the people who read books like Fire Logic would actually like it if the cover art matched the story?
Anonymous: It never occurred to me that Eunice might be non-white. Huh. Gonna have to re-read that again…
One of the shy little clues that Heinlein drops is the description of Eunice’s whole-body makeup and costume in the opening chapter. It’s not explicitly stated, but you can work out if you think about it that, given the colour of what is described, what the colour of Eunice’s skin must be. (But I didn’t figure that out until re-reading it with that in mind.)
Another little clue that’s dropped is later in the book, when Joan Eunice, her nurse, a doctor, and a lawyer are going to a night-club: Joan says “I’m free and over 21 and I’ll do what I damn well please!” I didn’t realise this is a clue for ages – not until I happened to re-read I Will Fear No Evil after seeing an episode of Fame where a racist white ballet teacher says, to a black Modern dance teacher, “I’m free, white, and over 21 – ” and I understood that Heinlein was, by omission, tactfully hinting that Joan Eunice was now not white. But that phrase was never part of my cultural background, so when I first read Joan Eunice saying that, I didn’t understand she was omitting part of it.
(The cover of I Will Fear No Evil showed a human skull in a fluffy blonde wig. This seems exactly the kind of misdirection that Heinlein himself was practicing in IWFNE.)
Speaking from the other end, I was told quite some time ago, when I asked why the covers rarely matched anything occuring on the inside (“But Pern dragons don’t have scales!” quoth a thirteen-year-old me), that the artists rarely or never got to read the books they were illustrating (for lack of availability or time) and went on what the publishers told them the book was about. So if the book is about “a young male wizard,” i.e. Earthsea, the artist gives you “a young male wizard.”
Says a lot about the fact that most people’s “default” imagery is of a white person, though.
[...] and my second post at the Feminist SF Blog (Judging Books & Their Covers) went up a few days ago and has gotten some really good responses. Check it [...]
The problem not is the unwillingness of the illustrator, it’s the fact that they have failed to read the books. Not the fact that they refuse to make them a person of color.
I wondered about that too with Logic — and kept flipping back at the cover and staring at it! Finally I just sighed and figured maybe it was meant to be Karis on the cover — but even so… why not Zanja!
I remember particularly being struck by the rarity of this image when I first read the book. i.e. that in the book she is a black woman and on the cover she is not definitely not a black woman. But as you say, made somewhat ambiguous and light skinned. Her afro is nice and as a bonus she is not on her knees or being rescued by the sword guy.
Kimiko – I did the same thing, trying to figure out who was on the cover because in my mind it could not be Zanja. I was just immensely confused by the whole thing until I realized what was going on and I was just so shocked. We really should have come farther it’s a shame we haven’t.
Anonymous – I never meant for this post to blame the illustrators at all. This is more about what they are told by the publishers. I never mention illustrators at all in fact, I’m sorry if it came off as if I was blaming them.
Indigo – Like I said above (to Anonymous) this was not meant to blame the illustrators rather what the publishers tell the illustrators. And you make a good point it is very telling that most people’s default is white.
Liz – I think the reason I didn’t think it was Karis was because I bought Earth Logic at the same time and knew that the person on that cover was supposed to be Karis (and props to the illustratopr in that case because it was exactly how I pictured her). Since the images weren’t the same I figured the cover of Fire Logic had to be Zanja. Thanks for the Andre Norton cover, this is one instance I had no idea about and you’re right it gets points for not having the female character on her knees. And at least they made her somewhat ambiguous instead of completely white, which is something…I guess.
Judith Tarr wrote two trilogies (Avaryan Rising and Avaryan Resplendant) about an empire ruled by a line of demigods descended from a child of the sungod who is explicitly described as being black in the text. I recently reread the first trilogy, and read the second trilogy (which was written a number of years after the first) for the first time, and noticed something interesting.
All the early covers of the first trilogy show the demigod protagonists – both male and female – as being white when they are clearly described as black in the text.
However, this error had been corrected in the covers of the second trilogy, where the protagonists, primarily female descendants of the protagonists from the first trilogy, are shown as being multi-racial – which, given that Mirain, the black demigod from the first trilogy, and his successor, marry people of several other, lighter-skinned races, is just about right.
Someone found a clue, maybe, in the intervening years? Or are multi-racial people, particularly women, exotic and therefore OK to put on covers, whereas black protagonists cannot be shown?
I am also suddenly reminded of the 1986 first edition cover of Steve Perry’s Matadora, in which the female protagonist is shown as the PoC that she is. I think it is indicative of how infrequent this is, that I remember the image so vividly after 20 years – and I don’t even have a copy of the book at the moment, I had to check online to make sure that I had indeed remembered the cover correctly.
Just of the top of my head I can think of two brilliant fantasies with PoC main characters (Double Vision by Tricia Sullivan, and Perdido Street Station by China Mieville) that follow the black-protagonists-can’t-be-shown rule and avoid having characters on their covers at all.
A black male, although an elf, that was depicted as white in the first editions is Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urden.
Here are the covers of the earlier editions, even though some of them are rather fuzzy:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/r-a-salvatore/
In the “Icewind Dale trilogy” covers Drizzt is black but then he’s white from Homeland to Starless Night. In Passage to Dawn and after it he’s black again.
You might want to add to the list the reprint of Samuel Delany’s Babel-17 (the pb edition printed with the unedited version of the story), as the cover shows a tall muscular blonde woman and a man of indeterminate race (and possibly indeterminate species), neither of whom appears in the book. The main character is Rydra Wong. The book’s characters do a lot of body modification — adaptation and self-image are strong themes here — but that cover adds nothing to the book. The original printing’s cover, with Rydra’s eyes shining through an intricate spiderweb, makes more sense and doesn’t offend my sense of the story.
If you’re collecting data, Zelde M’Tana by F M Busby made it clear on the cover that the protag was a black woman — pretty darned unusual, especially for the eighties.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/f-m-busby/zelde-mtana.htm
Angie
[...] No Really! Stop It! and just over a year ago at Feminist SF – The Blog talking about books in Judging Books & Their Covers. I’m glad that others are noticing this horrifying trend and that this is till happening with [...]
I recall having heard Delany mention that early editions of a couple of the Neveryon books depicted major characters as white and that he got a reputation as a complainer for mentioning that problem to the publisher.
This cover of the Left Hand of Darkness looks like it might be portraying Genly Ai, a character explicitly said to have dark skin, as white.
http://booksontheradio.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/thelefthandofdarkness1sted.jpg
It definitely happens with MoC as well. I remember reading Steven Barnes’ Street Lethal and realizing about two-thirds through it that the main character is black. I think subsequent books in the series were slightly better about depicting the character, though.
My two favorite authors are women, though I’m a white guy, so while I can sympathise with you to a degree, but I’m afraid my world view is not the same. When I first started reading I found my SF in the library as hardbacks and I read it all regardless of cover, because the covers were mostly strange non-representional stuff. Like the old paperback covers to VanVogt’s Null-A or Slan books. Still, that isn’t the case now, and I appreciate and applaud your desire for more diversity in writing, and accuracy in cover depictions.
You asked: “Now with all this evidence can someone explain this cover to me?”
That’s easy!
Just seek out the responsible editors/publishers and ask them 3 questions:
1. “Are you from the South?”
2. “Did you vote Republican in the 2008 election?”
3. “Did your ancestors own slaves?”
If the answer to any of the above is “Yes” (or “That’s none of your #¤%* business”) — there’s your explanation in a nutshell.
Seriously.