The Plenary Review

Felicia Pride wrote a great article on the AA publishing industry for Publishers Weekly annual issue devoted to AA publishing, but the Twitterati was up in arms over the mag’s “Afro Picks!” cover photo:

PW’s response is here :

The image was a photograph taken from a new book from W.W. Norton, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present by Deborah Willis, a collection of carefully chosen photographs intended to highlight the physical and cultural beauty of African-American life. The image (Pickin’, 1999) by Lauren Kelley is a photograph of a black woman whose hair is full of Afro picks, the ubiquitous metal toothed hair-comb of the 1970s, complete with plastic handle in the form of a black power fist.  The afro picks are arrayed in the woman’s hair to create a kind of giant sculptural Afro hair-do and the woman is leaning slightly forward to give the viewer a better look at the quirky artificially created hair-pick crown. The coverline for the image is: Afro Picks! New Books and Trends in African-American Publishing and it refers to the feature story “African-American Books in Today’s Marketplace,” a look at the current marketplace for black books by Felicia Pride.

The resulting response to the choice of that particular image and that coverline was not anticipated by the person most closely involved with this week’s cover. That person was me, PW senior news editor, Calvin Reid. I organize, edit and oversee the annual feature story on black books. I chose the cover in collaboration with the magazine’s creative director and I wrote the coverline, Afro Picks!, which was intended as a pun to highlight a story that “picked” new black titles of interest.  The image was reminiscent of the 1970s and appealed to me, someone who grew up in the middle of the 1970s era wave of black pride, black power and big afros with big afro picks stuck right in the back.  To me it is a sweet, tongue-in-cheek funny and striking image of quirky black hair power. And while it never occurred to me that anyone would be offended by these images, I was very wrong and I have to acknowledge that. Quite a few people were offended by it and outraged by what some perceive as a disparaging or degrading image of a black woman.  I certainly regret offending anyone and while I still love that image, I intend to think long and hard about whatever  image is chosen for next year’s cover.  

This cover reminds me of Bloomsbury’s ridiculous cover choice for Justine Larbalestier’s novel Liar, about a compulsive liar (Micah) suspected of killing her boyfriend. This is how the author, who strongly objected to the cover, describes Micah:

Micah is black with nappy hair which she wears natural and short. As you can see that description does not match the US cover.

After much controversy, Bloomsbury said oops! Sorry. Here’s what we thought you meant:

What are your thoughts about the “Afro Picks!” cover and the Larbalestier covers? Much ado about nothing? Overreacting by writers of color? Racist or just plain dumb?