South Asian book covers ‘coded female’?
By Jess McCabe | 27 May 2008, 18:01
Is the cover art on some fiction, specifically that written by Desi authors, “coded female”, Ultrabrown asks?
It’s not clear how much of this is that South Asian culture is seen as feminine in America, and how much is generic to literary fiction. Are language and craft and design coded female?
Manish is talking about the US covers, but a quick look at Amazon.co.uk shows the same/similar versions available in the UK.
A couple of issues present themselves here; first off, if the covers are gendered at all, I would call them “feminine” rather than “female” - the two terms not being synonymous. But are the publishers aiming the books at women? Suggesting that Desi writing is somehow “feminine”? At any rate, I think it’s obvious even to the relatively untrained eye, that publishers* trade heavily on exoticism and Orientalism (with a capital Edward Said-type O), which, obviously, in turn plays out a fundamentally sexist and racist trope about men/the ‘West’ being the norm/strong and women/the ‘East’ being the other/weak.
Manish points out some interesting exceptions:
There are some exceptions such as The Konkans, and the aggressively masculine covers of Sacred Games and Londonstani (crime novels) and Tourism (urban fic).
Because this is at least partly about femininity, there are, as ever, at least two ways of interpretting this. (Western publishers otherising Desi writing and experience, and/or lumbering it with women’s/chick lit’s second-class status), or (the covers are feminine - so what? You won’t buy a book with leaves on the cover? What century are you living in?)
*(Although, perhaps, the same could be said of some writers…)
Have your say
In order to keep this blog as a feminist and friendly space, comments will be subject to some rules. We do not seek to censor debate: the beauty of the internet is that anyone can set up their own blog or website to express their views.
- This blog is a safe and friendly space for feminists and feminist allies. Debate and critique are welcome where it is constructive and deepens analysis or understanding. Anti-feminist comments will not be approved. We get to decide what's anti-feminist.
- All comments must be approved by one of the bloggers. For this reason, there may be a delay before your comment appears.
- No sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ablist comments, comments which make personal attacks on any blogger or commenter, or comments that are otherwise deemed offensive by us will be posted.
- Trolls will be banned from commenting. We get to decide who is a troll.
- No anonymous comments - please feel free to use your real name or make one up, though.
- Be nice.


Sian said:
This is definitely true to fiction in general, but I just had another look at my Desi fiction and it's also true there-something I hadn't noticed before.
In fact, when I used to volunteer in a charity shop, they actually organised the books into Men's and Women's fiction! The funny thing about it was that they knew very little about the books that were brought in, and so based this on the cover-leading to a black/beige/serious-looking copy of "Pride and Prejudice" being placed in the Men's section, but a copy of the same book with pastel shades and swirly writing on being placed in the Women's section...
Posted on 29 May 2008 at 1:00 PM
priyanka srivastava said:
chitra divakaruni's characters are female rather than feminine. they have strong sense of thier own identity as a woman. they celebrate womanhood.
Posted on 01 August 2008 at 5:41 AM