Book Smuggler did an excellent post on the whitewashing of book covers recently that really got me thinking. If you don’t click over, (BUT YOU SHOULD) you’ll find that whitewashing is putting a white person on the cover of a book that clearly stars a person of color as the protagonist. To which I say: WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE SMOKING? The theory goes, white people aren’t inclined to pick up a book w/ a POC on the cover, and apparently white people drive book sales. This is wrong on so many levels.
It’s offensive to white people because, come on. If it’s true then perpetuating it isn’t going to help anything, and you aren’t giving anyone a chance to learn better. I sincerely hope it isn’t true, though. It’s offensive to POC for, well, do I even have to explain?
So, I wanted to know - do you read books by or about POC? If so, is it intentional, a book set maybe in a foreign country you want to read about? If you don’t, you should. Actively seek them. Publishing is a hard business, and it’s even harder for POC books because of crap like this going on.
Yesterday I posted two books on my I’m-going-to-walk-three-miles-to-the-library list, LIAR and BLEEDING VIOLET, that star POC. I’ve read the first fifty pages of these books, and they are *amazing*. But that’s neither here nor there except I wanted to plug those books, go read them.
I know this post isn’t a great theoretical discourse on the practice (for that, GO READ BOOK SMUGGLERS) but it’s something that really got me riled and I wanted to draw attention to it.
For myself, I read books that sound interesting. I don’t pick up things featuring or written by people of any race in particular on purpose — I pick up whatever catches my attention. Covers, blurbs, titles, whatever. I’ve read incredible books with both white and non-white protagonists, so I’m not about to start discriminating (or reverse-discriminating) based on anything but author skill.