Tina Dupuy at mediabistro.com’s FishbowlLA tracks the angry Amazon.com customer reviews for Amanda Marcotte‘s It’s a Jungle Out There, a self-described “feminist survival guide to politically ihospitable environments.” The problem lies in the artwork lifted from a 1950s comic book that introduces each chapter, which features a blonde jungle beauty rescuing a not-so-great white hunter from hostile savages. “I find it laughable that the author even attempted to discuss racism when the illustrations in the book were completely racist in themselves,” ran a typical complaint.
The Amazon reviews were spillover from a controversy that’d been brewing on the blogosphere around the same time, which Marcotte’s book viewed by some as just the latest evidence of an alleged problem relating to women of color on the part of Seal Press, the indie publisher behind the book. As it happens, the issue has been largely resolved: Marcotte apologized, saying, “I didn’t pick the offensive imagery in my book, but I should have caught it sooner than now. I didn’t and there’s no excuse.” She further promised the artwork will be removed from future printings, and Seal says they’re already going back to the printers, as well as seeking out training in racial sensitivity to avoid similar missteps in the future.