Views from the Reading Room

Today's topic is whitewashing ... and a positive response.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a cartoon in which the various human characters are all from societies based on Asian and Inuit cultures. Late last year, the casting was announced for a live-action movie "The Last Airbender", with all four leads played by white people. Later it was changed so that the "villain" is to be played by Dev Patel. This is not an improvement.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words: racebending.com has photos that make the point instantly.
The fannish response can be found at aang_aint_white and in the racebending community on LJ.

Justine Larbalestier's recent book Liar is about a black teenager with natural (kinky) hair. The cover for the forthcoming US edition shows a white girl with straight hair. I first read about this some time last week; here it is discussed by Alaya Dawn Johnson on the angryblackwoman blog.

I've seen several other posts about each of these things recently (in and out of the IBARW feed). They are not two single incidents, but examples of a sustained practice in Hollywood and in publishing.

In Proposal: Open Source Book Re-Covery Project, coffeeandink suggests a project to create a library of alternative covers for whitewashed books and other media. Lots of people have offered support already, including web space, software skills and artwork. What a brilliant idea! The project will also take suggestions of books that need re-covering.