The cover on the left is the UK (August 2011) Mills & Boon cover of Maisey Yates's The Highest Price to Pay and the one on the right is the Australian (September 2011) Mills & Boon cover.
On her website Maisey Yates notes that
there has been a bit of controversy regarding this book, the cover, either the UK cover for its boldness, or the AUS cover for it’s less-than-bold approach. But just as a hero is a hero, not because of the color of his skin, or in spite of it, but because of the characteristics he possesses, I hope this book touches people, not because of the cover, but the contents.Over at the Mills & Boon community blog she's written that the novel
Unfortunately, some (and by that I mean one person who wrote me claiming to represent a group of readers) were put off by the fact that I have a character of African descent in this book. To that I say: Sidney Poitier came to dinner in 1967. Why are we still having this discussion?
has a lot to do with skin, but not so much in the way you might think. The hero's skin is perfect, while the heroine's skin is scarred and damaged, burned in places to the point that she no longer has feeling. In Ella's mind, Blaise is masculine, physical perfection while she's lacking.Harlequin Mills & Boon have featured black protagonists on their covers in the past but Tumperkin, who drew my attention to the UK cover of The Highest Price to Pay, thought this was the first M&B Modern to do so. I think so too but we're open to correction.
Here are two more UK M&B covers featuring black protagonists: on the left is Carmen Green's The Husband She Couldn't Forget, published in the Cherish line in July this year, and the one below is Barbara Gale's The Ambassador's Vow published as a Silhouette Special Edition in the UK in 2005.
The "Bad Blood" story, "Restless Billionaire" by Abby Green features a Bollywood star as heroine, but shockingly, the cover has a blonde woman on it.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that's another "spot the difference" book, Lynne. For one thing, the titles of the US and UK versions are different. Abby Green has the UK cover of Restless Billionaire alongside the US cover of The Stolen Bride and the heroine on the US cover isn't blonde. I could be wrong, but it also looks to me as though she has a blue elbow.
ReplyDeleteThe whitewashing of covers continues to be a source of frustration to me. I am a black woman who spends a lot of money on books, and actually very little is 'African-American fiction', not that there's anything wrong with it. I feel as though the publishers are afraid that a person of color on the cover will scare away potential buyers. How about the other way around?
ReplyDelete"The whitewashing of covers continues to be a source of frustration to me."
ReplyDeleteThe contrast between the UK and the Australian covers is very intriguing in that respect because the model on the UK cover is very clearly black whereas the Australian cover hides most of the male model's face and the parts of him which are visible seem rather lighter.
For what it's worth, in the novel the hero is described in the novel itself as: "tall dark and handsome as sin" and "beyond handsome with his deep mocha skin, and striking toffee-colored eyes, perfect bone structure, good enough to be a model, except he didn’t possess the androgynous quality many male models did. No, Blaise was utterly masculine, tall and broad shouldered with a physique that was meant to be wrapped in an expensive, custom suit."
Those quotes are from the excerpt on Maisey Yates's site. If that's all the Australian cover art department had to go on, then I suppose the difference might be due to a difference of opinion about what constitutes "mocha skin." I'll try to get hold of a copy of the novel to see if there are are more details about Blaise's appearance and ethnicity elsewhere in the novel. That said, I had the impression that Harlequin/Mills & Boon authors fill out a sheet to help in the creation of the cover, in which case something must have gone wrong somewhere along the line.
"The contrast between the UK and the Australian covers is very intriguing in that respect because the model on the UK cover is very clearly black whereas the Australian cover hides most of the male model's face and the parts of him which are visible seem rather lighter."
ReplyDeleteYou might skip around the edge by focusing on skin colour only, but I'm crass enough not to. :D The bloke in the Australian cover is unmistakeably Caucasian.
Might be Indian (or one of other brown-skinned Caucasian groups) or specially darkened for this cover if white. My money is on the latter.
"beyond handsome with his deep mocha skin, and striking toffee-colored eyes"
I do wish authors could go easy on using food as descriptors for non-white characters' physical appearances. It's really disconcerting that non-white characters are more likely to be compared with food and drink than white characters.
I'm, personally, thoroughly sick of authors' tendency to use 'almond-eyed' to describe the eyes of a character of East Asian ancestry, especially when many Caucasians are "almond-eyed" but rarely described as that in fiction. Furthermore, not all East Asians are "almond-eyed" nor should one assume they're mixed race if they don't have "almond eyes". But I digress. :D
@Danielle
ReplyDelete"The whitewashing of covers continues to be a source of frustration to me. I am a black woman who spends a lot of money on books, and actually very little is 'African-American fiction', not that there's anything wrong with it. I feel as though the publishers are afraid that a person of color on the cover will scare away potential buyers. How about the other way around?"
The reality is it's the sales that drive publishers to sing this mantra: 'Let's make everybody white in art, even though not all are white in text!' Some say covers with non-white characters tend to generate poor sales. I find this frustrating because they still couldn't say whether it's text or the actual cover that cause poor sales.
Either way, publishers should ignore sales - of books that feature under-presented minorities - and keep making covers reflective of text until everyone is used to diversity in covers. Or at least until a new generation don't make judgement in accordance with cover art in terms of race, like most of this generation and last few generations do.
Some publishers have argued they don't have the money to afford an investment in that long-term effort. I feel they should have a part in social responsibility because after all, it's their predecessors that maintained white Caucasian presence in text and art for so long that white Caucasian became, and still largely remains, the default race in text and art.
It would be fantastic if M&B keeps on doing what they say they would do, like what they have doing with these UK covers here so far.
You might skip around the edge by focusing on skin colour only, but I'm crass enough not to. :D The bloke in the Australian cover is unmistakeably Caucasian.
ReplyDeleteMight be Indian (or one of other brown-skinned Caucasian groups) or specially darkened for this cover if white.
I was skipping round the edge because I'm not a very visual person and so I didn't trust my ability to correctly guess the model's race/ethnicity on the basis of the very small parts of his face which were visible. Also, I'm a bit unsure about which terminology to use. For instance, "Indian" and "Asian" seem to mean rather different things for US readers than they do for UK ones.
I do wish authors could go easy on using food as descriptors for non-white characters' physical appearances. It's really disconcerting that non-white characters are more likely to be compared with food and drink than white characters.
I've now got a copy of The Highest Price to Pay and you may be happy to know that the heroine's skin is "creamy" (40), so she's compared to a food/drink too.
"I've now got a copy of The Highest Price to Pay and you may be happy to know that the heroine's skin is "creamy" (40), so she's compared to a food/drink too."
ReplyDeleteI can't tell if you were being facetious or not.
I'm inclined to believe you didn't notice long enough to know that 'creamy' and 'lightly/goldenly tanned' are basically the only ones authors use for white Caucasian characters. For non-white characters? It's practically everything on the menu. Chocolate, honey, cocoa, caramel, coffee, almond, waffle (seriously!), milky tea, black treacle, etc. Not just food, but the nature and animals as well. "skin like a Jasmine lotus", "Silky and dark as a panther" and "yellow eyes of a tiger".
"I can't tell if you were being facetious or not."
ReplyDeleteNo, I wasn't being facetious. I've noticed that Caucasian heroines quite often have a "creamy" skincolour and I suppose it's related to the phrase "peaches and cream complexion." I'm fairly sure I've seen honey-gold tans and I did a bit of searching and quickly found found one heroine with "soft, ripe strawberry lips" and another whose skin is "pure peachy cream," and whose breasts are "handfuls of milk-and-honey" with nipples which turn "almost the color of wine."
It does remind me a bit of passages in the Song of Solomon like this:
thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples;
And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
That's not to deny the point you're making about the much wider range of foodstuffs used to describe non-white characters in romances. Flower metaphors (for heroines) and predator metaphors (for heroes), though, are quite common in the romances I've read featuring white protagonists.
I've read the book in full now (the UK M&B edition) and as Yates wrote, the book does have "a lot to do with skin, but not so much in the way you might think." The focus on skin is very much due to the heroine's scars (she was badly burned in a house fire). There's also quite a lot of discussion about their emotional similarities and Ella, who's created an outgoing image to hide her insecurities, sees through Blaise's ruthless one:
ReplyDeleteShe looked at him, at his chiseled face, so hard it seemed to be carved from stone, and she felt an instant stab of guilt for the thought. And why, she didn’t know. Only that she, of all people, should know better than to take people at face value. (61)
Blaise's mother was from Malawi and the issue of racial difference is mentioned, very briefly, during a discussion about the relationship between his parents:
I think when they fell in love they were perhaps a bit idealistic. They were able to see past cultural differences, skin color difference, and then many others were not. And there was tension. [...] They imagined that love would be enough. It was not. Of course, things have changed now. I don’t believe there would be the same issues. I’ve certainly never had them, and I have dated all types of women. But at the time ...
As I mentioned, Blaise is described as having "deep mocha skin, and striking toffee-colored eyes" (8) and later there's mention of his "honey eyes" (95). He's
the epitome of male physical perfection. Rich brown skin, well-defined muscles with just enough dark hair sprinkled over them to remind her that he was a man.
Tight, defined ab muscles contracted as he drew in a breath and she could only watch the slight movement of his powerful body with awe. She had known he would be perfect. (110-11)
As for metaphors and similies, Blaise is described as being
like a solid piece of mahogany. Hard and unforgiving. Beautiful, too, but it didn’t change the fact that a collision with him would be absolutely devastating. (25)
when he smiled, it didn’t look like an expression of happiness. It was more like watching a predator, satisfied in the knowledge that he was closing in on his prey.
She had a feeling that, in this scenario, she was very much the gazelle to his panther. (27)
And Blaise notices Ella's breasts
Soft and pale, light pink tips that looked like the sweetest treats. Treats he couldn’t resist. (159-60)
and
He pressed his lips to her neck, nibbled the delicate skin there before moving on to her breasts. “You are like a dessert,” he said, running the tip of his tongue around the outside of one hardened nipple. “Strawberries and cream. But much better, much richer.” (161)
Their skin-tones are contrasted at one point:
“I love the contrast of your skin against mine,” she said, her voice muffled.
“You do?”
“Yes. It’s like art.”
“As I said, you have the soul of an artist.” (162)
Sorry, I forgot the page reference for the quote about Blaise's parents. That's from page 94.
ReplyDelete