Been Around The Blogs And I, I, I- The One About The White-washed Covers, And Lessons On Lemons and Lemonade…
Once again, I had a load of posts on my Google Reader to catch up on, so here are some of the more noteworthy ones.
1. Apparently Avatar has made it to the top spot for the sixth week, and has now grossed $552m in the US, which means that it will probably now eclipse Titanic ($600m ) to become the biggest box office hit ever.
On the other hand, The Lovely Bones isn’t faring so well. It’s possible that people don’t want to watch a film where the main protag is a little girl who was raped and murdered. Shocker.
2. RRRJessica is back from South Africa, and she has pictures.
3. Dear Author has news of more ‘white-washing’ going on at Bloomsbury. Remember the uproar over the cover of Justine Larbalestier’s Liar, and how the black protag somehow took on a white face on the cover? Well it seems that this is becoming a trend. Bloomsbury seems to hate black people on covers. The book that has been white-washed this time is Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass.
Apparently the main protagonist is described as a ‘dark-skinned’ woman, but if you look on the cover, that woman definitely seems white to me. Of course you have the usual Pollyannas burying their head in the sand and pretending that Bloomsbury is simply being misunderstood. There’s one person, (A, who seems to be a Michelle Malkin wannabe) who is apparently bi-racial and looks white, well isn’t she the lucky one. Talk about totally missing the fucking point. But then again, anybody who argues that race doesn’t exist, then goes on to write the following needs shooting:
I admit I am somewhat cautious when selecting “non-traditional” romance — by that I refer to ANY type of romance not featuring a white, monogamous, non-handicapped m/f pairing — because I really don’t want to read a book where “white” people, “straight” people, Christian people, etc. are villified, represented as being insensitive or lacking awareness and respect for minorities.
God I hate twats like her. It’s not like we don’t know that publishers believe that book covers featuring black folks don’t sell as well.
Salon also weighed in on the whitewashing scandal.
Anyway, as with Liar, Bloomsbury have announced that they will be changing the US cover. It makes one wonder whether or not they keep doing these things to get some free publicity.
4. Jane at DA has a “summary” of The Gingerbread Tryst over at DA. Yeah, she loved it as much as I did.
5. Angela has a great post up on her blog. She’s questioning who the audience for African American romance is.
Angela writes:
According to the RWA (their previous stats were more detailed, so I’m including them), the average age for a romance reader is around 45, tends to live in the South or the Mid-West, is married, has children, has at least an undergraduate degree, and is a white-collar worker. The stats aren’t broken down by ethnicity, but I’m certain that the majority, perhaps even all, of the readers surveyed were white. Despite my desire for their inclusion into the general romance audience, African-American romance readers have different expectations for their romance fiction..
I daresay that I probably don’t fit RWAs stats, but then again I live in England where a lot of black women wouldn’t be seen dead reading romance.
Angela continues:
However, as I tuned into the new (unfortunately) BET web series, Buppies, I was suddenly struck by how unlike AA romance it was. Oh, sure, it did perpetuate some of the stereotypes and bogeymen that have been floating around the professional black community for the past ten years, and there’s drama, drama, drama galore, but it’s…well, smart. Couple this with shows like Girlfriends, The Game, or Half & Half (I miss that show!), and it leaves me confused about the typical audience for AA romance. For one thing, if you hang around online a bit, you’ll notice that there is a large, and growing segment of black men and women forming communities online (and these are hilarious, smart, pithy folks) AND watching the same TV shows. Yet, somehow, in its current incarnation, I cannot see these people rushing into the store to pick up the latest Kimani or Dafina. They might read some Zane, or some Eric Jerome Dickey, they’ll probably cop the upcoming Helena Andrews memoir/chick-lit Bitch Is the New Black, maybe some nonfiction written by a black sociologist or historian, but the romance genre is invisible to these people, who admit to being voracious readers.
Raven over at Raven’s Reviews counters with her own thoughts on the subject.
She writes:
Perhaps part of the problem is that “hilarious, smart, pithy folks” think AA romance is written for their opposite number–boring, dull-witted, unfunny folk. Maybe the AA romance reading community hasn’t made itself visible enough to people outside it for those people to recognize the diversity (in age, education, geography, income, interests, marital status, etc) of the community. On the one hand, I see no problem with that. If AA romance fans want to get together to talk to each other about something they love and remain unconcerned about the world outside, more power to them. On the other hand, though, there is something to be said for announcing our presence. So here goes:
I am a 36 year old, happily married mother of two daughters. I am very well educated and work full time. I love superhero comic books, the television show Supernatural (in the ongoing IR in my head, the lovely Jensen Ackles is the star), and besides reading about the Eatons from Pennsylvania
Shall we? I’m a thirty four year-old sometimes happily married, sometimes less so, university-educated British black woman, who has a Bachelor of Science degree, as well as a BA degree. I have a more than passing interest in domestic and international politics. I love watching trashy reality TV, as well as hard-hitting expose documentaries. I think that writers like Eric Jerome Dickey do nothing but help cement some of the black stereotypes out there, so no thanks. I think that Zane is a tad over-rated, however I think that Beverly Jenkins and Dorothy Koomson are the fucking bees’ knees.
Any romance readers out there who want to add their stats too? It doesn’t matter if you aren’t black. *g*
6. Katiebabs has a post over at her blog entitled When Failure Is The Only Option Left. It’s an intensely raw and honest post, that I admit made me feel a tad uncomfortable whilst reading it. I think it shocked me to witness such black despair in someone that I consider to be a Sunshine Yellow, but if Katie can be so honest, then I can be too.
Katie, you’re not alone. My life isn’t exactly how I planned it either. Not exactly. I always wanted four kids – three girls and one boy to protect the girls. I come from a good-sized, close-knit family, so I always envisaged that I would emulate my parents and have a houseful of kids. Isn’t it funny how you take such things for granted? Well TTG and I tried for years to get pregnant, and last year our dream finally came true. Only to be dashed a couple of months later. Yeah, I lost the baby, and it was hard, but for a few weeks, I was the happiest person this side of the equator, and that’s a feeling that I hang onto when the rain falls heavily and the sky gets dark. Shit happens, but the sun will always rise, even without the rainbows. You’ve just got to keep on keeping on.
Posted by Karen Scott · 
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