I've talked about this before here, but it bears repeating: Lavender-Green Magic by Andre Norton was published in 1974. The copyeditor changed the race of the three protagonists from black to white. Norton was able to correct this, and the version published is her original. Copyeditors are supposed to correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, keep an eye on continuity, and point out things they think are mistakes. It's interesting to speculate exactly where in that list that the copyeditor thought changing the race of the characters would fall under.
My book Wheel of the Infinite was published in hardcover in July of 2000, with this cover:
Maskelle, who is unquestionably the main viewpoint character and protagonist, is on the front, and the artist (the fantastically talented Donato Giancola) placed her on the righthand side so that's where she'd be. Though she's a little gray. I found out later (was it on here? if it was one of you, please drop me a comment) that the publisher, HarperCollins, asked him to make her less brown. (ETA:
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redplasticglass said I was at a convention at one of his panels a number of years back -- and when he posted the original painting, and then the printed cover on the screen, he mentioned that "--Look! They greyed her out!"I'm not entirely sure if they asked him to do it, or they just "misprinted" or what exactly, he didn't elaborate. (I really doubt he would have been willing to make the change if they'd just asked him to, he was so angry about it. And their attempts to 'fix' things pretty much showed that they had done it deliberately.) Needless to say, he wasn't happy about the situation. After that first image, he showed us an image of that second cover -- He then went on to say that he had complained about it. Later, he finds out they made her black again, but they'd stuck her on the BACK of the book. And that was really the last time he was willing to work for them.
I saw the 'greyed' cover on the book my library had, and they really DID make her grey. Literally grey, though I couldn't remember if the tone had been adjusted as well or not. I think they were about comparative darkness. Just... grey, not brown.)
I envisioned Maskelle as looking something like Gina Torres (see icon), who played Nebula in Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and Zoe in Firefly and Serenity. (Yeah, I do have actors in mind for a lot of my characters. Also theme songs, but that's another post.)
I think this image below may have a color tone closer to Giancola's original and more faithful to the book, but my eyesight isn't great today:
For the paperback, the publisher flipped the cover, and it looks like this, with Rian, the secondary character and love interest, on the front:
And there it is. Not much has changed since 1974. It's still terribly rare to see a not-white main character on the front of a book. I saw a link to a blog post someone did on not-white main characters who inexplicably became white when pictured on the cover, but damn, again I have no idea where. If someone has that link, please comment with it. (ETA: Found by
forodwaith: Judging Books & Their Covers. And another example in comments)***
I'll be leaving Friday for ArmadilloCon and then Chicago to visit friends, so I'll be gone for a bit, and
probably not quick to answer email.
Comments
In Alan Dean Foster's Pip and Flinx novels, Flinx, the main character, is described in the books as having dark skin and red hair; his ancestry is Irish/Hindi. The text doesn't state the details of his appearance in every book, though, and at one point I thought maybe I'd imagined that description - because all of the book covers show him as being either very definitely Caucasian or, like with your book cover above, kind of weirdly grayish.
So I emailed the author to find out. He confirmed that the character is supposed to have "definitely dark" skin. On the other hand, he also said that he has more input into what Flinx's flying dragon looks like on the book covers than into what Flinx himself looks like, and said that publishers prefer Caucasian 'types.'
For the record, the earliest printing that I have of a book showing a very Caucasian Flinx on the cover was printed in 1972; the most recent one I have, also showing a very Caucasian Flinx, was printed in 2006.
Yeah. Not a lot has changed at all.
When I read that book I didn't see her as hispanic or even light colored... in my mind I saw her as having a dark chocolate colored skin.
I am pretty sure the copy I have has him on the cover.
What a silly thing to do. Amazing to me that people still think that race is a marketing tool.
But another well-known example is Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books, not to mention the dreadfully whitewahsed mini-series of a few years ago...
See you in a couple of days. I am on the other Fannish Feud team, so you're going down! ;)
(This was not, BTW, the illustrator's fault. The POV character is blind and therefore never described herself. But it's interesting that the illustrator assumed blonde.)
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/f-m-b
I'm not sure who Mr. Busby had to whack to get her on the cover, but it was worth it.
And as a former art director--most cover artists are white, and many are not versed in getting the darker skin tones to look right. I think Michael Whelan mentioned it in one of his art books.
I love Wheel of the Infinite, and so does my teenaged daughter. I love Maskelle exactly as she is, from her dark skin to her endless supply of attitude and on to her no-longer-so-young age. She deserves to be front and center, in all her glory.
(And I am so tired of overly cautious publishers dictating what I do and do not get to read!)
Since none of the black characters I've ever seen on SF/F book covers has actually been African-American, or "acted black," to use a modern black phrase, I also wonder what particular kinship to those characters American black readers feel.
That was me, I think. :P I was at a convention at one of his panels a number of years back -- and when he posted the original painting, and then the printed cover on the screen, he mentioned that "--Look! They greyed her out!"
I'm not entirely sure if they asked him to do it, or they just "misprinted" or what exactly, he didn't elaborate. (I really doubt he would have been willing to make the change if they'd just asked him to, he was so angry about it. And their attempts to 'fix' things pretty much showed that they had done it deliberately.) Needless to say, he wasn't happy about the situation. After that first image, he showed us an image of that second cover -- He then went on to say that he had complained about it. Later, he finds out they made her black again, but they'd stuck her on the BACK of the book. And that was really the last time he was willing to work for them.
I saw the 'greyed' cover on the book my library had, and they really DID make her grey. Literally grey, though I couldn't remember if the tone had been adjusted as well or not. I think they were about comparative darkness. Just... grey, not brown.
Now that I know, yes they can, and that it was HarperCollins? I'm just completely shocked.
So, even if it wasn't completely whitewashed, I don't remember that it was made totally obvious, either. I don't recall much about the cover though, except that it was a very light purple and cream, and the characters were shown as very small shapes in a maze.
Still, good for her! (And I can't believe I remembered that much of a book I read over 30 years ago!)
I do like the current YA cover trend of showing parts of bodies rather than the whole body; because then readers can fill in the details from their reading, rather than a preconceived notion of what the publisher thinks their character looks like.