After finishing this book I moved on to the next in the series, which focused on Tenar, a young girl living in the Kargad lands. The people of Kargad have light skin. Tenar was typical in this respect, and is described as having black hair.<\/p>\n
This picture was on the front of my copy of\u00a0Tombs of\u00a0Atuan:<\/i><\/p>\n
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It\u2019s a gorgeous piece of artwork. I immediately assumed the girl in the picture was Tenar, and I figured the guy would be introduced later on. But that\u2019s not exactly what happened. The man on the cover never entered the book, but Ged did. I did a double take. That man on the cover\u2014that was supposed to be Ged?<\/em><\/p>\n Now yes, in the picture above, the man\u2019s skin is darker than Tenar\u2019s. But would you describe his skin as \u201cred-brown\u201d? I wouldn\u2019t. Tanned, yes. Red-brown, no.<\/p>\n I should have seen it, because my copy of\u00a0Wizard of Earthsea<\/em>\u00a0had an afterward written by Ursula Le Guin, and I had read it.\u00a0In this afterward, Le Guin wrote that her decision to make Ged a person of color was intentional\u2014that when she wrote the book in 1968, there were few fantasy characters of color, and she wanted to change that.<\/p>\n Le Guin \u00a0even notes her frustration with illustrators:<\/p>\n His people, the Archipelagans, are various shades of copper and brown, shading into black in the South and East Reaches. The light-skinned people among them have far-northern or Kargish ancestors. The Kargish raiders in the first chapter are white. Serret, who both as a girl and woman betrays Ged [in Wizard of Earthsea<\/em>], is white. Ged is copper-brown and his friend Vetch is black. I was bucking the racist tradition, \u201cmaking a statement\u201d\u2014but I made it quietly, and it went almost unnoticed.<\/p>\n Alas, I had no power, at the time, to combat the flat refusal of many cover departments to put people of color on a book jacket. So, through many later, lily-white Geds, Ruth Robbins\u2019 painting for the first edition\u2014the fine, strong profile of a young man with copper-brown skin\u2014was, to me, the book\u2019s true cover.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I read that\u2014I did\u2014and still, when I picked up\u00a0Tombs of\u00a0<\/em>Atuan,<\/i>\u00a0I didn\u2019t realize that was Ged on the cover. At that point, in my defense, I hadn\u2019t realized that Ged was a recurring character. The first\u00a0Earthsea\u00a0<\/em>book was about Ged; the second was about Tenar. That was what I knew. Who knew what the third might be about?<\/p>\n After realizing that that tanned white man on the cover of the book was meant to be Ged, I started googling, curious about other depictions. I learned that in the early 2000s,\u00a0a miniseries was made based on Earthsea. Here\u2014I kid you not\u2014is Ged (with, I assume, Tenar):<\/p>\n The problem posed by this miniseries\u2014which cast a white actor<\/em> as Ged\u2014was so big that Le Guin herself felt the need to address it<\/a>\u00a0in an article titled \u201cA Whitewashed Earthsea.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea<\/em>, the miniseries based\u2014loosely, as it turns out\u2014on my Earthsea books. The books, A Wizard of Earthsea<\/em>and The Tombs of Atuan<\/em>, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don\u2019t know what the film is about. It\u2019s full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense. My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he\u2019s a petulant white kid. Readers who\u2019ve been wondering why I \u201clet them change the story\u201d may find some answers here.<\/p>\n When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of \u201cconsultant\u201d\u2014which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As it turns out, they didn\u2019t. They didn\u2019t include Le Guin in the decision making in almost any capacity. And so, well, the whitewashing happened. And more, apparently. I haven\u2019t seen the miniseries, but I am left with no desire to.<\/p>\n This, by the way, is the Ruth Robbins painting Le Guin mentions liking.<\/p>\n As I thought about all of this, I was reminded of the fuss over Rue, when the Hunger Games movie came out. Rue was played by Amandla Sternberg, an African American actor. Some fans were shocked\u2014and even angry\u2014to see Rue portrayed as black. But as numerous commentators pointed out at the time, the book specifically identified Rue<\/a> <\/em>as having \u201cdark brown skin and eyes.\u201d This was no embellishment on the part of the movie.<\/p>\n Critics of the line of argument I am about to take may point to A<\/em>\u00a0Wrinkle in Time<\/em>. Certainly, that is an example where a white book character\u2014Meg\u2014is played by an African American actress. I am not saying that movie portrayals must always be identical to book portrayals. There is such thing as creative license.<\/p>\n But there is something completely different when an author goes out of her way to write characters of color into her book only to have cover artist and movie adaptors completely ignore her intent and whitewash her stories.<\/p>\n Whitewashing didn\u2019t start in this century, of course. It goes way back. Here is a medieval painting of Joseph and Potiphar\u2019s wife, by\u00a0Guido Reni\u00a0in 1630. Do either of the characters look even vaguely middle eastern or Egyptian?<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/heroicfantasyitalia.altervista.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Earthsea.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/5\/59\/AWizardOfEarthsea%281stEd%29.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/8b\/Guido_Reni_%28Italian_-_Joseph_and_Potiphar%27s_Wife_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg\")
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