Thursday, January 21, 2010

Space Of Grace

Book Cover: A bald, possibly twenty-something black man in long flapping leather coat, with a sword in one hand, a gun in the other, and a crown on his head. Lightening spears out from behind him like a halo.  He's walking down an alley with buildings which have fire escapes. Text says: King Maker - The Nights Of Brenton Court. Maurice Broadus

Hi-rise buildings in shades or purple which shade to yellow and then orange/red. Three black people's faces are in the yellow diagonal shading, two men bookending a woman who has a sloth on her shoulder. The top man has prickly spears of something extending from his face. The bottom man has a dog(?) half shading into his face. Text says: Zoo City. Lauren Beukes

Both coming out through AngryRobotBooks.Com, a new SF imprint via HarperCollins.

On the one hand, it's encouraging to see SF with PoC, that have PoC covers. On the other, checking out AngryRobotBooks, I saw it's three white guys in charge.

Still just looking at them lifts my spirits.

And Zoo City is set in South Africa!

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ETA: I've not really wanted to do any sort of demarking on the fact that it's been a year since Racefail/Racefail-09 began. The people who behaved, as they behaved have left it behind and likely given it not much thought at all.

And truthfully, on the blogs of people who have mentioned it, the stream of comments from various well meaning white people talking about just how much they learned, is frankly distateful to me.

It was meaningful because it changed how they think? And now they're on their yellow brick road towards being better people?

What happened changed my life and will continue to. It changed how I see the world of publishing and it will continue to. It changed how I see white people and it will continue to. And it has left me exhausted and affected my health.

I really don't care about white people's watershed moment of illumination. Especially because what happened was just a magnified moment of many moments in many years.

And those moments are still happening.

So to all the white people patting themselves on the back for being so much more aware now. Is that all you're going to do? Be aware as you navel gaze? And you want me to smile at you?

You want me to think your "awareness" is real change? Just because you jumped on a bandwagon of chic? Or to refute a label of racist you saw looming? Or to pad your damn egoes?

Nah dread. Not righteous. Not righteous at all.

Expend some effort. Take up some of the bloody load. Then we'll see if I have a 'progress report' to make for next year.