nprbooks: Image by TBWIA\Chiat\Day “There are so many ways to...
Image by TBWIA\Chiat\Day
“There are so many ways to get this right, they had to look for a way to get this wrong.”
That’s author L.L. McKinney’s response to Barnes & Noble’s “Diverse Editions” campaign. The bookseller cancelled its plans for a run of classic novels with redesigned covers featuring characters of color after critics called it “literary blackface.”
Even if you redesign Dorothy Gale as a black girl with ruby sneakers, “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,” McKinney tells NPR’s All Things Considered. Hear the rest of that conversation here
– Petra.
