Literary Blackface and the Performative Ethics of Publishing

A few weeks ago, on a trip to The Strand’s landmark store in the East Village, I noticed a copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott with a cover design I had never seen before. Four figures with flowing hair and long dresses studded with clouds stood in a cluster over a pale yellow background with a few delicate tree branches over their heads. Two were very thin, and two were not. One had pink skin, one purple, one blue, and one green. It was a pretty scene, for sure, but that wasn’t what made me stop and take a second look.

Three things struck me about the artwork: the colorful, surrealist aesthetic, the unique body types of all four figures, and the ethnic ambiguity bestowed on the women by their unearthly skin tones and textured hair. All of this seemed to me an attempt to reel in a Gen Z and millennial audience that increasingly has strayed from the printed page as a mode of media consumption—a pretty transparent attempt, and one that may be a symptom of a larger and more problematic endeavor to rebrand publishing without making actual structural changes.

Back in February, Barnes and Noble pulled a collaboration with Penguin Random House from their shelves following criticism—much of it on Twitter—about the tone-deafness of the campaign. The collaboration, entitled “Diverse Editions,” featured cover art depicting the main characters of classic novels such as The Wizard of Oz and Treasure Island as BIPOC. Tweets by BIPOC writers and activists pointed out the many ways in which Barnes and Noble missed the mark: failing to promote BIPOC authors and using Black History Month to sell more books by white people, among others. One such post, penned by House of Representatives candidate Qasim Rashid, points out that the Barnes and Noble executive board is almost entirely white. Another by YA author Bethany C. Morrow reads, “This...feels like a fail. You put me on the cover to make a buck but I'm not in the pages?”

These editions demonstrate a base misunderstanding of what diversity is, a misunderstanding that is evident in publishing as a whole. A BIPOC face on the cover of a paperback that was not written, edited, or published by actual BIPOC represents nothing but virtue signaling by an all- or majority-white publishing house or marketing team. Furthermore, Barnes and Noble’s blunder represents the insidious trend of using “diversity” to market products that are not catered to a diverse audience, relabeling content for and by white people to appeal to the fragile sensibilities of performative activists and co-opting and aestheticizing the black face to be consumed by white ones. In an interview with NPR, author L.L. McKinney also expressed her disgust, calling the initiative “literary blackface” and pointing out that Barnes and Noble created a Black History Month project that excluded Black people from the literal narrative: "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.”

But book covers are only the most recent symptom of a diseased industry. Especially in an increasingly less print-focused industry, they don’t matter nearly as much as what happens inside the book, and even more importantly, in the publishing house office. According to the 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey by Lee & Low Books, 76% of respondents self-identified as white. On Twitter, authors have spoken out about racially biased discrepancies in book advances under the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe. One example that clearly articulates the problem: Roxane Gay was paid a $15,000 advance for her New York Times best-selling collection of essays Bad Feminist, while white authors Lacey M. Johnson was paid $215,000 for her self-professed poorly selling essay collection entitled The Reckonings.

BIPOC writers have taken their own steps to counteract the lack of diversity in publishing—see Celeste Ng’s funding of We Need Diverse Books adult publishing grants and The Shea Serrano Scholarship with the San Antonio Association of Hispanic Journalists—but they shouldn’t have to. If the publishing industry is trying to expatriate BIPOC contributors, it’s working. However, if publishers are actually serious about inclusion, representation, and equity in their industry, they must prioritize BIPOC-led projects and voices. And, for goodness’ sake, pay BIPOC the same rate as their white counterparts. Performative activism, buzzword as it is, applies perfectly to the ostentatious displays of “wokeness” performed by the publishing industry in the past year at least. The time for literary blackface never existed, and it certainly does not exist now.