It's tone deaf in about every way imaginable. They say that they went out of their way to find books with characters that could be of any race and somehow thought that coming up with an AI to do that was better than just asking someone familiar with the classical canon of Western literature to pick them. A lot of these books have really problematic things to say about race, implicitly if not explicitly, in ways that make it seem crazy to push them as part of a celebration of black culture. Then the books themselves basically exist to make money for Barnes and Noble, they would have been better received if some part of proceeds went to a charitable cause relevant to black history month.
so badly executed that it's detrimental to their cause.
as i said before, the whole thing would have been better if they just stuck with the promoting Black authors part and skipped the recoloring book covers part.
You know what's pissing me off about this. Two of those books listed, Three Musketeers and The count of Monte Cristo were written by a black author.
Alexandre Dumas was the son of a free man of color, Alex Dumas who was a General in Napolean's army and had, until WW2 and the Nazi's tore it down to use for metal for weapons, a statue in France erected of him. He is who Alexander based the Count on, and actually did end up in jail for crimes he didn't commit, eventually dying at home.
That's Alexandre's father Thomas Alex. His mother was a slave in Saint-Domingue, and his father a Marquis. He was educated in France and damn if this man wasn't a bad ass.
Entering the military as a private at age 24, Dumas rose by age 31 to command 53,000 troops as the General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps.
Dumas's strategic victory in opening the high Alps passes enabled the French to initiate their Second Italian Campaign against the Austrian Empire.
The French—notably Napoleon—nicknamed him "the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol"[6] (after a hero who had saved ancient Rome[7]) for single-handedly defeating a squadron of enemy troops at a bridge over the Eisack River in Clausen (today Klausen, or Chiusa, Italy).
If you read the Count's discription you'll see he's noted with having Dark skin, and it's hinted that he may be like Alexandre's father, in that he probably had a non white mother, thus his skin is a darker tone in the novel.
I don't see why the books had to be canceled. Seriously.
I don't have the text on hand to verify, but this Quora answer says it's explicitly not the case:
lol, I wish I could find a screenshot of this
I meant as a monthly event in February that is meant to highlight African Americans. The various legacy characters that became a different race or gender or sexuality are spread out across the year.
I first found out about this via this https://twitter.com/elizabethminkel/status/1225043534757203968
It's always hard for me to find a book that will keep my attention. I went to the bookstore today after looking up your recommendations and picked up Children of Bone and Blood. I got to chapter 12 before I put it down the first time. I love it so far! Thanks!I get the intent behind the covers but it's just weird to do especially when most of the stories the characters are described as white so it's hard for readers to even really picture a black character in the words despite the fact they're on the covers. In that same breath the art IS fire.
Honestly, I would have loved if those covers were instead framed prints that ran for BHM and use some of the revenue to go towards foundations for black youth outreach or something. I doubt I would have bought any of those books, but I want the covers.
But then again, I'm someone whose parents never read them those books specifically because they were white focused and she felt I needed books by black authors about black characters to spark my imagination and creativity to create and appreciate black art and not subconsciously see it as "less than" because society at large didn't see them as "classics" in the same sense those aforementioned books are seen as. I didn't start reading those classics until I was in school and I was able to appreciate them for what they are, and around this time I was creating my own short stories and no subconsciously making my characters white.
With all of that stated, I myself forgot how black focused B&N has historically been on BHM, I saw this and assumed this was what they were doing this year and was like man such a step back from what they used to do.
Lastly on the subject of books during BHM. A few of my recommended readings (focusing on Fiction)
(I'll always include this because it's so good. I'm nearly done with the sequel and it's even better which is saying a lot as CoBaB is fucking great)
