The first thing I heard about
Lilith's Brood was a disclaimer: don't judge this book by its crappy romance novel cover. A naked woman covering her breasts with her hands, under white sheets.
But this is a classic science-fiction trilogy, I thought to myself. I must perservere!
Despite my most valiant efforts, I can't get past this book cover. Covers make a huge first impression on prospective readers, and I've never understood why they go overlooked so often. Why does the moody painting on
The Great Gatsby's cover have to have an
unnecessary white box around it? Why can't authors stop their
great novels with film adaptations from getting the
obligatory movie poster cover?
Imagine if the Beatles hadn't had control over the cover of
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or
Abbey Road. What about Jimi Hendrix's
Axis: Bold as Love or Nirvana's
Nevermind or A Tribe Called Quest's
Midnight Marauders?
Even in today's music market where album sales are bottoming out and everyone buys 99-cent singles on iTunes, album covers make a difference. When Kanye West released his
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy last year,
its cover made perhaps more waves than the music itself. A huge controversy ensued, and regardless of what you think of Kanye's music, it's clear he cares about cover art.
Why can't literature be afforded the same artistic integrity? The most successful novels go through
dozens of
different book covers, hardly
any of them with
input from the
authors themselves. Sometimes a writer like
Shel Silverstein will fight tooth and nail to get exactly the artwork he wants, but then again, Silverstein was also the artist. It's tough for writers who just write.
So what about
Lilith's Brood? The woman on the cover barely looks like how protagonist Lilith is described in the novel. The top of the photographed woman's head is blurred out--her only distinguishable traits are her curly hair and that ethnically, she's probably black.
The woman appears to be in a very sensual situation, but this is a disservice to the protagonist--Lilith is an empowered female character. The cover insinuates her sexuality should be front and center in the reader's mind.
Does this matter? Octavia E. Butler, the author, is a bit of an anomaly. In an industry full of nerdy white men, she was one of the only prominent African-American female sci-fi authors. Did Grand Central Publishing give
Lilith's Brood a romance novel cover because they think men won't read a book written by a woman? Is the woman on the cover black simply because Butler was black?
At the end of the day, despite whatever cliché your teachers and parents may espouse,
book covers matter. They're our portal into the world of the story, and it's a shame the publishing industry wants to make these portals as inconsequential as possible.
