Cover Matters: Silver Phoenix
The hardcover of SILVER PHOENIX by Cindy Pon
Recently there have been rumblings in the blogosphere about the re-jacketing of Cindy Pon‘s book SILVER PHOENIX that have been brought to my attention. Reactions have been mixed, from outrage to support, with many bloggers pointing to the re-jacketing as yet another example of publishing cover racefail (the first being Justine Larbalestier’s LIAR and the second being Jaclyn Dolamore’s MAGIC UNDER GLASS).
This is a bit of sensitive subject and I was a little wary of writing about it. It isn’t the topic; I’ve blogged about race and cover matters before and I try to champion novels with POC themes, settings, and characters whenever possible, but this situation requires delicacy for a few reasons.
- This is not directly analogous to situations in either LIAR or MAGIC UNDER GLASS.
- I am not Cindy Pon’s editor or publisher so I obviously don’t know all the details.
- Despite my best intentions to keep neutral, there may be some finger-pointing (not at Cindy or her publisher).
- What I say may come off as a little defensive even though I don’t mean it that way.
- Contrary to what we want the outcome to be, in this situation, we as the concerned reader may not be able to effect much change.
Those reasons aside, I did feel I was qualified to say something about this topic based on these reasons:
- I work in editorial.
- I am a woman of Asian descent.
- I ain’t happy about this either.
Above is the original cover for SILVER PHOENIX. The re-jacketed cover is below the cut.
