Still Can't Handle It

Still Can’t Handle It

It’ s old news at this point, but I promised to keep up with this trend. To get caught up on the litblog buzz from two weeks ago, please read BGB contributor Russ Marshalek’s essay in Creative Loafing’s Culture Surfing. I’ll summarize by quoting Russ on the controversy surrounding the publication of Justine Larbalestier’s upcoming novel Liar:

Almost immediately upon cracking that book’s spine, though, what you’ll find is that Micah, the teenage girl narrator, is, as the author describes her, “black with nappy hair which she wears natural and short.”

Naturally, the publisher in its wisdom chose this cover to represent Micah on the advanced reading copies -

This choice rightly seemed to annoy many people, the Australian author among them. After much hullabaloo on the blogosphere, the publishers decided to change the cover and go with this one instead:

This would all be very surprising, only it isn’t. In July of 2008, I posted about similar shenanigans for three award-winning novels.

A friend of mine has written a book about the Tuskegee Airmen that will be published in the spring. I am officially urging him to not use the picture below for the cover. We can handle it.