This Year's [Book Jacket] Cover Girls (Article)

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ellio

a hardback life on an ebook budget
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That guardian article didn't half rub me up the wrong way. It's hardly bereft in it's subtle racism.

Nowhere under "woman or girl's back in period frock" does it describe "mostly white people, probably a lack of racial diversity". No, it says "you'll like her - heroine and author - but she's a bit quirky, elusive and old-fashioned" See also- white. As all the author's listed under that book sleeve are.

But then when we get to "multicoloured cover resembling gallery art" which, by the way, gives no inkling to race like the previous example because it doesn't even depict a human on the image, apparently this means "we're convinced novel's vibrant multiculturalism will make other fiction seem grey and stale (but have fingers crossed that full-on cover and book alike won't put off punters rather than wowing them)"

Oh, and, all of the author's listed this time round are PoC. Right.

So a white author writes a book where the cover is of a white girl in period dress (I usually associate period dress with period of heavy racism in history, but there we go) and what it means is that we'll love the author and the main character is going to be quirky.

A PoC author writes a book where the cover looks like gallery art and doesn't even feature people and what this means is that it is part of the authors multicultural manifesto to trick people into buying it thinking it will be better than the abundance of books featuring only white characters (but actually it turns out multiculturalism is off-putting and so is the cover)

WELL, OKAAAAAAAAY THEN
 
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