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merrilyIt occurred to me that when I made this post, I left out a couple of things, like who Justine Larbalestier is, and why you might want to drop a line to her publisher (debDOTshapiroATbloomsburyusaDOTorg) to help her out in getting her newest book's cover made a little less racist.
Justine's not particularly active in fandom (or if she is, she's been awfully good at separating her fannish self from her pro self, because I'm a nosy parker and I have no idea if she's got a fannish non de plume), but she's a concerned party: she keeps an lj account (justinelavaworm), and she wrote two books about women's involvement in sci-fi: Battle Of The Sexes in Science Fiction, which is about early sci-fi and gender roles, and is largely concerned with fannish involvement in the creation of sci-fi (it's great! you'd love it!), and Daughters of Earth, which is a collection of seminal (ovual?) sci-fi short stories written by women from the 1960s 'till now (many of which are out of print), paired with essays about the stories. After that, she turned to YA, and I really enjoyed her Magic & Madness trilogy, and also How To Ditch Your Fairy, which is adorable.
So, you should help her out because she's a fan, too, but also because she waded into this conversation before. You might remember, back during RaceFail'09, that John Scalzi said some pretty dumb things. Justine was the person to say, whoa there, you're not paying enough attention, and she did it diplomatically, and he listened and apologized. (I mean, other people said it to him, too, but Justine's his friend, and she's gonna tell her friends when they aren't wearing any pants.)
Not only that, but she's managed to do something very constructive about one part of what RaceFail was trying to address: she's written a book for teens which has a protagonist of colour.
Whitewashing is stupid and painful, and it needs to stop. Even if her publisher didn't want to put a black face on the cover (and the argument to not do that is so stupid and such an example of institutionalized racism that it makes my head hurt), they had other options - doing something like the Australian cover of the book, for example. And now Justine is in a bind, because this was not her choice, not even slightly, and she's argued against it, and now she's stuck.
But we have no contract with Bloomsbury, and we are readers and interested parties, and we can make a loud fucking noise about this kind of nonsense.
(If you are a bookseller, it would be particularly useful to write to Bloomsbury and tell them that yes, you do sell to black teens and other teens of colour, and yes, they want books that have protagonists like them. Apart from that, you should also tell them that you can do your job, thank you very much, and your job means helping people find books they may not have originally picked up.)
By the by, I don't know Justine personally. I just like her writing, and I like her respect for fandom, and I wouldn't wish this situation on anyone.
Justine's not particularly active in fandom (or if she is, she's been awfully good at separating her fannish self from her pro self, because I'm a nosy parker and I have no idea if she's got a fannish non de plume), but she's a concerned party: she keeps an lj account (
justinelavaworm), and she wrote two books about women's involvement in sci-fi: Battle Of The Sexes in Science Fiction, which is about early sci-fi and gender roles, and is largely concerned with fannish involvement in the creation of sci-fi (it's great! you'd love it!), and Daughters of Earth, which is a collection of seminal (ovual?) sci-fi short stories written by women from the 1960s 'till now (many of which are out of print), paired with essays about the stories. After that, she turned to YA, and I really enjoyed her Magic & Madness trilogy, and also How To Ditch Your Fairy, which is adorable.So, you should help her out because she's a fan, too, but also because she waded into this conversation before. You might remember, back during RaceFail'09, that John Scalzi said some pretty dumb things. Justine was the person to say, whoa there, you're not paying enough attention, and she did it diplomatically, and he listened and apologized. (I mean, other people said it to him, too, but Justine's his friend, and she's gonna tell her friends when they aren't wearing any pants.)
Not only that, but she's managed to do something very constructive about one part of what RaceFail was trying to address: she's written a book for teens which has a protagonist of colour.
Whitewashing is stupid and painful, and it needs to stop. Even if her publisher didn't want to put a black face on the cover (and the argument to not do that is so stupid and such an example of institutionalized racism that it makes my head hurt), they had other options - doing something like the Australian cover of the book, for example. And now Justine is in a bind, because this was not her choice, not even slightly, and she's argued against it, and now she's stuck.
But we have no contract with Bloomsbury, and we are readers and interested parties, and we can make a loud fucking noise about this kind of nonsense.
(If you are a bookseller, it would be particularly useful to write to Bloomsbury and tell them that yes, you do sell to black teens and other teens of colour, and yes, they want books that have protagonists like them. Apart from that, you should also tell them that you can do your job, thank you very much, and your job means helping people find books they may not have originally picked up.)
By the by, I don't know Justine personally. I just like her writing, and I like her respect for fandom, and I wouldn't wish this situation on anyone.