The Editor Wears Glasses?, Part II

Not bored yet? If you're still here, you must not be -- thank you for returning for Part II of "The Editor Wears Glasses?"

In my last post, I introduced you to the man who has replaced Miranda Priestly as my image of "editor": Philip Gwyn Jones, who, at the time of publication, was the editor-at-large of Scribe UK. His description of the many hats editors wear was extensive, and important to understanding the incredible influence editors have over their authors of colour. Today, I hope to expand on three of those hats, so grab a cup of tea and let's get started.

The Investor & Main Gatekeeper

Although split into two roles in my previous post, the roles of investing in authors and gatekeeping their entry into the publishing world are undeniably linked. By making an offer on a manuscript, editors become the main gatekeepers to publication, and as main gatekeeper, the same argument I wrote about in my post about agents applies. When making offers, editors need to remember they determine whose voices are heard in the Anglosphere.

Philip likens editors to the two-headed god, Janus; his simile is a good one. When deciding to invest in an author’s work, editors are always facing the worlds of both publishing and culture. On one hand, editors need to consider submission quality, and how it will continue their house’s ethos; and, on the other hand, how that manuscript will fit into and shape book culture. Should an author of color’s work meet a house’s high standards, editors need to recognize investing in their submission is also investing in the Anglosphere’s future book culture. I've spoken about it to death, but the US and UK will soon see its most diverse populations yet. Editors who publish multicultural and lingual stories will capitalize on a changing readership, and set their publishing houses apart as diversity-conscious and responsive businesses.

While on the topic of investment, it's worth remembering that when an editor invests in an author, the author invests right back! While the editor is the author's champion at the publishing house, that's not necessarily true for the entire publishing house (Thompson 88). A marketing team will market any book their house sets before them, and while they can be replaced, an editor cannot be. If an author finds an editor they love, the author is usually dedicated to their editor, and will follow their career (Thompson 88). As editors are publishing houses' strongest links to their authors, they should consider who they hire or promote as editors if they want to take on and keep their authors of color. When analyzing their house's employment diversity, publishing houses can examine what Mokades suggests at the end of this blog post.

The Designer

There’s the famous saying: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard it, disregarded it, and completely fell into its trap. Let’s be honest—we all judge books by their packaging before we read a word inside, and in a world with too many books and too little time to read them all, that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, publishers utilize cover art to categorize books, which allows readers to visually identify books they might enjoy. Such categorization becomes concerning, however, when publishers use it to "shape, or even condition and confine, [readers’] expectations of books and narratives,” which could “act as barriers to certain books, not least so-called ‘BAME’ books, being picked up by readers” (Boehmer & Lombard 119).

Let’s take novels with an African connection, for example. Many novels that travel to or take place on the African continent often get what Stephen Simon calls the “acacia tree sunset treatment” (qtd. by Boehmer & Lombard 119). Aminata Forna’s The Devil that Danced on Water (2002), is a good example. The orange and yellow cover features acacia trees shading the silhouettes walking beneath them. Above the tree line, a girl with African features gazes into the distance. Just by looking at the cover, one could not guess that besides investigating her father’s assassination in Sierra Leone, Forna also writes of caravan rides through Scotland with her white, Scottish mother, and her experiences at an English boarding school (Boehmer & Lombard 118-9). The cover is misleading, and visually exoticizes what might be a text that resonates with a many audiences’ experiences. It only tells one part of a complex story, while serving to emphasize difference.

Collage of "acacia-sunset-treatment" covers, compiled by Simon Stephens

Whereas Adichie warns against perpetuating the “the single story,” Ross cautions against “the single cover,” some of which, as we see above, “have been designed by someone whose principal idea of [Africa] comes from The Lion King” ("The Dangers"). Indeed, in looking at the collage above, I can almost hear the opening wail of “The Circle of Life.” Don't worry Simba and Nala, all our faces looks like yours right now, too.

Another popular cover cliché for Black women writers is what Kewellhampton calls the “soulful-black-woman-with-colorful-smudges" that grace many of Adichie’s UK edition covers, much like the one for Half of a Yellow Sun, below (Ross).

Unsplash

From Adam Talib's presentation "Translating for Bigots"

Unfortunately, the "single cover" trope is not specific to stories that travel to Africa. It also perpetuates stereotypes about women in the Middle East, as seen in the covers of Arabic-to-English translations that features the “Arab woman… wrapped in ten layers of fabric” (Qualey, "Translating for Bigots"). And, if we kept looking, I’m sure we could only find more cover tropes like these.

Though the editor’s hand is not the one that wields the artistic paintbrush, it is the one who commissions and signs off on the book jacket and cover’s final designs. Editors hold power over how readers identify and categorize texts before picking them up, and must ensure that, like the texts inside them, author of colors’ book covers are not degradingly capitalizing on or highlighting a text’s exoticness.

The Editor

What is outside the text is what gets audiences to pick it up, but what is inside is what gets them to buy it. When editing texts, editors, must be aware how they define the act of “improving" their authors of colour’s stories. Improvement does not mean inserting unwanted Whiteness, dumbing down characters so they appear less educated, or changing vernacular so characters sound Othered. Improvement means editors situate themselves to suit the author’s genre and voice to champion what the author has already created.

While there are testimonies of editors that White-wash texts, other authors of color sometimes experience the flip-side of that pitfall. In a recent poetry submission, I wrote poems in English that delved into Mandarin Chinese and Hawaiian. Despite pointing out areas for improvement in my critical commentary, I got a surprisingly decent grade on it. I was more surprised to hear a white, more experienced peer of mine, had received a lower grade. Although grading creative work is subjective, I uneasily wondered if I had received my grade because my white marker felt uncomfortable critiquing a language she knew little about?

Similarly, my friend of color is writing a book in non-standard English, and has struggled to make that voice consistent—something that was pointed out to her by peers and tutors. In her most recent submission, she hoped her current tutor would comment on notably “problematic” parts of the protagonist’s voice, but she received only complimentary feedback. My friend was frustrated, unable to trust her white tutor’s commentary. Her frustration stems not from the quality of feedback, but from the fact she has to ask. She’s right—should my marker, or my friend’s tutor, had been people of color, particularly from our own backgrounds, we arguably would not have doubted our feedback as we did.

Philip argues that editors are language chameleons who can adapt to many different genres and vernaculars to make an author’s work the best it can be. He urges authors to trust their editors with their work, but if an author experiences something similar to what my friend and I did, I wonder how much an author of color has to doubt that trust? Should we have to? I truly believe Philip to be sincere, but if a text is written in a pidgin or code-switches between English and a non-English language, can monolingual editors honestly say: I am equipped to deal with this? Editors might ask themselves: Am I willing to look up unfamiliar words, or seek outside counsel on cultural aspects of texts? Do I ask my authors to include footnotes to cater to monolingual audiences? Am I able to critique and comment on languages and cultures I’ve never been a part of?

If the answer to those questions are in the negative, the editor needs to find someone who can offer equitable linguistic and cultural feedback that authors who write for monolingual audiences would receive. No single editor, no matter their genes, could possibly understand every language or cultural experience, but part of an editor’s job is to ensure parity of standards. Editors: your voices should not drown out your authors’, but also don’t let their manuscripts go to print with authors still wondering if it was their best work.

In retrospect, I may need to amend one of my first statements in my last post. Philip and Miranda not only share a quiet authority that earns respect, but also a sincere passion for the work of those they patron. I remind myself, although my blog may sound like a harsh critique of the Anglosphere’s publishing industry, it is not because I think every individual or aspect of the industry is poor. Philip, a White editor, helped Tessa McWatt, a proud author of color, publish her phenomenal memoir Shame on Me the way that she wanted it to be. Shame on Me is proof that authors of colors’ books can be published in the Anglosphere’s current industry and published well. It serves as an important reminder to me, one I want to remind readers of: agents and editors, particularly those like Philip, are not in publishing only for the money—they’re in it because they love great stories and want the world to hear them!

I started this blog hoping that we, as consumers, may become more aware of the book culture that powerful publishing houses, who may prioritize the bottom line over the integrity of their authors, set and perpetuate. I write not to accuse each aspect of the publishing industry for their lack of cultural diversity, or support for authors of color, but rather to encourage them to realize that every single person from author, to agent, to editor, to consumer, are part of a positive feedback loop that we all have the power to change, no matter where we are in that circle. My dream is to create a future that allows authors of color to publish their books the way they want to be published, and to share those diverse stories with equally diverse audiences who feel they can write culturally honest stories, too. That’s it.

Thank you for going on this journey with me. Next time, we’ll discuss what inspired me to look deeper into colouring the canon: how a book and author are marketed.

Stay happy and healthy,

Kaci

---

Works Cited:

Boehmer, Elleke & Lombard, Erica. “Publishing, the Curriculum and Black British Writing Today.” Wasafiri, vol. 34, no. 4, 2019, pp.115-121. Scopus, doi: 10.1080/02690055.2019.1635836.

Jones, Philip. “Publishing.” Publishing: A Practical Approach, College of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing, 20 Jan. 2020, University of East Anglia Campus, Norwich, UK. Lecture.

Ross, Elliot. “The Dangers of the Single Book Cover: The Acacia Tree Meme and 'African literature.'"Africa is a Country, n.d., africasacountry.com/2014/05/the-dangers-of-a-single-book-cover-the-acacia-tree-meme-and-african-literature/. Accessed 9 Apr. 2020.

Thompson, John B. “The Rise of Literary Agents.” Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, Polity Press, 2013, pp. 59-100.

Qualey, M. Lynx. “Translating for Bigots.” Arablit Quarterly, 4 Nov. 2013, /arablit.org/2013/11/04/translating-for-bigots/. Accessed 9 Apr. 2020.