Please visit Ellen Oh and read her thought-provoking post. Then take a moment to consider these two book cover photos.
A Must-Read Post
Please visit Ellen Oh and read her thought-provoking post. Then take a moment to consider these two book cover photos.
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Yep, I already know the story behind this one. It's really a tragedy too, because the cover completely alters our impressions of what to expect (in this case).
ReplyDeleteI've seen this story too, and read the book. And I agree the second cover should be the one to go out. But I'm not sure it would've influenced me in my reading of the story.
ReplyDeleteI just came upon this story recently. It's brings up an interesting questions: How does the cover influence our reading choices, if any? Should publishers base part of their selling power upon the cover?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what's up with the entertainment industry. As a lighter-skinned American, all I want is characters I can identify with. (No kidding. Who would'a thunk it?) Many of the black clichés in pop entertainment don't satisfy that. However, one of my favorite, promising new authors (for example) is Sheila WIlliams, because in her first novel, she wrote a deep main character that I could identify with, in a quest that affects me where I live.
ReplyDelete(Sheila Williams is a black woman, who left her life as a highly paid corporate executive to become a fiction author. She's my hero. Her first novel tells the story of an 41-year-old black grandmother from inner-city Columbus, OH, who leaves to start a new life in a small town in Montana.)
See, now, I don't care about any of that. We never even think about it up here where I live. I go to an Italian Pentecostal church—I myself have German ancestry, Swedish, English, and probably a few other things I can't even identify—half the congregation is black, another half is Chinese-Indonesian, the remaining half is who cares what, and we never give it a second thought. For me, it takes something like this to remind me that there are those completely out of touch with the world in which I live.
I don't know whether my world is really that different from the larger American culture. (I often am the oddball out, and I'm used to it.) Or whether the entertainment industry is really out of touch with the culture of ordinary Americans.
I haven't been following news on The Last Airbender, even though the Little One and I are great Avatar: The Last Airbender fans... because we both want a new, follow-up story, rather than a rehash of the animated series. But when I showed her the photos of the movie characters, she's the one who told me that their skin wasn't even the right color. (Proud father.)
-TimK
Interesting stuff - will pop over now.
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