As a celebration of Black History Month, national book retailer Barnes & Noble announced their new “diverse covers” of classic novels. These were covers for classics like “The Wizard of Oz,” “Frankenstein” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” — written by white people with white characters, but now featuring people of color on the covers. Of the twelve books featured, only one was written by a person of color, “The Three Musketeers“ by Alexandre Dumas.
As soon as the announcement of these new covers hit the web via Publisher’s Weekly on Feb. 4, social media ignited with criticisms.
The first response seen on the Publisher’s Weekly tweet by @vanessid said, “Ah yes the white canon in Blackface. Yes, please further commodify Blackness to sell more copies of Moby Dick and pay yourselves instead of hiring, promoting, and publishing people of color.”
L.L. McKinney, author of the “A Blade So Black” series, a modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland with a black main character, told NPR, “It’s still a story by a white author, featuring a white character, told via the white gaze. And none of this has changed within the contents of the story itself. They’re essentially just slapping a cover on it to ‘celebrate diversity.’ But a lot of us felt that you’re just trying to cash in on the fact that it’s Black History Month, and now all of a sudden, black faces and brown faces will sell books. Just maybe one, two years ago, people were saying in meetings, ‘Yeah, you can’t put black people on covers. It’s not going to sell the book.’”
After initial backlash over the editions, Barnes & Noble tweeted a statement on Feb. 5.
“We acknowledge the voices who have expressed concerns about the Diverse Editions project […] and have decided to suspend the initiative,” the statement said. “The covers are not a substitute for black voices or writers of color, whose work and voices deserve to be heard.”
The pushback faced by Barnes & Noble was about how they were trying to use the celebration of Black History Month as a trendy way to sell more rather than to lift up the voices of writers who are people of color.
Instead of taking fiction that is incredibly popular and well known by white authors and trying to make it diverse, Barnes & Noble should have lifted the voices of people of color. Authors like Toni Morrison, author of “Beloved,” Ralph Ellison, author of “The Invisible Man,” and Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple,” deserve their voices to be lifted.
They could have also used the opportunity to feature the voices of authors who are currently releasing novels, like L.L. McKinney, Angie Thomas, author of “The Hate U Give,” or Tomi Adeyemi, author of “Children of Blood and Bone.”
By lifting the voices of black authors, especially if it‘s done through a major retailer like Barnes & Noble, readers are more likely to be exposed to them. Once readers are exposed to the voices of these authors, these authors will benefit and the readers will be more aware of issues that these authors have had to face.
We are no longer accepting performative acts from companies and instead expect them to actually do things to affect the change that they want to benefit from. Companies need to catch up to this, instead of attempting to benefit without actually doing anything helpful.
Photo: Marisa Fields-Williams/ The Johnsonian
