I recently had a run-in with a specialty group of authors and illustrators on Facebook. They took exception to the cover of my book, which I had posted along with a doll of color that I brought with me from Brazil some 60 years ago. The doll represents the famous Brazilian folk character Sací.
My image was taken down due to it being racist and causing offense to other readers. Now maybe you’re in agreement with this. But folks, things are what they are! Sací is black. I can’t make him another color. He’s also adorable – albeit in my opinion! Some of the pictures and characterizations of Sací on the Internet are truly ugly and demonic. My Sací is sweet. He doesn’t smoke – he blows bubbles in his pipe. He doesn’t hurt anyone; he just plays tricks. He doesn’t drink cachaça (white rum made from sugar cane); he drinks coconut milk. He’s a nice little guy. But he’s black and apparently reminiscent of the “black-face dolls” of the early 1900s. I need to have a discussion with the Portuguese for allowing their sugar plantation slaves to create this black character, and I must plan a séance with Monteiro Lobato so I can find out why he felt it necessary to make Sací so famous! How dare they give him a black face? Why not make him green like the leprechauns (I’m Irish by the way, and the green truly doesn’t offend me)? Why are people always hitching their wagon to someone else’s crusade? By not offending whoever was offended, they’ve offended me. Where does it end?
The bottom line is, I love the cover of my book. And Sací, I absolutely love your little black face. And I even like my book. It won’t win a Newbery, but it’s wholesome, and it does pay homage to a land, a people, and a culture that I grew to love and admire while I spent six beautiful years in Brazil, my other country.
