Across the Universe

Apparently traveling 300 years in a ship still does nothing for racial tolerance. As The Interrobangs Blog has pointed out. Elder has been photo-shopped very badly in an attempt to make him seem less ethnic. You can see pictures and everything by clicking on over.

Elle Whitewashes beautiful Bollywood Actress

It's not just book publishers who sometimes get it wrong. Elle recently white washed the beautiful Bollywood Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who is best known for being Miss World.

What can we do? Visit Change.Org and signe the petition. Thanks to April at Good Books and Wine for tweeting this.

Here is some info from Change:

It looks like Elle had quite the white Christmas.

Bollywood actor and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is featured on the cover of Elle Magazine looking far paler than she is in real life. Most fans are up in arms and an appalled Ms. Bachchan is considering a lawsuit against the magazine.

Consumers have long been inundated with ads that use prominent Bollywood actors to promote skin-lightening products. In a country that produces gorgeous women of color, it is sad that Ms. Rai-Bachchan, who is relatively light-skinned, is one of the very few with some cross-over appeal. To see magazines like Elle further enforce the color hierarchy of crossover appeal by making Aishwarya appear lighter-skinned is a slap in the face.

This is the second racial debacle surrounding Elle. The American version was criticized for its October 2010 issue, which featured actress Gabourey Sidibeon on one of its four celebrity covers with noticeably lighter skin than her natural complexion.

Lets tell Elle Magazine to make a commitment to moving away from using white as a standard for beauty, and demand a public statement and apology.

*Sigh* More Whitewashing At Work

You're probably all surprised by the volume of posts coming out of this blog lately, but it's summertime so I've had more time to post here. Unfortunately, today's post is in response to the trend that originally inspired this reading challenge: Cover Whitewashing. Here's the newest case of it, which is crazily going in the opposite direction of what we'd prefer to see:



I think what burns me the most about this is that the original (hardcover) cover is so pretty and unique. It's not like every other YA fantasy on the shelves. The new paperback cover is too much like other books in the genre, and it obscures the fact that this is a historical fantasy, based in China, with Chinese characters. The change is in conjunction with a re-styling for the second book in the series:

The author has posted about this on her blog, and said that the publisher was reacting to the poor reception they got from booksellers with the first cover (Borders wouldn't pick it up for their stores and Barnes & Noble only in small numbers). It seems like the move is an attempt to gain a wider readership (and wider acceptance by booksellers) by making the cover more generic. *sigh* I can't even begin to be as eloquent as others on this topic, so I'll provide some links to reaction around the blogosphere.

The first place I'd point you to is author Cindy Pon's blog, where she discusses the cover change and her reactions to it.

Here's Ari's post at Reading in Color: "Guess What This Post is About?" in which she discusses the author's stance as well as discussing the covers.

Here's a post by bookshop on LiveJournal: "i don't want to be this person. Dear Publishing Industry, stop FORCING me to be this person." Great follow-up discussion going on in the comments, too.

Inkstone has a great post on it called "I guess I still have a post in me", which talks about the publishing industry and book sales in conjunction with this debacle. Inkstone is also gathering a master list of links here: Link Collection: Silver Phoenix

And here are just a few more links:

• "Sad" - written by author Jeannie Lin
• "Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix" at Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge
• Attack of the Whitewashing Strikes Back Again! (Signal boost and ranting all in one!) - megwrites
• Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind: Dear Greenwillow Books

One thing that is for certain is that if you haven't gotten a copy of this book with the awesome and beautiful hardcover art, you should go do it now before they're all gone.

What do you think? Do you agree with the publisher that a more generic cover (that looks more like urban fantasy than historical fantasy set in China) will get the book to sell better? What is your reaction to this?