Books in Blackface

    The bookselling behemoth recently announced that their flagship Fifth Avenue location will partner with publishing giant Penguin Random House to celebrate Black History Month and highlight diversity. And if you assumed this news meant B&N planned to shine a spotlight on black authors or even books about black people, you’re wrong. Instead of focusing on the content of books, they had had a different, more Bookman-like approach:

    They put their books in blackface.

    Seriously. To honor black people, they decided to showcase a selection of white-centered literary tomes. But, instead of acknowledging that the books were written by white people who wrote about white people, these genius marketers simply slapped a diverse selection of black faces on the books’ covers.

    According to Publishers Weekly, the Penguin Random House and Barnes & Noble Fifth Avenue will have designed “Diverse Edition” covers for “twelve classic young adult novels.” 

    “Each title had five culturally diverse custom covers designed to ensure the recognition, representation, and inclusion of various multiethnic backgrounds reflected across the country,” AMNY reports. “The new covers are a part of a new initiative to champion diversity in literature.”

    The collection of not-so-African American literature featured unapologetically non-black authors such as Lewis Carol (Alice in Wonderland), William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) and James Matthew Barrie (Peter Pan). Other “classics” that will be highlighted for detailing the white experience during BHM include:

    • Moby Dick
    • The Secret Garden
    • Emma
    • The Wizard of Oz
    • Peter Pan 
    • Treasure Island

    Apparently, black people don’t write “classic” books. 

    To be fair, Alexander Dumas, who wrote Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo had a black grandmother. Both books made the list, which should count for something. Richard Wright’s Native Son is probably too real, as is Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon or Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Maya Angelou’s young adult, coming-of-age tale, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings isn’t exactly for young (white) adults, while books about serial killers (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which is on the list) or reanimated cadavers (Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein) must be much more palatable for white eyes.

    https://www.theroot.com/books-in-blackface-barnes-noble-celebrates-black-his-1841473226

     

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    more here Barnes & Noble Reverses Course on Redesigned Book Covers

    By Concepción de León @ NYTimes.com/Books, Feb. 5, 2020

    The bookseller planned to promote classic novels with covers featuring people of color for Black History Month. Critics accused it of “literary blackface.”

     


    It is 2020 and the nonsense continues 

    From the NYT article

    The backlash to Barnes & Noble’s initiative was the latest challenge the publishing and literary worlds have faced over how they approach race and diversity. The novel “American Dirt,” which came out last month, has been criticized as inaccurately depicting Mexican culture and immigrants and benefiting from an industry that doesn’t recognize Latinx writers.

    Late last year, the Romance Writers of America, a trade organization, was roiled by disputes over how it handled a racism complaint by one of its members and for what many romance writers considered the longstanding marginalization of writers of color within the genre.

    Earlier this week, several Latinx writers — including Roberto Lovato, Myriam Gurba and David Bowles — met with executives at Flatiron Books, the publisher of “American Dirt,” and its parent company, Macmillan. Flatiron subsequently said it would “substantially increase Latinx representation across Macmillan, including authors, titles, staff and our overall literary ecosystem.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/books/barnes-and-noble-fifth-avenue.html


    I can get quite upset when Fiction novels are not perfectly accurate. For example I was so angry with the way Martians were portrayed in Stranger in a Strange Land. That's just not how Martians are. Or when I watched Heathers. Not only didn't it accurately depict teen behavior in high school it didn't depicted mass killers accurately. What is it with these Fictional stories making things up? It's just not right.


    You are predictable.

    No one objects to the white literature. The objection is to putting characters in blackface as the tribute to Black History Month. Actual black authors were dismissed, but you knew that. Fortunately, you are not in charge and the publisher had the good sense to cancel the misguided project. Thanks for once again proving who you are.

    Best laugh I had all day.

    Edit to add:

     

    Just recently, there are rediscovered works of Zora Neal Hurston and Claude McKay

    In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston—the sole black student at the college—was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.” During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.

    Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.

    https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062915795/hitting-a-straight-lick-with-a-crooked-stick/

    Claude McKay

    Claude McKay’s novel “Romance in Marseille” could hardly sound more contemporary. A black man, Lafala, loses his legs as a result of his white captors’ cruelty, then, in a striking allegory for reparations, receives a compensatory windfall. He takes his new fortune from New York to Marseille, a hub of the African diaspora, and plans to return to West Africa in hopes of undoing his colonial education and reintegrating in the village of his birth. Meanwhile he lives in a sexually liberated working-class milieu, where queer love is accepted as a fact of life, no more subject to judgment than its heterosexual counterpart.

    The book’s themes — queerness, the legacy of slavery, postcolonial African identity — are among those at the forefront of literature today. But McKay lived from 1889 to 1948, and was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Now, a century after that movement began, “Romance in Marseille” will finally be published for the first time on Feb. 11. Its debut coincides with recent shifts in thinking about the Renaissance, which is increasingly seen as grappling not only with race but with class, gender, sexuality and nationality.

    “Romance in Marseille,” published by Penguin Classics and edited by Gary Edward Holcomb and William J. Maxwell, is the second of McKay’s posthumous novels to appear in recent years, after the 2017 publication of “Amiable With Big Teeth.” McKay began writing “Romance in Marseille” in 1929 and put it aside in 1933. It was a practical decision; McKay earned his living from writing, and his editor, Eugene Saxton, who had previously challenged sexually transgressive passages in his books, believed that “Romance in Marseille” was too shocking to sell.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/books/claude-mckay-romance-marseille-harlem-renaissance.html

     

     


    Jezz, I thought we finally found something we agreed about. We're both upset that Fiction isn't true.


    More confirmation.


    Oh well, as I'm sure you'll agree since you yourself posted it, "You can yell about the injustice, but it changes nothing."


    You might disturb the neighbors. If you had any.


    Your words mean nothing. 

    Under public pressure, the company halted the insulting project.

    You stand in your yard yelling into the wind.

     


    Maybe you just need to grok better.
    Yet grokking's changed a lot in the last 60 years... maybe can't turn the clock back.
    https://theoutline.com/post/2706/the-misogyny-of-stranger-in-a-strange-l...


    Wow, kinda unfair for you to focus on Heinlein's misogyny when he was so homophobic. I guess you just don't care about the gays, just the women.


    I just haven't come out yet. You'll be the first to know.

    Meanwhile, gotta love them beards.


    I don't see any cause for outrage. I see an activist "black community" who markets to a "black community" laughing at B & N cluelessly choosing a stupid, self-defeating way to take advantage of the clever marketing campaign that is "Black History Month."

    Reality: they just want to make money off "Black History Month." Of course they are going to change the plan when black activists make fun of what they chose to do and they research it and find that their target demographic is agreeing that it's stupid.

    The only real racism here is trying to make money off of a group of people according to the color of their skin. Think about it. Is the sort of thing Martin Luther King thought about. May be necessary in the present but hopefully someday we'll get to the stage where none of it "sells".

    Hopefully someday there will be "Human History Month", not "Black History Month" in the content selling business.

    Meantime, there's no need for outrage here. When the target demographic (tribe) speaks with cold hard cash, they get their way. The demographic (tribe) has unfortunately been selected by color of skin.


    This is not a case of me mistakenly putting something on the wrong thread:


    I dunno, I see it as useful to have a Black History Month and remind whites among others of some pretty great works by black authors. It's been a long time since I read Baldwin or Native Son, and while I've seen the movie a few times, "The Color Purple" is still sitting on my shelf, and I'm sure there's a lot of obscure great works that readers would appreciate, partly could be cuz of some intrigue/appreciation it's black writers they didn't know, partly because they're great stories and it doesn't really matter that much who wrote them.

    I spent a few years reading a lot of Latin American writers - and crave the opportunity to start name-dropping the lesser known ones, occasionally people even appreciate the advice ("now will you get off my porch and let me go to sleep...?"). Similar with a lot of other genres (JR gets the occult references). I mean, sure, we can do the "Top 100 of All Time" stuff, but then we're anxious for that followup "Top 20 obscure books you probably haven't read" to compensate for the over-conservatism of the usual Tippity Top list, and then there's the Satellite Flix Dennis Hartley over at Digbys releasing specialized movie lists for every occasion... https://denofcinema.com/, and I was pleased that recent South Korean film Predator was so good and accessible and not another Asian gangster piece or kitschy family & food epic.

    Niche is good, identity is good, diversity is good, main current & side currents are good.


    You are why we have so-called identity politics. You remain in a bubble regarding how dismissive institutions are when it comes to black people. You rational white tribal behavior and tell blacks the only option is to comply. You have no problem with white tribal behavior, but lash out when blacks respond. In your eyes, blacks can only protest when you agree.


    Uh, AA has a *lot* of trouble with white tribal behavior.

    Maybe less lecturing, more grokking?

    And perhaps go 2 days without using the word "bubble" - it's starting to complain about overwork and harassment.


    She is tribal. The world has to work her way and only her way. She views everyone else as tribal or practicing identity politics, but she is a poster child for tribalism.

    Edit to add:

    In this case, she feels that people of color have no reason to protest. They are accused of being "tribal" because they break the rules of her own tribal bias. It is her way or the highway.

    2nd Edit to add:

    AA disagrees with a group who protests, therefore they are automatically "tribal". She wants Human History Month as long as it agrees with her tribal beliefs.


    As blog admin, I can't prescribe medication sadly (no Drupal plug-in for that, though I'm tempted to write one), nor offer psychological advice. 


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