‘IS IT REALLY THIS HARD?’

Barnes & Noble Suspends Black History Month Initiative After Backlash

The bookseller sparked controversy with plans to release classic novels with new cover art featuring people of color.

Barnes & Noble announced it is canceling a Black History Month event at its New York flagship store and suspending an initiative to release a series of classic novels with new cover art featuring people of color after it faced mounting backlash on social media. The “Diverse Editions” program was criticized for featuring new covers with people of color while the characters featured inside the book are still depicted as white. “We acknowledge the voices who have expressed concerns about the Diverse Editions project at our Barnes & Noble Fifth Avenue store and have decided to suspend the initiative,” Barnes & Noble said in a statement. A launch event for the Barnes & Noble and Penguin Random House initiative was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. The bookseller made new covers for classics such as The Wizard of Oz, Romeo and Juliet, Moby Dick, and Alice in Wonderland. Writer Rod Faulkner called the covers “literally blackface,” while others said that the entire effort could have been focused on promoting books written by people of color. Author Karen Strong wrote on Twitter, “Can you imagine a young Black girl seeing a cover with someone who looks like her but then finds nothing that reflects her in the pages? No Black girls at all?”