An update on the cover of Liar
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6675065.html?industryid=47152
In an exclusive interview to Publishers Weekly, we discover the publisher of Liar is going to re-jacket the entire 100,000 copy print run due to the outcry in the blogosphere regarding the "whitewashing" of the cover. A story about an African-American girl with "nappy" hair had a visibly white girl with straight hair on the cover, and will now have either a text-only cover like the Australian version of the book, or an African American girl.
For me, this issue has raised a long-standing dilemma for writers, regarding race. There appear to be two camps of people: "you can only write about characters who share your ethnicity/cultural background/race/nationality," or "you can write from the perspective of anyone at any time." Justine Larbalestier, the author of Liar, is white and writes nearly exclusively from the point of view of protagonists who are not, and has a huge fan base of kids grateful to see themselves in a predominantly white array of books. Similarly, the canon of great literature is filled with books by both men and women who write from the POV of the opposite gender. Should writers be limited by their own experiences and upbringing? Perhaps the answer, as with most things, is "it depends." If someone writes well, no one seems to care about ethnicity/gender. It's when people write poorly, perpetuate stereotypes, or are just flat wrong, that problems seem to arise.
While writing from a male POV (in terms of a protagonist) or someone of a different ethnicity is not something I've tackled personally, maybe I should try for the sake of the challenge and experience.
In an exclusive interview to Publishers Weekly, we discover the publisher of Liar is going to re-jacket the entire 100,000 copy print run due to the outcry in the blogosphere regarding the "whitewashing" of the cover. A story about an African-American girl with "nappy" hair had a visibly white girl with straight hair on the cover, and will now have either a text-only cover like the Australian version of the book, or an African American girl.
For me, this issue has raised a long-standing dilemma for writers, regarding race. There appear to be two camps of people: "you can only write about characters who share your ethnicity/cultural background/race/nationality," or "you can write from the perspective of anyone at any time." Justine Larbalestier, the author of Liar, is white and writes nearly exclusively from the point of view of protagonists who are not, and has a huge fan base of kids grateful to see themselves in a predominantly white array of books. Similarly, the canon of great literature is filled with books by both men and women who write from the POV of the opposite gender. Should writers be limited by their own experiences and upbringing? Perhaps the answer, as with most things, is "it depends." If someone writes well, no one seems to care about ethnicity/gender. It's when people write poorly, perpetuate stereotypes, or are just flat wrong, that problems seem to arise.
While writing from a male POV (in terms of a protagonist) or someone of a different ethnicity is not something I've tackled personally, maybe I should try for the sake of the challenge and experience.
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