The Sword and Laser discussion

Today I finally created a list here on GoodReads of books with whitewashed covers (that is, books where the poc main character looks white on the cover)

Here's the list. I would love if people could like the list if you agree that it's a shitty thing for publishers to do, and add some books from sci fi/fantasy that fit the bill if you know of any!

The original version of Octavia Butler's Dawn was egregiously whitewashed.



So were most versions of Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea.

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Most book covers that feature Jesus, Mary and almost any biblical character would fit that description as well.

BTW I had to look up poc to work out that it meant 'Person of Colour.'

Love (and hate, at the same time, I suppose) this list! Definitely think this is a problem, I'll see if there are any I can come up with to add.

The Edge of Tomorrow, AKA All You Need Is Kill -- in the original novel, the main character is Japanese, but after the movie came out, the publisher did a cover with Tom Cruise.

Those examples Trike posted are genuinely shocking. How do they screw up so badly there?

Whitewashing is only the beginning of all the things wrong with that Earthsea cover... no surprise it ended up on http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk

Streetlethal is grim 1980s cyberpunk about black people, written by a black man, so naturally the cover has...I don't know. Is that Lee Majors? A young Donald Trump?

I'm currently reading Binti and remember reading about the whitewashing of the cover for her second novel: The Shadow Speaker

Full article at gizmodo: http://io9.gizmodo.com/hugo-winning-a...

Ten years ago, Hugo Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor was getting ready to publish her second novel. She was thrilled to share her latest work with the world, which envisioned an African country after an apocalypse, centered around a black protagonist. Then she saw her book’s cover...It showed a white woman in the middle of an African desert, even though there were literally no white characters in the novel...Okorafor said she refused to allow her character to be whitewashed on the cover, and she worked with her agent to get the cover fixed. The publisher was gracious, albeit a little less-than-forthcoming about the problem. They said it was because there weren’t enough stock model photos of black women, though Okorafor doesn’t fully buy it. It took a few back and forths to get the cover to roughly represent the ethnicity of the protagonist (even if it inevitably failed to capture what she actually looked like, since her character was bald for most of the novel).

Justine Larbalestier's novel Liar is another that started out whitewashed and was changed after a protest. A blog post: http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2...

Sean wrote: "The Edge of Tomorrow, AKA All You Need Is Kill -- in the original novel, the main character is Japanese, but after the movie came out, the publisher did a cover with Tom Cruise.

[bookcover:Edge of..."

I wonder if this one truly counts because it's very common for book covers to change after a movie comes out to increase sales for the book. And the movie itself was whitewashed. So I guess it would be white wasing once removed.

Eric wrote: "Sean wrote: "The Edge of Tomorrow, AKA All You Need Is Kill -- in the original novel, the main character is Japanese, but after the movie came out, the publisher did a cover with Tom Cruise.

[book..."

I wonder if this one truly counts because it's very common for book covers to change after a movie comes out to increase sales for the book. And the movie itself was whitewashed. So I guess it would be white wasing once removed.

The movie was an adaptation with Western localization which is one thing but the content of the book was still the same with the Japanese characters. So the cover in this case was pretty misleading.

I find it objectionable that Martians are portrayed a being green,cowboys are shirtless and Forengi have big ears.
Yep, just about every science fiction book cover is either unrealistic.
or in bad taste:
http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk

Dang it, Warren! I am now going to have to spend at least an hour reading those and guffawing.

Warren wrote: "I find it objectionable that Martians are portrayed a being green,cowboys are shirtless and Forengi have big ears.
Yep, just about every science fiction book cover is either unrealistic.
or in bad ..."

#SmallLobesMatter

The Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... is definitely guilty of this... the protagonist is described as 'dark' to the extent that a blush doesn't show on her face, and yet on the cover she's a pale-skinned blonde.