Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

What I have found interesting is that most of the time, when an interracial couple is written, it is a white man and a black woman. Yet most of the interracial couples I know in real life, are black men married to white women…  I think sometimes interracial relationship books are hard, because the interracial part becomes THE book… and if I am reading a romance, I want a romance, thank you very much… I have read some good ones in the last year, but I think I will be happy when there is a day where an interracial couple in a book isn’t that big O deal…

IMO the larger publishers are afraid of them, don’t know quite how to handle them, and therefore leave the whole issue to smaller imprints to deal with.  In addition, the practice of shelving AA authors seperately makes them difficult to find and purchase.

I love any well written romance, and interracial can add an interesting and fun element to a book.  Like many other readers I have heard on this subject, we don’t like preachy and we don’t like the race issue to be the only plot.  Tried to read Brenda Jackson, but her approach was so titty-fingered that I wasn’t really sure about the interracial aspect (or maybe the cover was just wrong).

Crush by Crystal Hubbard is good.  Champagne Rules and Hot In Here by Susan Lyons are awesome!

My belief is that interracial romances are harder to pigeonhole, so bigger publishers aren’t too enthused by them.  As for the readership, I think that is growing, as are the number of interracial couples.  Maybe it’s because I live in New York, but I see all kinds of pairings that make you wonder how these people even met.  LOL As far as black/white pairings go, bw/wm is on the rise.

I also agree that interracial stories that are only about race are not enjoyable reading.  By the way, what does this mean?

Tried to read Brenda Jackson, but her approach was so titty-fingered that

Confused minds want to know.

All the best,
Dee

I see the African American section at the bookstore, I always wonder why theose books aren’t integrated into ALL the books offered. Especially the fiction, non fiction I can understand it having it’s own place on the shelf.
People are people, I wish they were all together and I think once they ARE all together then we’ll find more interracial stories where the story is more than race.
I don’t know if I’m saying it well, I just think that it sets us back a few years to have segregation in bookstores when in life we’re much more diverse and integrated.
Regardless of race,  romance readers are way ahead of a lot of the world in that we want good stories, prejudice isn’t an issue.

If you write it, we will read it.

In general, I don’t tend to read ‘Black’ romance, or novels for that matter, because once they get categorized in that way, it gives off the vibe that it’s going to be a book about Black People, rather than a novel where the characters just happen to be Black.  And this, as I see it, is a step away from equality rather than a step toward equality.

The day that we’re all truly equal, regardless of skin colour, is the day that ‘African-American’ will only be a section in the bookstore as a subcatagory in the history section.

If there’s a book that looks interesting to me, and one or both halves of the couple just happens to be non-white, I’ll pick it up.  But I’m not going to join Oprah’s book club.

we don’t like the race issue to be the only plot.

Yep, I’m in this group.  I tried a couple and had that problem.  I’m sure there’s interracial books out there where there’s sustainable conflict but I don’t really know how to pick them out.

I agree with sallahdog; if an interracial romance becomes more about the “interracial” and less about the “romance,” I don’t think that would be a book I would want to read. Well, I would read it, but I wouldn’t be able to deal with a steady diet of it. Perhaps because I don’t want to deal with the unpleasant aspects of interracial romance, such as hateful bigots? My brother (white and Hispanic) and his wife (black) have had to deal with a lot of scary, hateful people on some military bases where he has been stationed. I would just be afraid that any interracial romance novels I picked up might have some frightening scenes in it that would give me nightmares—because some of those books will have to deal with hateful people, prejudice and the scare tactics that some bigots use to “run people off.” Just as I avoid romances that involve brutal rape, I would want to avoid interracial romances with hate-filled antagonists. Those things are just too real to me, and I don’t read romances so I can be reminded of all the horrific things that people do to others—I want to read about love.

Wow, and the word “hate” showed up in there a lot. Hate is absolutely frightening to me; there’s enough of it in the real world that I don’t want it showing up in my free-time reading.

It reads like I’m assuming that dealing with prejudice would have to be a major theme of an interracial romance, and I certainly don’t think that has to be the case. And honestly, dealing with ignorance and prejudice is one thing—scary but doable—but dealing with prejudice, ignorance and active hate? Something else entirely. Not a theme that would make me feel safe in the book-world in which I choose to immerse myself.

Whew, long post. Hope it made sense. Thinking…like Shatner…now.

I recommend checking out Monica Jackson’s blog for more info on this topic. She has a slew of blog posts about this very topic, and as she is AA and a romance writer (though not strictly romance anymore-she’ll tell you why), comes from a viewpoint that I have not come across in any of the other blogs in Romanelandia (well, ok, I haven’t read EVERY blog in Romancelandia…). Some of what she says could come off as being..I was going to say mean, but that’s not it; it’s in your face, so be warned that it might make you uncomfortable (it doesn’t stop me from going back though); but if you really want to know about this subject, drop on by. http://monicajackson.com/blog/

I read recently a book, Object of Love, which was interracial.  I didn’t even know it until I was almost 1/3 into the story.  It was great, though, and I have NO problem reading them.

I wonder if the lack of them is because the vast majority of readers are white chicks, though?  This might not be the case (although judging from my year of experience hovering in the romance section, it bears out), but it’s a thought.

I notice, too, that there aren’t very many women of ANY other ethnicity, Asain, Black, Hispanic, etc, and rarely are there any Russian or Eastern European heroines, as well.  Is this for the purpose of easier self-identification with the heroine on the part of the reader (or author?)?

spamword somewhat69…NO!!  Definitely 69!!

Seriously!  End segregation now!  Anyway, it’s irritating that the bookselling world only recognizes two races.  What if you’re a Navajo with a soft spot for Polynesian girls?  What if you’re a Japanese chick and you really dig on Turkish men?  What if you’re a white American girl with the hots for Andy Lau?

Where’s our section of Barnes & Noble?

Oh, and I forgot to ask, what is this plot line you love “that is too embarrassing to mention”? Come on, you can’t throw a teaser like that out and then not tell! I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours…

I’ve been branching out lately and reading more romances (lots of great recommendations from this site - thanks!), but haven’t run across an interracial one yet.  Like others already mentioned, it’s more about the story than the skin colors. I work in a very diverse company and live in a tolerant community and have been in an interracial marriage (b/w) for 20 years. My brother’s wife is Chinese and I have friends and co-workers in interracial marriages of different type.

Probably it’s just the enviroment I live in, but I’ve never had any negative reactions to the fact that my husband and I don’t ‘match’. I did write an interracial relationship into a fantasy novel I wrote (not yet published), but the racial element doesn’t cause any difficulty for those characters.

Looking forward to more diverse characters to come!

less98? 98 less of what?

Well, my fiance is a full-blood Navajo, and I am the whitest woman ever.  Indian Romances, including those written by you-know-who, are certainly one very specific genre of interracial romances.

Elle

It seems to be a black/white issue in the US publishing industry, ‘cause I’ve seen numerous bestselling romances over the years with Asian/Anglo, Native American/Anglo (Thanks, Cassie!) and Hispanic/Anglo match-ups and no one blinks an eye.

It would be interesting to get feedback on this from someone in the industry, telling us whether any marketing work was done to determine the benefits or downside of shelving AA romances separately, or why we don’t see more B/W storylines.

I’m writing an interracial Hispanic/Anglo right now and I love to see that there is an audience for this plotline.

I agree, however, that if the interracial aspects consume the plot, I wouldn’t read it. The same way I steer clear of books about widow(er)s—because, in general, the plot tends to focus on how horribly guilty the hero/heroine is that they’ve moved on.

Living in such a racially diverse city and not thinking twice about interracial relationships, it would never have occurred to me not to include them in my books.  (WARNING: Blatant pimping ahead.)

Asian secondary heroine with Hispanic secondary hero
African American secondary romance
Caucasian hero with Asian heroine
Caucasian heroine with Caribbean black hero
Caucasian secondary heroine with African American secondary hero

There’s talk about how accurately authors portray various races, but I just write the people as I see them.  If race is an issue for them in the story, I’ll include it.  If it’s not, I don’t, and then I hope they come across as the characters I intended them to be.

Well, as a writer… Aside from any question of whether my pub would buy it or not, I feel that the racial stuff WOULD be an issue in the romance, though not much more than other social issues. For example, the high-powered lawyer falling for the mechanic or the older woman and the younger man. What will their friends/family think? Will both the h/h be able to overcome their preconceptions, etc.?

But for me, personally, as someone who was in an interracial relationship for four years, it makes me tired thinking about revisiting those particular issues with my characters.  It’s a minefield I spent a lot of time in, you know? But I’ve never been a shy heiress dating an intimidating stable master, so that still sounds exciting to explore. Ha! Does that make any sense?

All that said, Champagne Rules by Susan Lyons is a recent interracial romance I read. Good stuff! Great cover too.

I’ll be interested to see more comments here. I took on a related topic on at Romancing the Blog a while back, and not only did it drop a big goose egg, I got hate mail. (Having grown up in an urban area and living on the East Coast, I thought it was all pretty benign material, or that I knew what kinds of responses I would get. Ha!) I asked whether books in which the protagonists were African American were the exclusive territory of AA writers. And why that section of the bookstore was segregated. One type of response was that “it’s hard enough for AA to get published, so hands off” and another was “the segregation in the bookstore helps sell to the right market.” Not what I expected! It was a bloody mess at the end of the day.

But I forgot to mention that one of the ex-boyfriends of my contemp heroine is black. Actually, I don’t think I ever say that in the book, I just know it in my head. It would’ve been weird for her to THINK of him as her black ex-boyfriend, no?

This isn’t an issue confined to romance, either. Back in November, The New Yorker published a story, “Brooklyn Circle” that featured several characters that were the product of interracial relationships.  I remember thinking, “Huh. Now that’s something different!”

I think one reason for the dirth of interracial romances may be attributable to the authors. A lot of writers I know feel uncomfortable writing from another class or race perspective, so doing it well from two perspectives (at least one of which may be foreign to said writer) could scare some folks off from the task.

I think that though it’s not strictly romance, C.E. Murphy does a great job of writing an AA heroine in a realistic way that doesn’t harp or preach in her Negotiator series (Heart of Stone, House of Cards). Her heritage is part of what makes Grit who she is, but it doesn’t define or confine her. And of course the hero is made of marble during the day so yep, pretty darned white.

I agree that if a romance is marketed as a black romance (or whatever kind of novel) I’m not interested. If it’s marketed as a romance and happens to have an interracial couple, that’s cool.

And I mean, come on. Different race/culture is a mainstream in romance. All those magically tall Greek Tycoons!

Huh. Never thought of this. I would pick up an interracial romance for probably the same reasons I’d pick up any other romance:

1) Someone told me it was a good book.

2) I’d learn interesting stuff about a time, place, or in this case, cultural situation.

3) It was funny. ‘Cause I love me a funny romance.

Marta Acosta’s books feature a Latina heroine and her very WASPY fiance (who is a vampire). I’m not Latina, and seeing the world from the heroine’s brown-skinned perspective added to my enjoyment of a great book. I think, if publishers are turning down great books about interracial couples because they think people won’t want to read them, they’re missing out on sales.

http://readerimarriedhim.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/thoughtlessly-consuming/

I haven’t been reading romance for that long, but I’ve been reading sci-fi / fantasy since I could hold them in my pudgy fingers.  This is also a problem over there - the only interracial romance in a sci-fi fantasy that I can think of off the top of my head is Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle - the protagonist is black (in fact, all the “good people” are black), while his eventual love interest is “white.”  The author has actually mentioned that she intentionally snuck it in there, because otherwise she didn’t think readers would accept and/or identify with him.  And then when the Sci-fi channel made it into a movie, they messed it up :/

Cobblestone Press also has multi-cultural romance. I actually just read one, and the cultural differences were NOT a part of the story at all. It was refreshing. You may want to check Cobblestone Press for your multi-cultural romance needs.

It seems to be a black/white issue in the US publishing industry, ‘cause I’ve seen numerous bestselling romances over the years with Asian/Anglo, Native American/Anglo (Thanks, Cassie!) and Hispanic/Anglo match-ups and no one blinks an eye.

Not to mention all the “sheik” romances . . . it’s a whole bloody subgenre, with a substantial readership (or so I’m told).

I was interested to see that no mention is made in the backcover copy of my upcoming book, LORD SCANDAL, that the hero is half-Turkish (and it comes up quite a bit in the book). It was nearly the only word that was removed from my suggested wording. *shrug* Guess they’re more worried about scaring off those it would an issue for than attracting those who are looking for it (and as the book is not “about” the racial differences, I don’t think it can really be categorized as something that would appeal to those looking for books that deal with interracial couples).

Interestingly, I was just in B&N;yesterday and when was checking out the whole backsplash was “Urban Fiction” (or, what Black Books Direct calls hip-hop fiction, ghetto lit or gangster lit). THONGS ON FIRE was prominently featured.

Writing interracial romance has the same pitfalls as writing Characters of Color in a fanfiction story. You have to keep the characters true to themselves, not turn them into “Julie Andrews in ManTan” nor make them walking talking ghetto stereotypes. Google “race in fandom” and it will cover the waterfront in terms of the debate.

I venture into it now and then, always with trepidation.  A Cherokee trucker here, a Barbados black man there, an Arabian dancing boy or a Greek rabbi who now runs North America.

As for segregated books stores, I have to agree that it’s purely marketing. If your audience wants something specific, they don’t want to have to root for it amid scores of books that are similar but not right.

Like you Sarah it’s not something I think twice about anymore in my day to day life. When I was in high school yes a little, but not with my daughter’s generation or the friends I have now.

But this is a very timely topic for me because I recently finaled in a RWA chapter contest in the historical category with an interracial romance. I mean I guess it is.
He’s European and she’s half European half Caribbean Indo-African. Would that still make it an interracial romance? Is it considered an interracial romance if, believe or not, her heritage is not the one of the major conflicts the story line is based on? (Great amounts of Money and a rather lawless setting can overcome many obstacles for your characters) Should I be worried that I’ve given the book a death sentence in terms of ever selling to NY by making the heroine who she is? Honestly that never crossed my mind. Damn was I hopelessly naive?
It’s my hope that I wasn’t naïve but on the cutting edge of a trend that will become more and more popular.

I love Marjorie Liu because her books are probably the most diverse of any other writer out there.

Book after book of white characters is pretty annoying, to me, because it doesn’t reflect the reality I live in.

And also, I would really love more romances with Asian characters. Asian heroes, Asian heroines—whichever.

I think what you see in books is a reflection of what popular culture is producing.  How many sitcoms and dramas that you watch on a regular basis have interracial couples?  Heck, how many have AA couples at all (apart from CW’s line up)?

Am I saying that it’s okay?  Heck NO! But don’t go thinking that Romancelandia is behind the times or anything.

Humans are so depressingly brilliant at creating problems where none really exist, aren’t they?  The very concept and definition of ‘race’ (as at least a couple of you have already indicated) is so unbelievably sloppy, unscientific and nineteenth-century-class-conscious and imperialistic that it should be laughed out of court.

There are no pedigree humans around, thank heavens:  the closest thing we have are some royal and aristocratic European lineages, and they are no great shakes.  British citizens of Afro-Caribbean ancestry sometimes identify with Africa, though their own genealogies almost invariably also contain Europeans, Indians (from various areas of the sub-Continent - many different peoples involved) and Chinese (again, more than one kind).  Any country that had African slaves in the 18th, let alone the 19th, century (we gave it up earlier than the USA) undoubtedly has ‘African’ (usually west African) genetic material in some of the native-born-for-generations white population.  Africa itself is not all ‘Black’ (whether that means very dark skin colour or negroid physique):  Egyptians and Nubians, Sudanese and Somalis, Nigerians and Ghanains and Kenyans and Tanzanians and many different South Africans - all different peoples, with different languages, cultures, physical appearance, histories, religions, and admixtures, ancient and modern, of other peoples - no more like to each other than all the multifarious peoples of Europe and the Middle East and Asia. There are fair-skinned, blue-eyed, blond Algerians, and handsome Nubians, black as jet but with aquiline features, high foreheads, narrow noses and lips.  What possible meaning and definition does this idiotic term ‘Black’ have?  As far as I can see, in modern America and to a lesser degree in Europe, the term is purely a socio-cultural one, and one that is intentionally and provocatively divisive, from within and without.

I am not trying to dismiss the issues that have been raised here:  they are perfectly valid subjects of discussion.  I understand that some people of limited understanding and education have strong atavistic feelings of fear and discomfort about the idea of mating with somebody of a different so-called colour.  I am just trying to point out that they should be taught some basic scientific method, some principles of genetics and physical anthropology, and snap out of it.  We are not in the Victorian age any more (though sometimes I wonder whether people are trying to go back there, or even further, to the Middle Ages).  We are not even in the 20th century.  How long is it going to take the single, undivided species Homo sapiens to grow up?

Coming back to novels, on the one hand, many of today’s readers of fantasy romance can apparently cheerfully stomach shape-shifter books in which women mate with members of other SPECIES, while on the other, some of them have a fit of the vapours at the thought of associating with another human being who has a different skin colour.  Call me old-fashioned, but much as I admire wolves, when it comes to sex, I’d rather get it on with a black human male than with even a part-time canid.

One despairs.

I think, also, that authors may fear writing an interracial romance, because most of them (the authors) are one race or another, or are perceived as such, and that means that they are opening themselves up to an immense amount of criticism of their portrayal of a topic that is not (probably) one they know well themselves, and is a sensitive one for many people, and one about which feelings tend to run high.  I think I think the issue is the most pronounced when it comes to Black/White relationships—as other have noted, there’s the entire Sheik thing, and at least in what I suppose one could call the cowboy subset of romance novels, there’s a significant Latino presence; however, Black/White is rare, and I think Asian/White is, as well.  And combinations which avoid White altogether (e.g., Black/Native American, or Asian/Latino) are effectively nonexistent in mainstream markets, are they not?

I am a white woman, and at least in part because of where in the country I live, I have never been in a long-term mixed-race relationship, because there are relatively quite few nonwhite people (and even fewer nonwhite men) in my area—for example, in my workplace of roughly 150, there are, best I can figure, eight people who identify as nonwhite, of which one is male.  Anyway.  If I write a book in which I simply portray a mixed-race relationship, no matter how careful my research, the odds are, I will manage to trip over a stereotype that—even if I have asked for feedback on my portrayal of the race dynamic, from people who I have found who I think would have a meaningful opinion due to their own personal or academic experience with the topic—will generate outrage.  I can’t write it simply, most likely, without race becoming an issue.

For instance.  If my nonwhite primary character is Black, and is, oh, say, a mechanic from a background of blue-collar workers, I may find that some readers believe this is a representation of my racism, that I believe all Black people are inherently not capable of managerial or academic professions.  However, if my Black primary character is a college professor from an upper-class background, I may find that readers object to my unrealistic portrayal (which ignores the very real problems that some people have which stem from long-standing prejudices about skin color).  If s/he is a college professor from a difficult background, I may find that readers believe I do an inadequate job of discussing what the journey for this character, to get to this situation, may have been like.  If s/he is a professional athlete, I am almost certainly going to be criticized for perpetuating a stereotype. 

The trouble here is that in order to fully represent all that a nonwhite character might be so that it doesn’t come across as either ignoring or perpetuating racism, I have to present, and make reasonably roundly-portrayed, an entire array of characters of color so that I can show that I do know that some of them are garbage haulers and some of them are doctors and some of them are librarians and some of them work at the 7-Eleven, that some of them have run into great resistance based on their skin and some have not experienced that problem the same way, that some of them are kind and gentle and others are nasty and mean.  To be clear, I believe this is not a trouble with individual readers or writers so much as it is a manifestation of a lot of hurt and injustice that exists and has existed in the lifetimes of people who might be irritated; I don’t want to suggest these readers are “oversensitive,” because that implies that I am the authority on what their level of sensitivity should be, but I do want to suggest that there may be slights perceived that were never intended, and that even an author with excellent intentions and pretty good research may not be willing to risk the perception.  I suppose in order to begin to change that, someone has to begin, but it’s in no way so simple as to merely make the boyfriend Black (which is a whole other problem: if I exoticize his nonwhiteness, making the story about his amazing differentness of skin, then it would be easy to perceive that I believe his value is about his skin, not his self; I am selling him as “other,” rather than as “Mike who is a smart stocker of supermarket shelves and volunteers at the public library one weekend a month and likes roast chicken sandwiches and whose favorite color is green”).

Anyway.  In order to portray all the many facets of nonwhite people so as not to oversimplify or perpetuate racism, and get it in the ballpark of fair, requires a large and fully-drawn supporting cast, and not doing so leaves one open to criticism not of the story, but of the author and her beliefs.  Frankly, if I’m going to have to write that entire supporting cast, it’s going to take up a hell of a lot of my storytelling energy, and at that point, maybe it’s just as easy NOT to add the white part of the cast and also the additional storyline of mixed-race relationships, which, unless I have been misled, have conflicts and difficulties that are both like and unlike those faced by any other couple.  All of which means that it’s not going to be a sweet little romance by the time I’m done; it’s going to be an epic, and even still, I and my editors may fail to do it well enough. 

I want to reiterate it is not my intent to suggest that folks who read a character of color and object to the portrayal based on their perceptions of how that character’s various traits tie into existing stereotypes and/or racist beliefs, are necessarily doing it wrong.  I’m only saying, this problem in writing about race exists, and probably serves as a deterrent for those who would like to include the subject.  And writing interracial romance, once you open the issue of race being relevant in the first place, is writing about race.

I’m black and I write interracial romances, I also happen to be in an interracial marriage if that’s relevant. I’ve been trying to get published since 2002, with little or no luck. My first book, Rock Star, was published by a small African American press. It’s done very well with almost 7000 sales. Given that I’m the book’s only publicity machine you’d think that would be enough to get New York’s attention. Not so much.

I get the impression that New York hasn’t a clue as to what to do with an interracial romance. It doesn’t fit into their carefully delineated niches, so they’re left perplexed and bewildered. I suspect they also fear the possibility of angering any number of groups. So it’s best to just leave them alone altogether.

Even something as basic as a cover becomes a political issue. At least one writer has been told that putting a white man on the cover of an IR book is a major no-no. White readers might buy it accidentally and then return it upon discovering *horrors* that the book involves Negro sex. (According to at least one distributor this has actually happens. As someone who has never returned a book I find it almost inconceivable.) Readers might be turned off by the interracial content, and so on. And, of course, a book by a black author must go in the Negro ghetto, even if only one (or sometimes none) of the characters are black. And the band played on.

It’s a sad commentary quite frankly. If my fan mail is any measure, there is a large and growing segment of the population that is clamoring for these books. That same segment is frustrated by the fact that it seems that the e-pubs are the only ones producing them. Even if one can overcome some people’s dislike of e-books, you also have to deal with the fact that many people don’t like the sensuality level in some e-books.

It’s a helluva Catch-22. We have weaker sales because of these factors we have no control over. But those same sales numbers are used to justify not picking us up.

In my first book, race was a triggering issue, but the heroine was mainly conflicted over living life in a fish bowl with a rock star.

In my second manuscript, which I just sold to an e-pub, (Yay me!) race is scarcely mentioned at all. Not surprising given all the other issues they’re dealing with. With the books that I’ve plotted for future manuscripts the degree of racial conflict varies from none at all, to fairly minor issues. Having been in an IR marriage for almost ten years I think it would be unrealistic for all my books to lack racial conflict. OTOH, I think it would be unfair and woefully unbalanced to present IRs as all sturm und drang. For the most part, I’ve found being in an interracial relationship to differ little from a monoracial relationship, and my characters have plenty of conflict outside of race.

I don’t think race has to be a primary conflict, but certainly it will probably come up from time to time. Especially in my first book where the characters are in a small southern town.

I think L’s and Roslyn’s comments contain many valuable insights (as do many - maybe all! - the earlier posts in this thread).  I know from a friend who is a very successful romance author (you would all know her name) that she is simply too nervous to include black characters as major players, for the very reasons that L. has listed, though she has never hesitated to include gay couples in her stories.

Can I suggest that maybe, perhaps, just possibly, there is a way out, but it has to come from the readers, readers who want to read about real relationships involving real people, who are simply not, in this day and age, always going to be from the same square mile.  The way forward is for white readers to buy books that are written for, and marketed to, black readers.

Reflect that in the 1920s and 1930s, music made by black American musicians went out on records that were sold ONLY in the black ghettos of American cities.  They were known, condescendingly, as Race Records.

But over time, white people started to buy some of these records;  they would go and seek them out, in the outlets where they were available.  Jazz (a wholly black genre at first) became trendy and eventually, even those Blues started to be important to music-lovers of all hues - because it was great, great music, that speaks, not only to the ‘Black’ condition, but to the human condition.  Eventually, an unsung hero called Sam Phillips started to record black and white artists TOGETHER - in the same studio at his Sun Records at the same time! Shock!  Horror!  And a white boy called Elvis sang songs that brought together cultural threads from Africa and Ireland and heaven knows where.  The middle-class white parents of 1950s USA worried about Elvis not merely because of the pelvic thrusts, but because they could see and hear the black element in his art.  Perhaps their white ewe-lambs would be debauched.

The Blues, with its roots in the West African slave culture, and Country and Western, with its roots in Irish and British folk music, blended to produce rock and roll, and rhythm and blues, and all sorts of musics that bring these so-called ‘races’ together.  ‘Inter-racial’ music is one of the great achievements of 20th-century culture.

Could we take the power of music as an example, and see if it can be done with mere words, too?

I’m always caught out that anyone still gives a good damn about race. My family sure doesn’t. I think I’ve dated pretty much every option out there and while my parents and friends haven’t liked all of them, race was never the issue (in fact, my mom is still begging me to date one of my buddies who’s AA, or “black” as he prefers to be called*). Class is a whole nother issue though . . . my dad would soooooo not be happy if I brought home someone without a college degree.

*Someone said something earlier about not getting the “black” label, that AA was better, right, whatever. I have to say, most of my “black” friends don’t like to be called AA (anymore than most of the Native Americans I know like to be called “Indian”). To quote one of them: “I’ve never been to Africa. I have no ties to Africa. I’m not Obama for heaven’s sake, I’m just plain ol’ black.” *shrug* It’s like the Hispanic/Latino debate. Whichever term you use, the only thing you can be sure of is offending someone.

As a “Latina” writer who was once told she wasn’t Latina enough…and who had interviewers and publishers ask me to “prove” my Latina-ness, I totally understand why a girl like me wouldn’t dare write an African American main character.  What kind of questions would I have to deal with then?

I will read them.  Like everyone else, I don’t want to see racism as the main conflict, but if it comes up in the natural progression of the story, I don’t mind.  The key for me is to FIND the books.  The segregation of bookstores really has to stop.

we don’t like the race issue to be the only plot.

It’s weird, because this is actually why I want to read an interracial romance - especially a historical - because I find it romantic and empowering if two people basically say ‘fuck you’ to society and its massive stupidity.  It’s kind of why I like gay historical romance, too - it takes such a tremendous amount of strength to say “I’d rather be myself and love who I want to love” than to conform and play by the rules.

more of a “Interracial romance: what’s up with that? How come there’s not more of it?” type of random musing. So? Your thought?

My thought is that I just read a thesis on the topic of inter-racial (black woman, white man) and there’s a discussion of why the majority of romances described as “inter-racial” feature that particular combination) romances. It was really interesting and I think it might be helpful to you:

Blanding, Cristen. Interracial Romance Novels and the Resolution of Racial Difference. Thesis (M.A.)—Bowling Green State University, 2005.

Here’s the abstract:

This thesis is a study of the emerging subgenre of category romance novels that depict interracial relationships, specifically relationships between black women and white men. Employing textual analysis of twenty-six novels published from 1995-2005, by romance publishers such as Harlequin, Silhouette, and Genesis Press, and situating them as category romance novels targeted towards a black female audience and written by black female authors, this study argues that these novels constitute a new subgenre, and that the conventions and themes that are common to these novels conceptualize racial difference as the most salient issue in the depiction of interracial romantic relationships, while simultaneously arguing that romantic love is fundamentally apolitical.

The whole thesis can be downloaded from here.

Wave hands in the air for Jewish heroes! Hello? Anyone? Ok, I’ll get back to work. If you can’t find one on the shelves, you have to write one yourself…

From the top of the thread:

” What I have found interesting is that most of the time, when an interracial couple is written, it is a white man and a black woman.”

Well, I know for a fact that at least one major print line (that I worked for) REQUIRED that pairing—that is to say, the viewpoint character had to be a black woman (reflecting the target audience).  Sometimes one would “get away with” a mixed-race heroine.  (Or just give the heroine green eyes, creamy skin and butt length hair and SAY she was black.)  But more often than not, no.

In addition to the insightful comments already made here is the issue of minority readers who still feel that marrying/dating/boinking outside their race is a copout and a capitulation.

One of the things I enjoy about fantasy is that I can make up my own damn races. And mix them up at will.  Which is cheating, I know.  But I am constantly afraid of otherwise someday being pigeonholed on the “black” shelf in the back of the bookstore.  (At the moment I am tired and ineloquent and the caffeine has not kicked in, and so am not finding a diplomatic way of saying “America is not interested in the black shelf.”  I’d like to be more nuanced than that—I’ll try again later.)

(My sign-in is “girl46.”  I like the anonymity of that. God I need sleep.)

Carrie—I watched “Crossing Delancey” again the other night and remembered why I loved it so much.

Peter “Akiva” Decker from Faye Kellerman’s Decker/Lazarus mysteries is also quite the hunk, even though the books aren’t strictly romance.

Nita Abrams does some great Jewish heroes in her spy novels set during the Regency period.  And I had a Jewish privateer in one of my books, but he was the hero’s best friend, not the hero.

we don’t like the race issue to be the only plot

How about Karyn Langhorne’s Unfinished Business, which has political differences being the main source of conflict between the hero and heroine?

Black activist Erica Johnson wears her causes on her sleeve—literally. With her class of beloved fourth graders depending on her to represent their concerns, Erica’s ready to confront golden-boy conservative senator Mark Newman. And she’s willing to suffer through a night in jail and a battle of wits with a real-life war hero, if it will help get the children the money they need.

Mark Newman’s a worthy adversary. But there’s a more human side to the ambitious politician with the dreamy blue eyes—from the physical pain of his war wound, to his grief over his wife’s death.

Unfinished Business is an awesome book. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Never really considered a Jewish hero, but I can definitely see it.

What I have found interesting is that most of the time, when an interracial couple is written, it is a white man and a black woman.

Most of the publishers doing African American books are AA publishers. Presumably most of their readers are black women, so, of course, they would want a black heroine. As far as I know, most of my fans are black. Thus far out of 300+ e-mails, I’ve only had two who identified themselves as white. That’s a very unscientific sampling, but that’s all I have to go by. Also, I doubt there’s a huge fan base of white women wanting to read about AA heroes with white women, but I could be wrong. Some of the e-pubs have them, but I haven’t seen any from a New York publisher.

Someone said something earlier about not getting the “black” label, that AA was better, right, whatever. I have to say, most of my “black” friends don’t like to be called AA (anymore than most of the Native Americans I know like to be called “Indian”).

I think this is just the very tip of the very scary iceberg that keeps some writers away from writing interracial. Thoughts?

J.J. Murray is a white man (I think) who writes some pretty good black-woman-white-man romances. I enjoyed SOMETHING REAL, which perhaps leans a bit harder toward women’s fiction, but has a strong romance.
I enjoy interracial romances—Jade Lee’s done a number of Chinese heroes with English or American heroines. I’d like to read more of them. I’m still wary of writing them, though, for the very reasons L. listed… Then again, I do write fantasy…

I love Suzanne Brockmann and I kept thinking of her when I read this post because she writes diverse couples:
Harvard’s Education - bm/bf
Taylor’s Temptation - native american hero/waspy heroine
Into the Storm - Asian female/white male
Sam & Alyssa - white male, black female
Jules & Robin - two gay men!
Into the Night - hot sexy young man/older woman
and I get the impression that Frisco’s kid is also an interracial couple

As an Asian female who reads romance novels I enjoy reading books where the heroine is Asian too.  I’m not so much for Asian heroes, mostly because I’m not attracted to Asian men so much (exceptions will include Jet Li and Andy Lau).  Of course I married a white boy so that’s probably another reason why I enjoy AF/WM books. 

As a historical, Mary Jo Putney had the China Bride and I really enjoyed that.

Also, I doubt there’s a huge fan base of white women wanting to read about AA heroes with white women, but I could be wrong.

You wrote this seriously? I’m going to assume you didn’t mean that to come out the way it did.

Anyway, I am an AA author in an interracial marriage of nine years (as someone else mentioned, if that matters). I have to say I disagree with the comments on desegreation in the bookstores. IR is a genre. Face it. We wouldn’t be having this discussion otherwise. If you’re looking for an IR book, you wouldn’t want to have to search through the paranormals and the other genres to find it.

You wrote this seriously? I’m going to assume you didn’t mean that to come out the way it did.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with the way it came out? I mean, most romance authors are white. If they wanted to write books with black heroes, I would have to assume that they would. And as white women seem to be the bellweather for this industry, presumably they would be published. Given the dearth of them, once can only gather that white women aren’t interested in reading black heroes.

Indeed, when the topic of why white women don’t read black romances comes up, one of the key responses is that they can’t ‘relate’ to black books. What is one supposed to gather from that, other than that white women don’t want black heroes? After all, these same white women have no problems with sheikhs, shifters and any number of other species, but Negro sex? *horrors*

“R is a genre. Face it. We wouldn’t be having this discussion otherwise. If you’re looking for an IR book, you wouldn’t want to have to search through the paranormals and the other genres to find it.”

I think the very issue of this discussion thread (or one of them) is that Interracial Romance is NOT a genre, or at least not a large and recognized enough genre to be even a little bit easy to locate.  Possibly even floating the suggestion that it should be one?

I edit for an e-pub, and they used to call such romances Multi-cultural, which I preferred, but now they call them interracial.  I hate this term.  I’m also a teacher and it comes up in many a book discussion about educational issue, etc.  I really hate this term “race.”

I have no desire to disregard any part of who I am; why would I simply go by a description of color?  To my mind, I’ve read plenty multi-cultural romances.  To me, it’s anytime the hero and heroine are from different cultural backgrounds, not simply different “races.”  (My Big Fat Greek Wedding could be a simple example.)

Now, I know—that’s not the whole issue, particularly not in the US.  But I dislike seeing the idea of multi-cultural/interracial romances reduced to a B/W issue.  (There’s a whole other issues veering off from that general topic, but I’ll try to keep it to romance.)  What about the NR’s Stanislaski’s?  What about any author who’s written (with any degree of accuracy) about Cajuns?  Are those IR, or not?

If you’re looking for an IR book, you wouldn’t want to have to search through the paranormals and the other genres to find it.

What if the IR IS a paranormal? How does something become a whole ‘nother genre just because the two people are of different races? Yet this doesn’t happen except for when one of the people is black. Sheikh books aren’t housed in the ‘Arab’ section (if such exists). Why is that okay? Is it somehow beyond the scope of reason to believe that fans of paranormals would somehow overlook it if a paranormal IR somehow wound up shelved with others of the same type?

Perhaps I’m naive (and marketing assures me that I am), but I would like to believe that people who love good books would love them regardless.

As a woman who quite enjoys her “Negro sex” at home and would read about it if it was well-written and interesting, I’m going to half-way agree with Roslyn, in that I think most publishers and writers are generally swayed by “what was” (AKA the vast majority of romances from a WM/WF perspective), and it’s only “now” that we’re seeing the racial diversity embraced (almost) by our culture reflected in our romances.

I will say, however, that I had to overcome my instinctive hackle-raising at how I initially interpreted her words.

Also, for those out there looking for a good AF/WM, the incredibly hot Vampire’s Slave books (duo, hopefully soon to be trio) were incredibly smokin’ hot.

I’ll agree with the vast majority on this site, though, and say that, provided it’s a good story and well written, I’m down for whatever.  But I’ll jump off the raft if the plot gets to be TOO “race oriented”.  People are people, and people in interracial couples know this first and foremost…which allows their said interracial coupleness to flourish and develop.

Lots of interesting discussion here.  As a white girl who’s been with my black boyfriend for four years and counting, I would love to read more IR romances if I only knew where to find them and which ones were well written.  As for such books dealing with “issues”, I for one would be glad to read them as long as they feel real.  In my own relationship I have had to deal with the issue of my family being Christian and my boyfriend being Muslim (his family has no problem with this but boy oh boy, mine sure do), multiple cultures (him being from Africa, me nominally American but raised in SE Asia), multiple social contexts (him from one of the poorest countries in the world, me from one of the richest), languages (neither of our native languages are the same and we often rely on a third language to get complex ideas across), and so on.  Skin color differences seem like a trivial thing compared to the diverse backgrounds we bring to the table.  Granted, my IR relationship is not a typical American b/w relationship…more of an international one, but still.  There are issues.  I would expect them to figure into a story and would feel cheated if they didn’t. 

The world is a diverse place and that’s what makes it interesting.  I would be surprised if we don’t see more racial and ethnic diversity showing up in our reading material over time to reflect the shifts.

It’s weird, because this is actually why I want to read an interracial romance - especially a historical - because I find it romantic and empowering if two people basically say ‘fuck you’ to society and its massive stupidity.

It’s interesting Allie, my e-mail runs about 5/50 on this issue. Some think there was too much racial conflict. Others say there’s not enough. Of course, there are those who say it’s not realistic. Now, you’d think they were talking about the fact that a rock star falls madly in love with a small-town bookstore owner. No, they have no trouble buying that. They think it’s unrealistic that there would be no racial conflict between them.

I can’t wait until they see my next book. :D

Indeed, when the topic of why white women don’t read black romances comes up, one of the key responses is that they can’t ‘relate’ to black books.

Race doesn’t matter to me, but setting sure does. I LURVE me some Beverly Jenkins historicals!!! But I don’t find myself drawn to books categorized as “Urban Lit”. Not drawn to reading Chick-Lit about 20-something white chicks either, though for some reason Brit Lit (like those of Wendy Holden and Marian Keyes) is totally my cuppa. *shrug* I can’t explain it. But I will totally second Champagne Rules as a fab IR romance (BM/WF).

I would love to read more IR romances if I only knew where to find them and which ones were well written.

You might want to join the MSN group for interracial/multi-cultural readers/writers. Here’s the link:

http://groups.msn.com/InterracialMulticulturalRomanceReaders/general.msnw

Right now they’re going nuts over books with Japanese heroes, but I’m sure they can point you in the direction of books with pretty much any combination you desire. Most will be e-books, of course.

Thank goodness I write sci-fi and can skip the race nonsense. I give almost everyone tan skin and let the reader decide what they look like. My MC (hero) for my present WIP is described as being tan with blonde-white hair. I picture him as the perfect Polynesian boy with huge muscles and white hair, but he has a Russian name so maybe he has Mongol ancestors somewhere? Still, romance is one of the few places where I think race is still a huge issue in writing, that and historicals.

But, if you think back a few hundred years, it was taboo to have an Englishman marrying a French woman, they were at war and marrying across borders was not welcomed in some circles. Further back (or maybe not) marrying outside of your social circle was forwned upon. Romance worked past those problems and we regularly have Duke’s marrying the cinder girl. It’ll go mainstream soon enough :o)

I haven’t all comments, so I’m just responding to what SB Sarah wrote.  I’d buy an interracial romance no problem. (in fact I have as I own Suzanne Brockmann’s books with Sam and Alyssa).  I honestly shop for the storyline and if it interests me. I wouldn’t care what ethnic background the characters are.

My parents best friends when I was growing up was an interracial couple (Hispanic man/white woman).  Never thought anything of it. Seems completely normal to me. In fact, I spent my teen years fantasizing that I married their HOT son! LOLOLOL

I’ve seen how an interracial marriage can work. It’s not without it’s struggles with the rest of the world, but every marriage has it’s struggles, just different ones.

I apologize if one of the 58 comments that precede this has said the same thing. I suspect that there is a strong desire in women to pair with exotic men (or to put it more bluntly, the other), but that the prevailing culture still sees it as taboo (irrespective of how many mixed race marriages we are able to say we know about personally). I think this is why there are so many Spaniards and the like out there. I also suspect they are made billionaires to make them even more acceptable.

Why should it matter what people read or want to read?  Reading romance (and other fluffy by the poolside genres) don’t have to be about political or social correctness.  They have to get your rocks off or scratch the proverbial itch.

It comes down to what consumers want to read and what writers want to write about.  If no one is writing it because no one is really interested in it then it shouldn’t matter.  I hate it when people push a racial or sexual issue just because no one wants it.

I don’t think it’s taboo or that there is a desire for the exotic.  I think it just doesn’t occur to writers to put it in their books.  Romanceland tends to lean towards the traditional trope.  And when it deviates from that it also tends to do so conservatively.  Is there something wrong with that?  Not at all.  ESPECIALLY from this genre because it is meant as a comfort food and entertainment, not as a political statement.

The best examples of interracial romance books are the ones which deal with the characters’ races almost as an after-thought.  It’s not as if it’s a prerequisite for a reader to know the race of the characters before reading a book.  A good example of an author who totally disregards race as an issue in constructing her books is Marjorie M. Liu.  Of course, she’s dealing with the paranormal, and if the reader can accept a gargoyle as a hero, why can’t they accept a different race of human?

What if the IR IS a paranormal?

What if a mystery is a fantasy (e.g. The Dresden Files, which I have seen in both sections at different libraries)?  What if a Romance is SF?  Sometimes things are in more than one genre.

There isn’t an IR section at my library, but I can tell you why there’s an AA section: because before we had one, people came in and asked where they could find it.  Do people who are browsing the general fiction possibly miss something that they would like because it’s shelved in AA?  It probably happens from time to time.  A person browsing Fantasy might also miss something she’d like in SF.  A person who never heard of The Dresden Files who browses the fantasy section might miss it if that library considers it mystery, or vice versa.  We try to make things easy to find based on how we think people are most likely to look for it, but sometimes there are two categories that fit a book equally well.  In an ideal world multiple copies would be split between both places (which is often done for many of our AA books of which we own multiple copies).

As one member of an interracial couple, I have to say that I’m not sure it’s enough of a subject to carry a romance.  Most of my friends are in interracial or inter-cultural relationships/marriages.  The issues, however, that make relationships difficult/challenging are mostly not related to race.  The couples I know who’ve had problems - have the usual gambit of problems (money, infidelity, etc.,) so I don’t know if it’s enough to carry a romance, but it would be interesting in the sense that I could see a reflection of myself in a romance.

One interracial romance that I read recently was: The Tao of Sex by Jade Lee (though I wasn’t a fan of the book, too abstract for me).  Then there have been a sprinkling of ‘mainstream’ (read Harlequin) books over the years where the hero was 1/8 or 1/4 native American - and recently A Scent of Seduction by Colleen Collins with a (NOT MY WORDS) ‘Native American hottie’ - hero.

I’m also one half of an interracial couple (he’s black and I’m about as white as you can get), and maybe it’s because of where I grew up/currently live (Seattle), but it seems fairly normal to me. I agree that novels specifically about interracial couples tend to focus too much on race, but I think it’s more out of a want to be sensitive to the issue than a reflection on real life (at least my life - I can’t speak for anyone else). Out of all the issues my bf and I have had, race has never been one. We’ve talked about it, obviously, but it was never an obstacle or a factor - other than it’s part of the way he looks, and I kinda really like that :). That is not to say that racism doesn’t exist, or to disregard the experiences people have had with it, but I look at it much the way I look at the color of his eyes or the way he smiles - it’s just part of the person I love, and one of the reasons he is who he is. I’d love to see that reflected in a novel.

Also, can we all have a cheer for Sam and Alyssa? One of my favorite novel couples of all time, bar none! Hmm, it’s been a while since I re-read that one…

As an author of black and bw/wm romances, I’m thrilled to see all the messages from readers saying that you’d read these books.  However, if print books are your cuppa, you’ll have to go to the black section to find most of them.  Genesis Press and Parker Publishing are two small print presses who regularly publish bw/wm.  As others have said, may epubs do too.

shameless plug—my last release was part of an anthology What White Boyz Want, released in March—end shameless plug.

As for why black books are shelved where they are, might I direct my fellow RWA members to your May RWR, starting on page 15?  I’ve said plenty on that subject on my own blog, Monica’s blog, here and at Dear Author, but the RWR has it in a black and white keepsake edition, pun intended.

Roz has already mentioned the MSN group.  They are voracious readers who love books with bw and non-black men in them.  They’ll be more than happy to give you recommendations.

Race is acknowledged in some way in both my full length IR books.  In No Commitment Required, the hero and heroine don’t have problems with color (they’ve got bigger issues) but their friends and some minor characters do.  In Three Wishes,  they discuss it and move on (heroine is black and Vietnamese, but identifies black) but again secondary characters have issues.  No issues in WB.  I know Amazon reviews are suspect now, but I’ve only ever once asked someone to post a review there.  Dear Author gave NCR a B, if that helps.

Allie:
may I offer gay interracial pirates?Kestrel on the Horizon

Carrie: Nikolai has an observant Jewish main character (not the title character, but his mentor). Watch for “Burning for Eight Days” from Ellora’s Cave’s Exotica line.

working71. Yep, pimping myself. That’s work.

The best examples of interracial romance books are the ones which deal with the characters’ races almost as an after-thought.

Oh yes. I’m a firm believer in drawing on universal emotions (especially when writing outside my own eastern European background) and adding in cultural elements as needed.

I work hard to get things “as right as I can” and the response has been good, but I admit that it’s frustrating at times to have to work around genre expectations.

It pained me to have my samurai hero tell the British heroine he loved her at the end of a novella instead of letting the fact that he kept her with him make the point.

So why arent there more interracial romances? Short answer: because the majority of (white) people in this country are socialized to feel uncomfortable with discussing race or ethnicity.

In general, I don’t tend to read ‘Black’ romance, or novels for that matter, because once they get categorized in that way, it gives off the vibe that it’s going to be a book about Black People, rather than a novel where the characters just happen to be Black.  And this, as I see it, is a step away from equality rather than a step toward equality

.

I am a woman of color. I am a woman always. I am a person of color always. I cant separate that. So if I fall in love I am a woman of color falling in love. Ss if you write a story about me then it must be a story about this particular woman of color falling in love.

As some of the posts on this thread indicate people are socialized to say all the PC things that they would love to read about other races/ethnicities. In reality the majority of romance readers only really do so only when its “safe”.

I agree with sallahdog; if an interracial romance becomes more about the “interracial” and less about the “romance,” I don’t think that would be a book I would want to read. Well, I would read it, but I wouldn’t be able to deal with a steady diet of it. Perhaps because I don’t want to deal with the unpleasant aspects of interracial romance, such as hateful bigots?

Safe means no uncomfortable feelings generated by reading the novel. The novel shouldnt force you to think about your unearned privileges, inequality, prejudice or anything uncomfortable. It doesnt matter if the love story is compelling and the characters are well drawn.

Like many other readers I have heard on this subject, we don’t like preachy and we don’t like the race issue to be the only plot.

It doesnt matter if the love story deals with love AND race. That little inkling that you might have to deal with confronting race privilege then it becomes unsafe. Read about bloodsucking killer vampires and shifters in paranormals? Sure. Read about serial killers and abusive husbands in romantic suspense? Yup.

Read about interracial romances? Not so much. Before you say what about all those Asians, Latinos, Native Americans. Yes they are in romance. But these are essentialized Others.  These are Others that are made safe. Safe as in the noble savage of Cassie Edwards, the powerful martial arts practicing Asian a la Liu or Stuart. So why arent there any essentialized versions of black people in romance? Cause for the most part the archetypes of black folk are negative. Think of what you see on the news, TV and film. But there arent any safe images of black folk that would fit in romance. The archetypes of the black female are the oversexed, angry and lazy black woman or the hardworking, nurturing and asexual mammie. Black men are hypersexual, masculine and and violent. There is no place for the asexual mammie in romance and the oversexed angry female is too scary. Popular culture flirts with the tall dark and handsome black male with an edge ( think of Denzel) but rarely if ever is he the romantic lead with any sort of deep exploration of the relationship with a woman. He is too masculine and violent to be a romance hero. So the mainstream houses ( as do the majority of the white romance readership) dont see anything that would sell (or that they would want to read).Why? Because its too scary if you have to explore what the couple actually has to go through.  If you have to deal with some real world stuff ( stuff I cant run away from on daily basis) then the white majority romance readership doesnt want to read it.

In the same way that little boys are socialized to read all stories as male stories; So we see that more men like to read stories about male protagonists. On the other hand girls are socialized to read male stories but also seek out stories where there are female protagonists. The corollary is that the white majority is socialized to read all stories as stories about white people; so we see that the white majority of romance readers read stories that deal with white protagnists falling in love. People of color read mainstream romances while at the same time seeking out stories about folks of color.

I think there is a large group of readers out there who really want IR’s but for some reason NY isn’t getting it. I’m a writer with 1 IR available now and 3 coming out next year, in an IR relationship, and am a member of IR yahoo groups and message boards. I think readers want the books its just finding a way to get NY to realize it. That being said, in my personal relationship race as never been an issue. Not with friends, family or our community unless it’s behind closed doors. That is how I write my books as well. Sure the H/H are of different races but it isn’t the conflict or a major issue in my book. There are so many other iussues out there other than race. I think that also helps the books to be more relatable to people of every race. I think a lot of people want to read what they can relate too and not everyone can relate to an race issues in a relationship so it might make the book harder to get into for them. I’m not saying thats the case, just a possibility. Love that you brought this topic up. Hopefully if we keep talking about it the bigger publishers will see and start to publish more IR books.

Also, my publisher, Parker Publishing has a line of books about people from races that aren’t written about a lot. Someone mentioned that in a post. The Lotus Blossom line has books about races that you don’t often read in other romance books.

(To start, I’m referring almost exclusively to historicals below)

I’ll tell you what strikes me funny… women do want to read about inter-cultural romances.  I can’t conveniently count the number of books I’ve read where the white hero was raised by a culture distinctly non-white.  Sheiks, Navajo/Apache/etc., Barbars.  The theory seems to be as readers it’s okay if a writer wants to cross a cultural barrier, but don’t you dare put the heroines lily white skin next to someone of anything more than a working tan.

The norm seems to be that if a person of x origin is raised as a person of y and paired with another x. It’s still and xx pairing.  But xy is… well not taboo, but the next closest thing.

So it doesn’t seem to be that [whoever makes these decisions on the reader’s behalf] has an objection to a cultured/savage paring.  It is almost strictly a colour issue.

Wow, thanks for the kind comments about my Champagne Rules and Hot in Here, the first two books of my Awesome Foursome series.

When I started the series, I knew I wanted to write about four 20-something girls (kind of a younger Sex and the City, set in Vancouver). I knew they couldn’t all be white, and couldn’t all have romances with white guys. That’s just not realistic in Vancouver. So, the heroine in Champagne Rules is white and her guy is African-American - the child of a single parent immigrant mom with big aspirations for her kid - and partly as a result of that, he’s kind of a workaholic super-achiever. The race thing isn’t an issue for the heroine and hero or their families, but his workaholic tendencies are. She wants a man who puts home and family first - and he has to re-examine his priorities.

In Hot in Here, race is more of an issue. Not for the heroine and hero, but for their families. Hers is Chinese and very traditional - and dating a white guy is taboo for them. She’s torn between being the good respectful daughter she’s been raised to be, versus being a modern Western woman like her friends and being able to date - and fall in love with - whatever kind of guy she chooses.

So, in these books, race both is and isn’t the issue, if you see what I mean. Although both couples are interracial, I see the issue in Champagne Rules as being his workaholism, and in Hot in Here it’s her problem re respecting her parents versus being true to herself. However, both those problems happen to exist because the CR hero and the HiH heroine aren’t white, but live in the middle of a predominantly white society.

A very interesting discussion!

You might want to join the MSN group for interracial/multi-cultural readers/writers. Here’s the link:

http://groups.msn.com/InterracialMulticulturalRomanceReaders/general.msnw

Thanks so much, Roslyn.  I’ve marked the link and will be checking it out.  :)

You know, I think it should be made clear that a Hispanic/Latino character with a white character isn’t INTERRACIAL.  It’s intercultural.  There are white Hispanics, black Hispanics, brown Hispanics, Asian Hispanics…being Latino isn’t a race, it’s a culture.  I think I was even misleading in my own post.

So in other words…that’s a whole ‘nuther topic.

Verification word: fear26.  Should I fear the controversy?  Nah.

1) The mainstream (NYC) publishers have been/still are squeamish about putting out interracial romances (or any other kind of cutting edge romance such as gay romances) because they
a) would rather not get into fights over distributing/racking/selling them in certain locales, and thus lose money, and
b) feel they don’t know how to market/to whom to market such books, and will thus lose money.

Both are legitimate fears, but time has ameliorated each situation to some extent. Things truly have changed in our country. And publishers have more diverse staff (not just editorial) with less hidebound perspectives. There is no reason to suppose things won’t continue to change for the better.

2) Not a lot of interracial romances were written and submitted to romance publishers in the past. Very, very few. There may be more now, but they still face the same statistical battle for publication as any other kind of romance, plus the issue that any new type of romance (usually defined as a subgenre) has to find an adventurous editor to test the waters. If and when the subgenre hits, nearly every publisher will take it on. 

3) Chick lit (which you can claim isn’t romance if you feel you must, but I think it is) finally opened the door to Jewish heroes, Italian families, and other recognizable ethnic groups. Previously, nearly all romances were about white bread middle American heroines, with some glamorized Irish blood or the occasional macho Italian hero thrown in. Since most Americans are a product of some ethnic mix, all romance readers except Barbie herself have had to willingly suspend disbelief in order to bond with heroines who are not exactly like them and who have romances with Texas oil barons, British lords, billionaire Italian counts, French wine producers, Spanish or Mexican aristocrats, and so on.

Bottom line: Publishers are in business to make money and if you show them they can make money publishing your kind of book (for instance, by being epublished and being a hit, the current paradigm), they will. Regardless of who or what it is about.

I’ve been monitoring this discussion with interest. I too am a member and an assistant mgr of IMRR, Interracial Multicultural Romance Readers. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about such books to visit our site and apply for membership http://groups.msn.com/InterracialMulticulturalRomanceReaders  The books we discuss and promote celebrate love in all of its many creative hues.

Now that being said you’ll find that there are some who insist that IRs should feature racial conflict because that’s the reality. But you will find even more, such as myself who argue that it’s only one reality and it certainly isn’t mine. I too have been in an IR relationship for the past 21 years and at no time have experienced any of the racial conflicts depicted in some of the IR stories published. That’s not to say that such things don’t happen, but it is not everyones reality.

There appears to be a move now to take racial conflict out of IRs as the driving factor in a story and instead focus on other problems. I’ve always argued for that and I think the voices on this thread support my thoughts.  That is most women who buy a romance want just that. A well written romance regardless of the color of the protagonist and not social commentary. Who wants to read about how much one peoples hate another? After awhile it just gets old.

The second thing is the way these books are shelved, I for one would want my book shelved so more people would be likely to come across it and buy it.  Cause isn’t sales the point? Shelving it in anything other than romance if that’s what it is would be ridiculous. Yes there are some books that cross over genres, sci/fi romances, but it’s still not that hard to figure out. If the romance drives the story it’s a romance, if the romance is merely ancillary to the sci/fi storyline it’s sci/fi.  Odds are if you can’t be sure it’s a romance.

I feel very fortunate that I met with no resistance or qualms whatsoever from Kensington when I submitted my paranormal romance, “Dark Thirst” to them two years ago. In it, the hero is white and the heroine is black. I’ve had mixed reader response to it—some folks think I downplay the racial issue too much, while others say just the opposite, that I play it up too much, but when I was writing the book, I simply tried to be practical and realistic, based on my own experiences and observations. To me, the focal point of the book and the relationship with the h/h was always that they fell in love, the way(s) and reasons they fell in love, not their race. But I felt to simply ignore the race factor would have been not only inappropriate, but a disservice, because it is something I think a young couple in similar circumstances would face and likely address. The whole “the hero is also a vampire” thing aside, of course, LOL.

For me, one of the most interesting parts of working on this book was talking with my friend, Maxine, who is black, and from whom I gleaned some of the anecdotes shared by my heroine in the story. For example, in the book, the heroine, Lina, talks about how her mother recalls that some cousins could go to the circus in their youth, because they were fair-skinned enough to “pass for white” especially in a dark circus tent, but Lina’s mother, who was darker-complected, couldn’t. That was based on a true story that Max shared with me.

Max’s father was also a police officer at a time when integrated police departments were something new and novel. She and her family really were brave and overcame a lot of racial obstacles to build lives for themselves. I admired the hell out of that and wanted to express that in my book in some way.

Anyway. I’m babbling. It’s late on a school night and I’m whipped, LOL. The sequel to “Dark Thirst” comes out in September—“Dark Hunger.” My agent is reviewing my pitch for a third book, “Dark Pasison,” and in it, the hero is black. We’ll see how that goes. Again, I have to give kudos to Kensington and my editor for not balking at all off the premise of “Dark Thirst” (because the hero is also deaf and mute—yeah, this book had a lot of challenges going for it, LOL).

Sara

I wanted to add as well that my book isn’t classified as IR. It’s shelved in the romance section. There’s nothing on the cover or back blurb to indicate it’s IR, just like there’s nothing to indicate the hero is physically disabled in it. Which is the way more books should be, I think. No one has contacted me to complain about the unadvertised IR content, which leads me to suspect that other IR books would be similarly received, even when the content was known aforehand. I agree completely—if the romance drives the story, the book should be shelved with romances.

Your book is very good Sara, I eagerly await the sequel. I’m not surprised your book wasn’t segregated. Brockmann’s wasn’t either. Publishers shelve based on the race of the author, not the characters. White women can write multi-cultural as much as they like with no fear of being placed in the Negro ghetto. It’s most unfortunate.

Thank you to Seressia, Roz and Kelley Nyrae for mentioning IMRR. Our group of more than 600 members focuses on IR/Multicultural Romances and as each of the ladies mentioned above know so well, there is a demand for them and the readership will hunt you down for them.

There is a demand for IR books that go beyond the boundaries set by the sheikh and “indian” romances. Readers are eagerly seeking them and there are many of us quickly writing them.

Virtually anyone can write an IR romance regardless of their complexion or ethnicity through the power of one tiny thing….Research.

If you as a writer can write about the regency era, then you can write IR.

You’re living in the 21st century and can only write about it (the Regency Era, Civil War, whatever) based upon what you’ve read about that time period. You don’t fear messing that up, why would you fear messing up or offending ethnic readers because you’re not the same complexion or ethnicity as your heroine?

Shoot, most of you aren’t men either, but that doesn’t stop you from writing about them as if you were. Trust me on this. Kate Douglas and JJ Murray both write IR and do them well while living this life in “white” skin.

And if you’re truely terrified of offending readers, then locate readers that read IR exclusively and they’ll tell you if what you’ve written rings true or if it’s just one stereotype after the other. Shoot, email me and I’ll tell you.

Sara,

I disagree that it’s a disservice to not include racial conflict. Disservice to whom?  Yourself if you have never experienced it or to your friend’s mother because she couldn’t pass for white. I think we stretch the reasons too far. I find it a disservice to the romance and to the storyline, if it’s included just because the writer feels it has to be present simply because the relationship is an IR, as opposed to the story calling for it. Your story sounds very interesting and like it had more than enough going on. I’m on my way to Amazon to check it out.

We are all products of our experiences I find it a disservice to portray all IR relationships as being rife with conflict. Mine has never been and mine is not alone.

Isis

I have notice a lot of main stream author rear away from interracial romance/erotica books. Most authors who I email state, they are afraid to write IR or no one wants to buy them. My reply to them they are souly mistake because there are many readers who are willing and able to purchase these books. What I understand it is the publish company who has basely denial authors. Because publish company believe there is no market for interracial romance book. I applaud ebook company for taking stand for this type of genre.
I personalty love to read interracial romance/erotica books, especially between black woman/ another ethnicity male.  OHMYGAWD that is so hot. I want to read how they overcame adversity, fell in love, and having great sex. I just can’t believe how single mind publish industry in this day and time. Don’t they understand how broad mind readers has become they want more than WW/WM, WW/Indian Man, Or WW/AM. The common theme white woman. Please! I and the readers want more diversity. White woman isn’t only person on this planet who falls in love. Broaden your horizon you be surpise what you will learn. I support IR. I for one love them.

they used to call such romances Multi-cultural, which I preferred, but now they call them interracial.  I hate this term.  I’m also a teacher and it comes up in many a book discussion about educational issue, etc.  I really hate this term “race.”

I had a teacher in college who argued that there is no such thing as race.  There are only different cultures, different skin colors.  No biological differences, as the term suggests.

I’m white, my husband is not, and this has never been an issue in our relationship.  My romances tend to have characters from different backgrounds and cultures, but I never see this as a conflict or a problem the couple has to overcome.  Perhaps because of my personal experience, my upbringing, and where I live (San Diego is very diverse).

My agent once referred to one of my books as a “multicultural romance” when she was pitching it.  I remember finding this odd.  To me, it was just a romance.

Sara, I read your book and while it’s been more than a minute since I read it (shortly after it came out) I don’t feel that race played much of a part in it at all. Fact is, his so called disability was more of a plot point than anything else. Race was way, way down on the list…and Isis, get that book ASAP, you’re going to enjoy reading it.

The “why” question I think is a pretty basic one in all the genres - why is our fiction so damn segregated and how come so many kinds of people get used as safe others (all those historicals full of brutal, barbaric, uncivilized, very different…scottish people) while the question of race can’t be touched directly at all?

I had to stop reading historicals with American settings completely because they were either about Native men who it turned out had gone to Harvard/were actually half white (always their fathers because that’s the IMPORTANT half)/were actually orphaned settler boys). Or they took place in places where slavery definitely existed and yet…slavery did not touch the book at all.

I was SO EXCITED when I saw Roberta Gregory’s A Respectable Trade on the rack at our grocery store, and then by the next week it had completely disappeared. I am sure someone complained. And it wasn’t even really a romance novel, I don’t think - once I finally tracked down a copy I looked at her other stuff and it seems to not be marketed as genre.

Anyway, I think I might try a string of Black-marketed romances. It fits in my “only cheerful books” vow for this year, and they should be pretty easy to come by (though from what is on the shelf, I think our library only stocks Christian romances with Black heroines.) Thanks for the post, and the links & titles in everyone’s comments.

Harlequin Superromance is publishing an interracial romance in a few months—it was originally an Everlasting Love but was moved to Superromance after the line closed.  I don’t remember the name, but it’s by Geri Krotow.

My first Harlequin Spice Brief, No Apologies, was about an interracial couple, as well, but it didn’t dwell on the fact that they were different races.  It was simply a romance with two people of different colors—he was black, she was white. 

  The world is made up of many different kind of couples—I don’t understand why romance shouldn’t be as well.

The IR aspect must also be looked at from the author angle. Like Roz said, and as Monica has been saying for a while, the color of the characters don’t matter, the color of the author does. Even though the world is multicultural, this society is still stratified by “race” (and on that note, religion: don’t see very many devout Muslims or Buddhists or Jewish or even a practicer of a non-World religion as a protagonist), which enables the majority to dictate what is an acceptable fantasy.

The way I see it, non-black authors writing non-white characters is a good thing, but their ability to experience success in ways a black author (or another minority author: I don’t see Jade Lee’s awesome historicals getting as much buzz as some of the all-white historicals that have been released recently) is unable gets my goat. Sort of reminds me of the casting for movies like Pinky, the 1959 version of The Imitation of Life, and various cases of “yellowface” and “redface” in Hollywood: the majority likes dramatizing people of color, but only if they’re assured that behind the “color” is a white person.

For all the declarations that “race” doesn’t matter, I feel this statement is used to keep the romance genre “safe” from anything truly uncomfortable. Which in turn makes me feel that who I am, and what my experiences are as a black woman in America, are unwelcome because it is “uncomfortable.” That I must shield a portion of what has formed my personality in order to maintain the status quo—something I find completely unfair and wrong.

I know there isn’t enough IR, multicultural, etc. romance on the shelves. And you ought to be in Canada to see how much worse it is here. But I do think things have improved a lot in the last few years, and that trend is going to continue.

I’m with Kensington and I honestly haven’t got any sense that they give a damn about the race/culture of the hero and heroine. They’re looking for a good story.

They did say, for my first book (white female, black male) that they had a heck of a time finding a stock photo for the cover. But they ended up with a gorgeous one. It’s romantic and gentle and I love the sense of connection between the man and woman. The back cover blurb doesn’t say a word about the IR aspect, but the cover photo pretty much gets that point across.

When RT BookReviews reviewed hte book, they didn’t label it as IR or include that fact in the review. Nor did they with Hot in Here (which has a racially neutral cover, and again no mention in the blurb). I’ve never had a fan comment negatively on either book (i.e., no-one has said there’s too much or too little of a race issue). I have had women in IR relationships comment that, from their perspective, I got it right. That’s very gratifying for an author. Of course there’s no such thing as a “typical” IR relationship, but it’s wonderful when characters ring true with readers.

Susan www.susanlyons.ca

Trumystique: love what you said.

Yes, race is a social construct, but the context it’s been created and maintained in doesn’t just go away. Race relations don’t just magically get better because we want to hold hands and sing for peace.

I don’t mean to sound completely flippant. (I’m very tired right now). But I grew up in LA and race played a huge part of my childhood. Being white in a white neighborhood had different connotations than when I was white in other neighborhoods. My friends of color all have stories to share, and while most are different some of them have very similiar underlining threads. While each person has a unique set of experiences and personality and history and whatever, race does play a part. (Being white means I get a lot more priviledges than some of my friends). Considering most relations get started on the first impression, the looks (and therefore skin color, while maybe not race- I’ve had friends who look white and friends who are considered something else because they look like another “group”) of a person do add to the overall impression. Just because someone wants to ignore race doesn’t mean they really can.

To get back more on multiracial romances rather than just race, I don’t need or even necessarily want a romance to only talk about racial issues. (Though again, if a book’s well written, gimme gimme). OTOH, I personally (this is all my oh so humble opinion) find it weird when race is brushed over. Not so much in paranormal, but in contemporary or historicals or… And OTOH again, I don’t want to be bashed on the head with it.  To use an example from just Suz Brockmann since someone mentioned her above: Alyssa and Sam’s story line had a huge racial component- Sam’s background, Alyssa’s perception of him as a “texas boy” (and therefore racist and homophobic), etc etc.  For Into the Storm, I felt Lindsey’s race was more forced into the plot rather than flowing, like “hey, don’t forget she’s Japanese folks”. (Still love her story though. But Suz just rocks).

And thanks for the link to Interracial/Multicultural Romance Readers. Looking forward to some suggestions.  And all the titles throughout the comments. And my TBR pile gets bigger…

Also, Naughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman is a really interesting YA novel with a black heroine and a white hero; the difference though is in her world, what it means to be black or white has been reversed. I think it’s the first book in a trilogy, but I’ve only read this one so don’t know how the rest go.  (Uh, warning and slightly spoilerish- while it is a romance, it doesn’t have an HEA).

Black and BW/other male romances are just like white romances in some respects: there are good writers and bad writers; there are stories where class/race is an issue, and some that aren’t (how many boy-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks stories are out there that keep driving the point home over and over?)

I just got back from the Romance Slam Jam, a convention that celebrates black romance.  Black romance authors and bookclubs get together every year (think of it as Celebrate Romance for black folks) to enjoy the world of black romance.  This includes interracial, paranormal, inspirational, and chick lit. (Please don’t ask why this conference exists, because if you don’t realize the answer….)

This year was the 13th year.  THIRTEEN, people.  A conference where my worth as a writer is easily and obviously noted and appreciated.  This conference eases the sting of being shelved differently, marketed differently, given smaller print runs and generally ignored by the larger romance reading community. 

That conference is such a high that I don’t even mind the comments here saying how there’s a dearth of multicultural romances, when I know Arabesque and Genesis romances have been around for far longer than erotic romances (as a named genre.)  When Parker is celebrating its third year in print.  When ebooks by and about multicultural people are being constantly released (ask Bridget Midway and Shiree McCarver).  When Sandra Kitt’s Color of Love is 13 years old.  When ENTWINED DESTINIES by Rosalind Welles, arguably the first black romance, turns 28 this year.

Kimani romance releases four titles a month.  That doesn’t include Tru, Arabesque, or New Spirit.  No idea how many Sepia or Strebor or Dafina or other lines release.  If you can’t find MC (read: black) romances, it’s because you don’t notice them.  They just aren’t on your radar. 

How many of you who “care about the romance, not the race” actually go into the black fiction section and look for romances?

Damn, now I’ve done steamed myself up.  It’s obviously time to go to bed.

Paid61—yeah, wish I got paid what a low level white author gets paid, but I’m not bitter.

This is such a great post. But I’ll have to come back to it. A friend mentioned Loving died today - but we covered that this semester, and today was my con law final and it could have gone better. So.
Crazy how some “old school” things didn’t happen all that long ago.

In general, I don’t care about race/culture differences between the h/h as long as it isn’t the overriding theme of the story. I’m married to a man of a different culture and we’ve had to deal with that. I know my situation wasn’t always a more normal one, like literally being the only non-white person in a town with a pop. of 69, it’s not something I like to rehash for recreational purposes. I also like to be able to relate to the characters. I like learning about different cultures and seeing situations from different viewpoints, but if I don’t understand the characters, then I’m just wasting my time. Some authors are good at getting there no matter the characters cultural differences to the reader, while some fall well short of the mark.

If you can’t find MC (read: black) romances

But see right here you are saying that MC = black and that’s just it. There are other cultures out there. When some people talk about the dearth, they may be referring to the variety of cultures as well as the general availability of interracial romance.

I’ve read a few black romances, my favorite to date is Last Bride Standing by Patricia Anne Phillips which I found at the library in the library completely unsegregated from the rest of the romance books, and like you said, there are good authors and bad authors like anywhere else. I think what keeps most people giving them a try is the belief that they won’t be able to relate to the characters due to cultural differences.

For those who don’t think that the majority of Romance readers want to read interracial or non-white Romance, how would you explain the success of, say, Suzanne Brockmann?  IIRC, Sam and Alyssa’s book was—up to that point—the most highly anticipated of the series, and it marked the transition of the series to hardcover, as well.

Robin, as many others have said, the “race” of the author is more important than the “race” of the characters. You can’t tell me that Brockmann got where she did without the benefits of white privilege in this society. While I can’t say she wouldn’t be successful if she was nonwhite and writing what she does, but she’d have a helluva lot more mountains to climb and hoops to jump through to attain the success she has if she were nonwhite.

You can look at the bookshelves and see the presence of many black authors writing historicals, contemporaries, paranormals, womens fiction—anything comparable to nonblack writers. But do they get the breaks their nonblack peers get? I don’t see readers gushing over Brenda Jackson’s Damaris family, when many nonblack romance writer who have created an extensive family series tend to shoot to fame. If paranormal and erotic romance is so popular, why didn’t the “Creepin” anthology get any love from the readers who gobble up anything paranormal and/or erotic?

If there is no problem, why did H/S’s experiment to place their black authors (from their acquisition of the Arabesque line) in their existing lines garner horribly low sales, AND why did Brenda Jackson become first black author to write for a major H/S line in 2002? If “race” doesn’t matter, where are the Billionaire Jamaicans or Chinese tycoons?

Jilll Sorensen said:

I had a teacher in college who argued that there is no such thing as race.  There are only different cultures, different skin colors.  No biological differences, as the term suggests.

Exactly right.  This is what I was trying to say umpteen posts ago.  It is, as Orangehands said, a social construct, more in some societies than others, and one that has its roots in societies whose status hierarchies were organised very differently from our own.  It is an outmoded concept.

I find it profoundly depressing that it is still even possible to have such an earnest discussion on the subject in 2008.

Exactly right.  This is what I was trying to say umpteen posts ago.  It is, as Orangehands said, a social construct, more in some societies than others, and one that has its roots in societies whose status hierarchies were organised very differently from our own.  It is an outmoded concept.

As an anthropology major, of course I know that “race” is a social construct. But the only people who have the ability to ignore (and benefit from) this stratification are the ones for whom it was created. I wouldn’t go as far to say that it is “outmoded”—outmoded for whom? Race was constructed for some purpose and its purpose is oh so apparent when I do something as simple as say, read a book.

As an author of interracial romance in the big, wide, wonderful world of epublishing, I can tell you that the vast majority of my fiction has interracial relationships, however, I do not make race the issue. Considering the previously mentioned court case (Loving vs. Virginia), in Virginia where I live, interracial relationships are so commonplace now. We’re a large Navy town with lots of races and nationalities here all of the time. So I write what I experience. What I’ve experienced is a melting pot of people who love each other regardless of color.

Now, as far as the big pubs being scared to publish I/R, to a certain extent, you’re right. I remember distinctly pitching one of my I/Rs to a publisher last year. At the time I was on the cover of Romantic Times BOOK Reviews Magazine where I lamented the fact that publishers and agents seemed scared to push an I/R work. After I pitched my story, the publisher got this strange look on her face and asked me if my story was I/R. I told her yes, because I hadn’t made it obvious in my pitch. Honestly, I didn’t think I needed to since race wasn’t the conflict. I just referred to my characters by their jobs. Then she told me that she would have a hard time selling my book. I told her not to worry. That I know how to sell I/R because it’s all I write and I have a pretty good fan-base. Then she said she didn’t know where to shelve my book. I guess the romance shelf was all full. Then she asked me to do something that I’ve never been asked to do in a pitch session before. She asked me to do research on the I/R genre and come back to her with sales numbers BEFORE I send her my story. After she sees the numbers, she’ll let me know if I can submit. Needless to say, I didn’t do any research, nor am I submitting to her publisher.

I’m not sure why publishers are so afraid to publish I/R. Romance is romance is romance. Period.

BridgeT
www.BridgetMidway.com

Robin, where was Suzanne Brockmann’s book shelved? Was she placed in the Negro ghetto with all those dozens of black authors who’ve been writing IR romance for more than a decade? Or was she placed in ROMANCE, with the others of the same genre.

Of course her book sold better than those of black authors who’ve done the same. I think it goes without saying that if readers have to seek out books in some segregated ‘African-American’ section of the book store it’s so not going to happen.

Brockmann, Reinke and any other white woman who chooses to write an IR romance will have a leg-up on any black woman doing the same because their books will be mainstreamed while ours are still segregated. And then people wonder why black authors are hostile when a white woman decides to write an IR book.

As someone still hacking away at ye olde Great American Novel, it’s interesting to come into a discussion and see readers and writers discussing the various issues of interracial/multicultural romance.  It didn’t even occur to me, really, that I was writing anything interracial until I stopped and thought about it. My main character’s Indian heritage is very, very prevalent in her life, and shapes who she is, but it’s not an issue between her and her potential love interests (one is white, the other is Korean). The secondary characters are all interracially involved as well! And it’s mostly just a reflection of my own group of friends here in New York.

So, I’m just trying to get the darn thing finished, but then, given all the discussion here, it hearkens back to my deep fear of “Okay, it’s done, but who would publish it and who would read it?” (Aside from the five friends I’d send it to with pathetic pleas.)  Where do you shelve a Chicklit or romance that not only doesn’t have primary characters who are white, but also doesn’t have primary characters who are black? Who’s going to take that on and market it?  I know Poonam Sharma went through Red Dress Ink, but I can guarantee that my slightly less ambitious Indian heroine bears no resemblance to her more high-powered ones… and therein lies another problem. Does anyone want to read interracial Chicklit about relatively normal, every day people who don’t drink Cosmos and can’t even spell Manolo?

Ugh. It’s scary out there in the publishing world!

Oh, and I must point out that Big Spankable Asses, which you snark so deliciously below, all three stories are interracial. So really, we must ask, are you looking for interracial stories? Or, are you looking for interracial stories written by white women?

I think I’m going to have to state at the beginning of this, that I am not American, and I come from Australia. I don’t feel like I can take part in the conversation because the Romance market is just so different here.

We don’t have “Black” romance here. Therefore, we don’t have any sort of “interracial” section of romance. Books are all lobbed under the one Romance category. Sure, there’s sections in a romance bookstore, but it’s “Historical” and “Paranormal” and “Contemporary”. Race just doesn’t come into it.

Interracial does not mean black/white to me. Not at all, and to me, discussion interracial romance as simply black & white is just that - there’s no middle ground. It should be any two different races. A friend of mine is in an interracial marriage. Her parents are Japanese and moved here in the 1970’s. She’s married a caucasian Australian bloke. Asian/Caucasian, African/Asian, African American/Caucasian, Eurasian/Caucasian, Polynesian/Asian - there’s so many different combinations that it shouldn’t be a racial issue. But there obviously is in Romance publishing, and because there isn’t a demand for it, per say, it’s been sidelined, and only specific interracial matches make it to publishing.

What would you call a romance where the woman in the story is from an interracial couple - her Dad is Japanese & her Mum is Caucasian - and she’s dating a caucasian man. Would that be classed under interracial?? I don’t think it should, but that’s because I view things differently. I think that’s because I’ve grown up in a country which has become significantly interracial itself, and there are so many Australians that are bits & pieces of many different races.

I’d love to see more interracial romance, but they should just be in the section that they belong - contemporary, historical (like Mine Till Midnight), paranormal etc. And it’s shouldn’t be actually be viewed as specifically interracial, but it will be, and it will for a while yet to come.

To the best of my ability to discern, as far as NY is concerned a book is only classified as interracial and segregated into the African American section if one of the characters is black and, the author is black as well. I don’t think Reinke or Brockmann’s books are called interracial, and I know both are readily available in the romance section of any bookstore. However, had they been black, their book would’ve been placed in the African-American section, and doubtlessly no one here would’ve heard of them, either.

Everything else, especially those with a white heroine and a white author are simply called romances and placed in their appropriate category.

And then people wonder why black authors are hostile when a white woman decides to write an IR book.

Maybe I’m dense, but I fail to see, how being hostile to your potential audience is going to help your cause of getting more multicultural romances written by black women read by non-black women.

It sounds just this side of self-defeatist and self-disenfranchising to me.

Maybe I’m dense, but I fail to see, how being hostile to your potential audience is going to help your cause of getting more multicultural romances written by black women read by non-black women.

I’m not hostile towards white readers, I’m hostile towards white writers, who, because they’re white won’t be segregated as my books are. Thus, they’ll sell more books and have more opportunities than I do. Then people will use them as an example (much as they have in this thread) as to how readers have no problem reading IR books. After all they’ve read books by white authors. Never mind that white authors are not segregated and have greater access to readers.

I live in a very diverse area, I have a multi-culti family (I am black with a white husband, I have a Japanese sister in law, my white sister in law adopted a Chinese baby, my one brother-in-law is Italian with a capital Tony Soprano).  When I read books or watch movies or tv, I want to see what I live, namely a lot of different types of people who live, work and love together.  So I am hungry for this to be reflected in my favored genre.

Because of the way the romance industry works, if it takes a Suzanne Brockmann—an established white author—to show that an IR couple’s book can be successful, even clamored for,  among all readers (because really this is what the pubs are looking for, crossover appeal) then I’m all for it. 

I actually think the way she did it was very smart.  She made them a secondary couple in her SEAL 16 series, let their story play out in an arc over several books, she built up the anticipation for Sam and Alyssa very slowly and made them a seriously hot couple.  And good for her, she followed the same model for her gay couple, Jules and Robin.  How many gay romances are written by mainstream romance authors and shelved in mainstream romance sections?  I have to give her props for doing what no other romance author seems to want to do or rather might be too afraid to do.  She is using her clout and her name recognition to write romances that show true diversity. 

Unless there is some massively successful tv show or movie that features an IR couple prominently then you can believe that the romance industry will continue to wring their hands and clutch their pearls over publishing/marketing them.  They need something to make them understand that these books are marketable.  Until then, maybe if established authors like Brockmann continue to write diversity into their books and show that they can sell, it might crack a ceiling and allow stuff to some pouring in.  Look at how the Vampire thing took off.

I must also give Nora Roberts props in her JD Robb In Death series.  One thing that frustrates the crap out of me especially with writers who set their stories in large, urban cities, is that lack of diversity even among their supporting characters.  Nora Roberts seems very cognizant of the fact that in the future many people in her NYC will be mixed race.  She has mutli-racial people, IR couples, black people all peppering her stories.  It is a small thing, but as a detail it is HUGE.

And while I am giving props, I have to say that if you are looking for an AWESOME romance worth FIVE STARS, give Seressia Glass’ No Commitment Required a look.  An the cherry on top, it is an IR romance.

But those white authors are also white readers.  Wouldn’t it be more effective to abandon hostility since negative emotions and attitudes will never get you the desired results?  I cannot believe that any editor (the majority of whom are white in the U.S. as far as I know) who reads this will feel like reading a submission by an author who is ‘hostile’ to them because of their skin color.  And why should they? 

Quite honestly, I consider it racist to assume that you know how that particular person will feel just because of how you perceive other white people have treated other non-white people.

That’s why I called this attitude self-defeatist.

Btw, I’m European, product of a mixed cultural marriage and grew up in a country were black/white relationships do not come fraught with the issues they have in the U.S.

’m not hostile towards white readers, I’m hostile towards white writers, who, because they’re white won’t be segregated as my books are. Thus, they’ll sell more books and have more opportunities than I do. Then people will use them as an example (much as they have in this thread) as to how readers have no problem reading IR books. After all they’ve read books by white authors. Never mind that white authors are not segregated and have greater access to readers.

So, in other words, it’s a white author’s fault they’re white? And they’re to be blamed for a black author’s lack of sales, purely because they’re white?

I find that every bit as offensive as black authors being segregated into a separate section because they’re black. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Seems to me that anybody being hostile toward anyone else because of skin color, no matter what that color is, fosters misunderstandings and bitterness.

Instead of being angry at white authors because they’re white, maybe the approach to take is to work WITH white authors to help convince publishers and bookstore owners to quit shoving all black-centric books into a segregated section in the bookstore. After all, if it’s not in an AA section, how the heck am I going to know it’s a black author? How do I know now? I don’t.

And I realize I’m saying this as a white woman (who is not an author) and I fully realize that discrimination does absolutely still exist in this country.

Maybe I’m being a total idiot but I think everyone, on all sides, needs to quit stereotyping people by race or ethnicity. No matter what that race is. And being mad at a certain section of authors because they happened to be born with pale skin? Wow. Just, wow.

submit word: directly51. As in, I’ll probably be broiled in oil 51 different ways for being this direct.

GrowlyCub, I defy you to find ANYONE who wouldn’t feel hostile about being discriminated against. I further, find it insulting that you would take it upon yourself to tell me how I should feel when you yourself has never experienced the same. It’s both condescending and presumptuous.

I’m working in an industry that practices 1950s style segregation and you turn around and call me racist?!? Of course, that’s how these conversations always go. Rather than call the industry out on their perfidy, it’s much easier to say that the writers have some type of problem.

Interesting that, no one does the same when writers of slash or erotica complain about discrimination. Bloggers circled the wagons and were vehement in their support. But, if I say that people are clearly more comfortable reading IRs by a white writer somehow I’m racist? This is not the first time we’ve had this conversation. Over and over again readers have said they feel uncomfortable reading about black characters. That they can’t ‘relate’ or whathaveyou, yet, if I simply repeat what the readers themselves have said (some in this thread), then I’m racist?

So, in other words, it’s a white author’s fault they’re white? And they’re to be blamed for a black author’s lack of sales, purely because they’re white?

I’m not angry at white authors because they’re white. I’m angry with white authors because they have greater access than I do, yet they refuse to acknowledge it. Let me say it again, they have greater access than I do, and they refuse to acknowledge it. I couldn’t give two good goddamns about their race, but when their race gives them privilege that they refuse to acknowledge goddamn right I’m hostile and rightfully so.

And Robinjn, any number of authors have tried to ‘work with’ white authors on this issue. I have yet to see any take a stand with publishers. Monica Jackson has been talking about this issue for more than five years. Instead of people acknowledging that it’s wrong and trying to do something about, she received exactly the same response that I’m getting. It’s all my fault.

How many white authors have you heard about confronting publishers about this issue? None. Apparently, Smart Bitches is unaware that there are dozens of interracial books being published each year, even when they snark one themselves. Why is there this lack of knowledge? Because the books are segregated. Yet when we point this out, we get browbeat with how racist we are, even when we’re simply repeating what readers have said, some in this very thread.

And how do you know I haven’t, Roslyn?  Actually, how do you know I’m not black or brown or yellow or red or any other of these cutsy labels?  Being non-white isn’t the only reason on this planet why one might be discriminated against.

Matter of fact, I’m part of the same minority as you are, I’m a woman.

But I’m not writing for a game of oneupwomanship on who has it rougher, because after all we are (mostly) women here and we are all in the *same* fricking boat.  We are *all* in the minority even though there are more of us on this planet.

I bet you there’s not ONE woman here who couldn’t share a story about being paid less than her male coworkers, about not being promoted due to a male, of being patted on the head and told the mechanic’s daughter doesn’t know how how to drive either, of being cheated in a business deal, of being belittled for her opinion because she’s a woman and can’t possibly know what she’s talking about in and by a group of male professionals in her field.

The point I’m trying to make and to which you have already closed your mind is that being ‘hostile’ about an issue NEVER leads to a solution.  Being negative is automatically going to defeat your purpose.

I went and read some of Monica’s posts.  I hope she feels better after she posts them.  I can guarantee one thing though, they do nothing to address the inequalities she perceives.  If anything they will confirm the negative stereotypes people have about her.  Ranting never changes anything.

I wish you success in your career.  I hope one day you will understand that we weren’t on opposite sides on this issue.  I have read several multicultural books by black authors.  Some I didn’t relate to at all, some I did relate to so well I wanted to be the black heroine (Lena Andrews writes great stuff).  It’s not the skin color of the author who decided that.  It was the author’s writing skills and the fact that their stories interested me.

make that ‘Lena Matthews and Liz Andrews’

Robinjn, not because they happen to have pale skin…because they’ve been rewarded for having that pale skin AND not stood up for the Black authors who are having to jump through extra hoops.

You can’t help it if you got ahead because the publishers and agents were disqualifying a whole bunch of your competitors before they left the starting gate, but you can use whatever influence you have - as a reader, as a writer, as a buyer, as a librarian or library user - to get it changed. Or at the very least not minimize people’s concerns when they bring it up.

I’ll tell you right now I go to a library where the vast majority of patrons are African immigrant or African American, and there are usually about 1/2 a shelf of AA-marketed romances on the shelf (under 4-5 shelves of romances with white H/H) and 90% of them appear to be inspirationals. My project for today is to check out the catalog and see if that’s because that’s all there are, or because all the other ones are always checked out, and request a bunch of books to check out or ask that they be ordered (thank you to everyone who name dropped authors and publishers, btw.)

*Sigh* 19 hours of an open flowing dialogue before things got heated and uncomfortable.
I’m not saying that anyone’s anger isn’t 100% valid. I’m just sad that the conversation has taken the turn that it has now and that some of that open dialogue will now be silenced.

GrowlyCub, when they start placing books in bookstores based on the gender of the author as opposed to the author, your analogy may well be apt, until then, it’s simply not applicable.

If books by white women, regardless of genre, were placed in a segregated ‘White Women’s’ area, which most readers don’t even know about, people would be burning the damned stores down. Hostility? Please. Why is it that anger and hostility is perfectly acceptable when white women are expressing, yet somehow it becomes ‘unacceptable and non-productive’ when it comes from a black woman? I’ve seen anger and hostility on these blogs directed at everything from plagiarism to Amazon.com, and that’s perfectly okay. But when black women are angry because we’re being discriminated against suddenly it’s ‘non-productive.’

Could it be that it makes you uncomfortable because you yourself are a beneficiary of that white privilege? Ferret-gate, Savage-gate, Reba-gate, et al are causes you can circle the wagons around because you don’t benefit from them. But the issue of race discrimination makes you uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that many readers don’t want to read the books because *horrors* there might actually be talk about race in them. I might have to think about my own privilege. Never mind that few if any have any ‘racial issues,’ but readers don’t dare risk it. Incest, child abuse, spousal abuse, sex with shifters even when they’re still wolves, hell, even sex with trees, bring it on. Race? OHMIGOD the humanity.

Yet, when we dare mention this fact, we’re called on OUR racism? OHMIGOD the irony.

“I had a teacher in college who argued that there is no such thing as race.  There are only different cultures, different skin colors.  No biological differences, as the term suggests.”

This is true.

“It is an outmoded concept.”

This is not.  It is an expression of the privilege of “colorblindness,” the operative word here being “privilege.” Would that it were outmoded, but sadly, some of us still have to live with it constantly.  (And this would refer to any dichotomy where one group vastly outnumbers another so as to claim the title “mainstream”—not just the “white, black (oh, yeah, and some other people, subcategories?  What subcategories?” dynamic of the United States.)

I’ve been a copyeditor for a while (don’t go by my posts; the Internet is a break that keeps me from going psycho) and for some time I thought maybe “black” romances (particularly of the “Urban Lit” variety) sold poorly because they were BAD.  Mary Sue heroines whose clothing did nothing but “display their curves to perfection,” bad grasp of sentence structure, telling instead of showing—and an undercurrent of misogyny and just plain meanness—all women who are not the heroine are slutty manchasers in too-skimpy clothing, bad weaves and too much jewelry, but when the heroine dons a low-plunging micromini it “hugs” her damn “curves, displaying them to perfection”—and of course all her hair is her own, and flows down her back in soft curls at all times. The hero goes to the beach in a THONG and then considers the women who approach him there sluts for wearing a two-piece.  Men who are not the hero are sexually dysfunctional “deviants” who are “on the down low” or incapable of functioning without stilettos on, or some nonsense.  (These are examples that stand out in my mind, but they are far from rare.) In one of the worst, I was meant to sympathize with a hero who committed massive tax fraud and had a horribly ostentatious (swimming pool in bedroom, five gold showerheads) mansion outside of the US—I was supposed to feel him because he tipped a worker twenty bucks, and because he was “emasculated by white society.”  Eh!?

I had to take a hiatus from proofing these because they actively made me angry, as well as embarrassed.

But then I recently picked up a Danielle Steele, and she was doing the same crap—Mary Sues of perfection so much more pure and awesome than the nasty nasties around them, telling instead of showing—it actually made me feel a lot BETTER…before I started to feel terrible all over again.

Okay, that became ranty. I don’t know what my point is here, except that I’d like to see more quality all around.

(Heh.  “shown94”  seems almost on-topic!)

::dusts off the Race Wank Bingo card and places a marker on the spot that says ‘white privilege’::

sigh.

I think the question I want to ask you Roslyn is, where does your anger and hostility get you? What rewards do you reap from it beyond a perfectly justifiable sense of knowing you’re right? And it’s an honest question. There’s absolutely no doubt that I cannot relate to how you have to deal with life as a black woman. I’m not black. I can talk about discrimination against women, but not black women.

But all that aside, the honest question is, does getting hostile and berating people for not understanding you get you what you want? Do you feel it will help your cause? Or does it have a danger of further marginalizing you? (OMG, she’s a militant, we don’t want to have to deal with her!)

There are a lot of things I get truly angry about (as a dog person, the huge number of crappy breeders out there are at the top of my list). But I’ve learned through the years that getting angry can be productive in the short term, it can give me a big adrenaline boost and make me feel better. But in the long term, it’s destructive, not only to me personally but to the cause I happen to be angry about. Screaming at people about how wrong they are just isn’t nearly as effective in the long run as trying to befriend them and find a few things you agree on, then swaying them to your pov through empathy and understanding.

And honestly, I do think there’s a place where books by women are segregated. It’s called the romance section.

“But those white authors are also white readers.  Wouldn’t it be more effective to abandon hostility since negative emotions and attitudes will never get you the desired results?  I cannot believe that any editor (the majority of whom are white in the U.S. as far as I know) who reads this will feel like reading a submission by an author who is ‘hostile’ to them because of their skin color.  And why should they? “

LOL —oh hon, you don’t TELL people you’re hostile.  You admit it semi-anonymously in an Internet rant.  In real life you internalize and smile while your stomach ulcers fester.  C’est la vie.  ;-)

And honestly, I do think there’s a place where books by women are segregated. It’s called the romance section.

That’s not a genre, it’s a gender. Again, not applicable.

...where does your anger and hostility get you?

And again, I ask the question, why isn’t this question asked in regard to the numerous issues that come up in Romancelandia every week? No one asked if anger and hostility benefitted those angered over Ferret-gate. No one is asking now if anger is benefitting those upset at RT. Yet, somehow, I the person being discriminated against am queried as to the validity and benefit of my anger. Have you stopped to ask yourself why you would ask me such a question?

The fact of the matter is, I don’t discuss this issue all that much except with other black authors, because I’ve learned over the years that the result will always be the same. Someone actually did a flow chart of the typical reaction when racism and discrimination is mentioned. First you have denial. “Oh no, that can’t be true. I bought books by Brockmann.” Never mind that Brockmann isn’t segregated and she introduced those characters with the same care one might give to a truck filled fertilizer and gasoline.

Then there’s, “Well, if they weren’t so hostile, I might care about their cause.” Never mind that plenty of folks far more gentle than myself have made the same complaints with similar results. I don’t care how delicately you introduce the topic of privilege many whites will respond with hostility. Yet, somehow they’re hostility is okay, and mine is ‘unproductive.’

You speak of my anger and hostility as if it’s something I purchased at Bloomies last week. I would much rather not feel them because frankly, it doesn’t feel good. But I defy you to find anyone who wouldn’t be angry and hostile that another group receives privileges and benefits that they don’t, and when they complain about it they’re told their complaints are ‘unproductive.’

This whole conversation got sidetracked because someone dare questioned my right to feel hostile towards white writers whose books are mainstreamed while mine are ghettoized. Apparently, I’m supposed to just ignore the blatant hypocrisy of people claiming that they have no problem reading an IR because after all, they ‘loved’ Sam and Alyssa. Yet, somehow they failed to notice that black authors have been writing IR stories for more than a decade with nothing more than crickets as a response.

I think my last post might have been unclear in its attempt at humor.  What I’m getting at is, you can’t tell people how to feel.  Roslyn points out a situation in the publishing world that makes her feel bad.  She didn’t say she was out throwing rotten eggs at people.  Again, you can admonish people on their actions, but you cannot tell people what uncontrollable feelings are okay or not okay with you.  (At least, not in such a way that it matters, or has any effect, unless your end-goal is to actually exacerbate those feelings.) ESPECIALLY when we are all acknowledging that the angrymaking situation is real, does in fact exist, and is in fact a problem.

(“similar35”!  Yes!  We are all similar!  Can’t we all just get along…. *laments*)

That’s not a genre, it’s a gender. Again, not applicable.

Of course I meant, that’s a genre, not a gender. Now, if it was called ‘White Women’s Romances,’ which ostensibly it is, then it would be applicable.

LOL —oh hon, you don’t TELL people you’re hostile.  You admit it semi-anonymously in an Internet rant.  In real life you internalize and smile while your stomach ulcers fester.  C’est la vie.  ;-)

Precisely.

Lizziebea - I have to side with you here being that I’m a misplaced Kiwi. I get sick and tired of this same argument, over and over again, just because people tend to forget that there is a big wide world out there outside of the borders of the USA. The world is a huge melting pot of different cultures, not just Americans with black or white skin colours.

I’ll read anything romance. Skin colour has never been an issue for me and I could care less if the author is black, white or green with purple polka dots (although I’d suggests you get the polka dots looked at). And for what it’s worth, I’m heartily against segregating books because of their authors skin colour - AA as a genre, no different than erotic/paranormal/historical I have no problem with—but this is, in the majority, an American book store issue.

Roselyn - How about instead of working into a lather about ‘how you white authors have got it better’ (that is what I garner from a few of your posts—btw, is there some secret form from publishers that asks what your skin colour is?Unless your meeting face to face, how would they know?) how about using this venue to put a positive spin on things. Give name and titles, give recommendations on books, hell, pimp your own. Show your own ‘genre’ to its best, instead of dragging into the quagmire of the great American race divide. Own your work with pride for what you, as an author have achieved, not what you think you haven’t because you have black skin. Instead of readers walking away from this blog with a list of twenty odd books to add to their TBR pile, they are walking away with a sour taste in their mouths and no impetus to go and buy.

The internet is a great thing, it lets anyone around the world find out about all sorts of wonderful things. It lets anyone around the world, whether they be black, white, asian, latin etc purchase my books. And it also lets anyone around see how much of ass an author can be and choose not to let their fingers do the walking and hit the buy button. Every single author, as a business person has to remember that and make the most of any opportunity thrown their way.

And to preach what I speak - from my personal reading pile Bridget Midway has some good eBooks out with a specifically black/white theme as does Lena Matthews.

Anne, I did exactly that. I mentioned my book. I even mentioned a book I have upcoming from an epublisher this summer.  I mentioned several other books and authors.  I pointed out that a book that’s been snarked on this forum is also an IR book. I gave people a link to an MSN group where they could find other readers of IR/MC romances. Other posters did the same. If people leave this thread with a sour taste in their mouth instead of the same righteous anger they’ve directed towards any number of other issues in Romancelandia, that’s their issue not mine.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me why my anger is questionable, yet the anger that’s regularly posted on various blogs is not. Why is my anger ‘unproductive,’ yet people getting pissed of at RT is not? Anyone care to address that?

And again, I ask the question, why isn’t this question asked in regard to the numerous issues that come up in Romancelandia every week? No one asked if anger and hostility benefitted those angered over Ferret-gate. No one is asking now if anger is benefitting those upset at RT.

Actually yeah, they did. Some people went over the top in both situations and in both situations were told that the kind of reaction they were having wasn’t productive. In fact, the whole contributing to ferrets was a way of turning a negative and unproductive rant into something positive and productive.

And it also lets anyone around see how much of ass an author can be and choose not to let their fingers do the walking and hit the buy button.

Could you explain why my righteous anger is seen as ‘being an ass?’ I haven’t stalked anyone or threatened their children. I’ve merely pointed out that there’s is discrimination going on. A fact that people have been talking about for more than five years now. In what way is that ‘being an ass,’ and somehow justifies someone not buying my book?

”[...] not what you think you haven’t because you have black skin.”

This is a trend, I’m noticing of late, of non-Americans insisting that blacks in America not having any real problems. I wonder where this comes from.  (I suspect it’s because blacks in the U.S. media are rarely portrayed as anything but scary, and based on my travels, this is the only face I see us showing.  I’m extremely troubled by it, but that’s a tangent.)

At any rate, Roslyn is talking about the U.S. publishing industry because that is the one she has to deal with. Why on earth is this such a problem? She (we) cannot address the New Zealand or European or East Asian or what have you marketing climate because we have no interaction with it or influence upon it.  But how is the fact that these disparate world markets have triumphed over the problems that we face here (or never experienced them, or experienced completely different problems) tsupposed to help Roslyn?  I mean, it’s all very encouraging to hear about, but how is “Shut up and suppress your valid feelings” any more productive than “This publishing reality that I have to live with makes me angry”?

Is it that we’re all just sick of hearing about it?  In which case I’d submit that if it became different, then we wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore?

Again, we are talking about FEELINGS.  Not REVOLUTION IN THE STREETS. 

Unless this is strictly a “let’s plan viable courses of action and implement them in ten steps” comm, with absolutely no room for “what are your feelings, perceptions and opinions.”

In fact, the whole contributing to ferrets was a way of turning a negative and unproductive rant into something positive and productive.

So where’s our fundraiser? (Metaphorically speaking, of course) If you’re so concerned about the negativity that I and others like me have generated, why in five years hasn’t anyone started a letter writing campaign, a boycott or something to that effect? Someone mentioned earlier that we should try to work with white authors on the issue. I’m still waiting to hear from a white author who has any interest in the same. After all, it has been five years. Ferret-gate took, what a few days? Yet again *crickets*. I’m castigated for being hostile, yet I don’t see anyone else being challenged on their absolute lack of interest. Injustice is going on, dozens of authors are being disenfranchised, yet the only person being called racist in this thread is me. Isn’t that funny?

...is there some secret form from publishers that asks what your skin colour is?Unless your meeting face to face, how would they know?

Authors have been asked their race. Black writers have been told that they must write black characters or they won’t be published. Black writers have been told to ‘play up’ the racial aspect of their books so that they better fit into the marketing niche.

At least one author who is black, but wrote white characters was told to change the race of the characters or she wouldn’t be published, despite having a contract. Google Millennia Black if you want to learn more about her lawsuit against Penguin.

Publishers know we’re black because for the most part there are only two publishers that regularly publish IR romances and they’re both black publishers. That’s Parker and Genesis. Most of the writers submitting to (or even knowing about) those publishers are black with a few exceptions.

Writers are encouraged to attend conferences where they have an opportunity for a face-to-face meeting with editors. Obviously, this is better than your manuscript landing in the slush pile. So yes, at some point, most authors who are published will have face-to-face interaction with their publisher.

Oh sorry:

(that is what I garner from a few of your posts—btw, is there some secret form from publishers that asks what your skin colour is?Unless your meeting face to face, how would they know?)

Generally one does meet face to face, at least with one’s agent.  And the agent is pretty integral to the direction marketing takes. And we have author photos.  Even if the face-to-face thing doesn’t happen, I can’t imaging the coy acrobatics one would need to go through to conceal it.  Seems stressful. 

(Interestingly enough, unlike much of the world, we don’t submit photos on our resumes (curriculum vitae).  I’ve always found that interesting.)

I am troubled by the underlying suggestion, though, that to get anywhere (in the U.S.) one must hide one’s race.  (Or pretend that it has no influence one the work one produces?)

“imagine”!! Sorry!  :-) *turns off internal editor*

I’m hostile towards white writers, who, because they’re white won’t be segregated as my books are. Thus, they’ll sell more books and have more opportunities than I do.

I’ve heard other African-American authors say the opposite.  By having their books in a separate section, their readers (who are predominately AA) know where to find them, and they think they sell more books that way.

I’m not saying the segregation is fair.  I probably wouldn’t want my books put in some little-known “multicultural” section.

Could you explain why my righteous anger is seen as ‘being an ass?’ I haven’t stalked anyone or threatened their children. I’ve merely pointed out that there’s is discrimination going on. A fact that people have been talking about for more than five years now. In what way is that ‘being an ass,’ and somehow justifies someone not buying my book?

I was referring not specifically to you, but to the ‘authors behaving badly’ potential. For me, authors behaving badly is gender/race/culture neutral.

Race discrimination cuts both ways. In one breath you said AA authors are discriminated against and segregated in USA book stores - an issue I can heartily get behind supporting as wrong. But then in the next you rail against other authors because they are white—sorry, but slap me in the face with a wet fish, then still expect me to support your cause? It ain’t going to happen, no matter what the cause/race/creed or colour.

I currently live in America, yes, but only for the last 6yrs. I do not have the same preconceptions as those raised in the USA and that was the point I was trying to make—Not every author, and not every publisher, and not every editor is American. Neither is every reader. Yet you slap all of us with that same you’re-white wet fish.

Wait wait wait. Why is Roslyn getting the third degree? She came here to discuss a topic and brought up really pertinent issues; and did it well, with logic, and directness. Rather than berating her for her feelings, we should be using that as a springboard for further discussion. Because she’s right about the color of the author issue. We shouldn’t be mad at her for noticing that. We should be discussing how to change that. For everyone here that jumped all over here for being mad and disappointed and tired; that’s pretty patronizing. Hell, I’m white and I feel patronized.  If this were a discussion of feminism, and some guy came over here and patted our heads and said that our perceived inequality was all in our heads and was a social construct that was outdated and it didn’t really exist…would you accept that?! Um..no. We’d be all over his ass and for good reason.

Do angry posts make one uncomfortable? hell yeah! No one likes to think they’ve been, perhaps inadvertantly, part of group that has been discriminating another (well, Ok, I don’t; I shouldn’t speak for others). But the reality is: if you don’t ask yourself whether it’s happening, chances are good it is, and that you are participating. Do you think Men came right out and said they’de been oppressing women for thousands of years? Um..no. In fact, men still oppress women and they HATE HATE HATE to be reminded of that fact. I haven’t seen a man stand up for female oppression EVER. Does it make me hate men? Oh, my, no. I love men. Do black women hate white women? I wouldn’t think so. Do black women hate the privilages that come by just being white. yup. And they should. We all should.

So..can we get rid of that hateration and get back to the discussion; because I think it’s a really important subject that we shouldn’t just shoo away because it makes us uncomfortable.

-Randi

But then in the next you rail against other authors because they are white—sorry, but slap me in the face with a wet fish, then still expect me to support your cause?

She’s not railing against the authors.  She’s expressing resentment of unfair privilege and annoyance with those who enjoy the privilege but won’t admit it (both parts of that last bit are necessary to the equation—“have the desired thing” and “won’t admit to it.”)

She is not categorically accusing every single white author who ever wrote an IR of being a terrible person—she is expressing her desire to enjoy the same levels of success for doing the same thing, her anger at the system that doesn’t allow this, and her frustration with those who don’t admit the system exists.

Those who don’t find themselves in any of the above categories don’t need to feel “attacked” by anything she says.

“the system” meaning “The mainstream publishing industry of the United States of America and no other country that I am qualified to discuss”—for the record.

(Aw.  “friends21”.  I love these.)

Guys,

Rosyln has a valid point. *sighs* Negating what she’s saying by using the hostility gets you nothing, doesn’t work. And it shouldn’t.

She has an issue to be angry about, and she’s angry. It’s really sad she can’t bring up the issue without others adding oh, but… as a way to prove it not so.

I’ve written interspecies, interracial, intersexed. And for me it is about the two characters and their attraction, growing emotions. Other side issues add to the conflict and plot, but only 1 story I wrote dealt largely with the inter, and that was Kitten. One character being a were tiger was a large driving force for prejudice in the book.

Black writers have been told that they must write black characters or they won’t be published. Black writers have been told to ‘play up’ the racial aspect of their books so that they better fit into the marketing niche.

This actually makes me think of a discussion I had in one of my reading groups.  We were talking about historical romance novels and why, out of all the times and events in history, the vast majority of novels written take place during a 300 year period and are set either in England, Ireland or Scotland?

I had visions of an author submitting her work set in Ancient Egypt or in Czarist Russia and the publisher saying “This is so wonderfully written, the characters just leap off the page and the love story is just beautiful.  Now just a few changes…can you make the heroine a feisty red-head?  And can you make the hero a Duke who is also a Spy? And can you change the Russian Revolution to The Napoleonic War?  Other than those few things, it’s perfect!”

She’s not railing against the authors.  She’s expressing resentment of unfair privilege and annoyance with those who enjoy the privilege but won’t admit it (both parts of that last bit are necessary to the equation—“have the desired thing” and “won’t admit to it.”)

She is not categorically accusing every single white author who ever wrote an IR of being a terrible person

Actually, the way Rosyln expressed herself said exactly that. I hate white authors because they’re white. See her words again, below.

I’m hostile towards white writers, who, because they’re white won’t be segregated as my books are. Thus, they’ll sell more books and have more opportunities than I do.

To me, that’s a pretty blanket accusation against all white writers, period. That’s sure the way I took it and it’s why, I think, she’s gotten some backlash. If she had expressed herself more fully in that post I think a lot fewer people (including me) would have said anything.

And I haven’t even said Roslyn doesn’t have a right to be angry, my question was whether it would really advance her cause. I don’t think it does.

But then again, I think this whole thread is a pretty pointed look at why here in the U.S. people shy away from IR. Look at the can of worms we’ve opened. People have gotten angry and hurt and we’re being polarized, sometimes by being shoved in a direction we might not even want to go. As an example I bet Roslyn thinks I’m on the “white author” side when really I’m not. I’m just doing like a lot of people, trying to understand and think through the situation.

Robin, where was Suzanne Brockmann’s book shelved? Was she placed in the Negro ghetto with all those dozens of black authors who’ve been writing IR romance for more than a decade? Or was she placed in ROMANCE, with the others of the same genre.

Of course her book sold better than those of black authors who’ve done the same. I think it goes without saying that if readers have to seek out books in some segregated ‘African-American’ section of the book store it’s so not going to happen.

I agree with you here, Roslyn.

The one part of this I object to is the assertion that white readers don’t want to read interracial Romance.  Now you may argue that they only want to read interracial Romance written by white women, but I would respond that it’s primarily (at least in terms of print books) white authors who have, as you say, had their IR book integrated and therefore not marked as “other” in that supplemental way.  That is, if Romance were simply integrated in terms of the race of authors and the race of characters, all kinds of women would be reading all kinds of Romance.  In other words, I think the segregation works on two (at least) levels:  it marginalizes the black author and marks her books as “different” than the rest of Romance.  I know that doesn’t mean that ALL white readers want IR books, but by the same token, I just don’t think the reverse is true, either (that white readers don’t want to read it, or only want to read a certain version of it).  And let me tell you; I would NEVER want AA/IR Romance to mainstream in the same way as so-called Native American and Sheikh Romances—as, in other words, the fetishized exotic.

Bottom line:  I think readers need to tell their local bookstores that they don’t want the segregation.  They need to write publishers and let them know that they want more IR/racially diverse books.  I believe that reviewing AA/IR books on the blogs can make a difference, too.  For so many Romances, readers don’t even know what the author looks like, but publishers overtly draw reader’s attention to the race of black authors, and while that shouldn’t matter, it obviously does, and in a way that marks books as separate and unequal.  One of the reasons I think this is such a factor is that I know of an AA author who crossed over from ebooks to a major NY publisher (not an AA imprint), and who wrote IR ebooks, and now writes similar books for the print pub.  I don’t know how many people are aware of her race, but she seems to have had no problem crossing over, in large part, I believe, because she’s marketed as Romance, pure and simple.  Not hiding the race question, in other words, just not making is *an issue*.

As for ebooks, I believe that they have the potential to help change the landscape for print publishing of IR books, because they provide a way for NY pubs to see that all kinds of readers appreciate diverse Romance (isn’t this what happened with erotic Romance?).  I know it’s long past due, and I understand the frustration and the anger, but I do think things are changing, and that the openness of many in the online Romance community to racially diverse Romance is a mark of this change.  Which is why I also understand why readers who have no problem with IR books feel a little blasted when all that hostility comes their way.

“Actually, the way Rosyln expressed herself said exactly that. I hate white authors because they’re white. See her words again, below.”

All right, I’m looking.

” I’m hostile towards white writers, who, because they’re white won’t be segregated as my books are. Thus, they’ll sell more books and have more opportunities than I do.

To me, that’s a pretty blanket accusation against all white writers, period. That’s sure the way I took it and it’s why, I think, she’s gotten some backlash. If she had expressed herself more fully in that post I think a lot fewer people (including me) would have said anything.”

No, it isn’t. I can see where this is coming from?  But no, “hostile” does not equal “hate” by any means Siblings who’d defend each other to the death harbor hostilities toward one another.  I’ve been “hostile” toward my mom, in my teen years.

Perhaps if she had said “jealous” it might have been clearer, or less of a piquant point?  But probably not as accurate.  “Jealous” carries a far more pathetic connotation.

A lot of valid points have been made by a lot of people. One of the things I like most about epublishing is that it’s opening a lot of doors for writers. There you’re not judged by the color of your skin but strictly the quality and/or marketability of your work. If your story won’t sell to one, simply try another. Each epub has a house-style, a market they aggressively go after and just because your book doesn’t fit their ‘style,’ doesn’t mean it isn’t any good.

Another point that was made is that authors shy away from writing about other cultures for fear of not doing them justice. As an author wanting to create a really 3-dimensional character, I can’t just give her asian (black, latino, greek) features and hope it goes over well. She has to have ‘ethnic flavor’ in order to round her out, or the reader needs to know why.

For example, if my h/h are super rich, I don’t expect them to behave in a typical manner. Ditto, military. Why? Because those are cultures I don’t understand and am not familiar with, so I can’t take issue if they are misrepresented.  But if you’re writing about me (a black southern female in my economic group), I expect there to be something about the heroine I can relate to, and I think this is why a lot of authors shy away.  And research is not always the answer because we ALL know how the media misrepresents people and things, and that includes the internet.

Okay Ladies…..take a breather. You’re justified in your feelings Roz and Seressia. But let’s offer these ladies the opportunity themselves to get hooked on books by AA authors then later find out that the series will never be finished because even though they….wait….I’m not going to add fuel to this fire. Instead, I’m going to offer a booklist of great books…some will have race as a factor…so you all will have to deal with it. We do. but they’re all great books that members of our board have read and loved.

So here goes…(I’m going to type until I run out of titles and hopefully if I miss some, someone else will fill in the gaps)...

Big Spankable Asses by Kimberly Kaye Terry, Angie Daniels and Lisa G. Riley.

At Last by Lisa G. Riley (There’s a sequel and right now, the title escapes me. But I still love you Lisa!)

No Committment Required by Seressia Glass
Three Wishes by S. Glass

The Color of Trouble by Dyanne Davis…This book one Best New Author when it was released.
Many Shades of Grey by D. Davis
Let’s Get It On by D. Davis
Two Sides To Every Story by D. Davis

Again by Sharon Cullars
The Object of Love by Sharon Cullars

Loves Redemption by Kimberly Kaye Terry
Just Like Candy by K K Terry

Ebony Angel by Deatri King-Bey

Against The Wind by Gwynne Forester

Being Plumbville by Savannah J Frierson

Rockstar by Rozlyn Hardy Holcomb - EXCELLENT BOOK!!!! Had to tell myself I couldn’t read it again…and again…and again.

Crush by Crystal Hubbard

Anything at all by Bridget Midway, Shiree McCarver, Aliyah Burke and Marie Rochelle

The Starletta Duvall Series by Judith Levin Smith.

Kyra Davis has a mystery series out...quite funny, everyone will love it…that features a bi-racial heroine in an IR relationship.

The Politics of Love by Giselle Carmichael

50% of Sandra Kitt’s entire catalogue of books and she’s FABULOUS! EVERYONE should read her immediately.

Fact is ladies, I know I’m forgetting a ton of authors and books. In fact, most of the authors listed above have other IR books.

Oh….L.A. Banks and F. D. Davis both have Vampire series that everyone should check out.

But read these books…if you can find them….then give us your honest and well informed opinion about “Writing Black in a White Industry.”

But also, as a reader, I can say, that yelling at the reader that I should be doing something, more something, what the crap is wrong with my because I’m sitting on my tuffet, eating my curds and whey? Pretty damn alienating.

I think what very often happens in these discussions is that you have a majority of readers saying, ‘yes, we are open to reading more racially and culturally diverse books,’ and some authors who are saying, ‘hey looked at how f*ed up the system is; white authors . . . . , white readers . . . .’ to which the readers feel like, ‘hey, why are you blaming me—I WANT to read these books, I AM reading these books.’ And the authors are trying to explain how they’ve been marginalized and how other readers have made it clear that they DON’T want to read their books, and white readers and authors just don’t understand.’ So you end up with the talking past thing, where the AA author(s) who speak out feel attacked and the readers feel attacked, even though, in the main, they really all agreed on one really salient point:  that good Romance is good Romance and readers want as much variety as possible.  If we could focus on that, and on how we have some common ground there, I think we could make some serious progress as a community united in the love of Romance.  But I honestly don’t know what it’s going to take to get there, how long it’s going to take to get past the MUTUAL feeling of disrespect.

Actually, the way Rosyln expressed herself said exactly that. I hate white authors because they’re white. See her words again, below.

How did you translate my feeling hostile towards white authors to I hate white authors because they’re white? I never said or even implied such a thing. Indeed, I made it clear that I feel hostile towards them because they receive privilege and fail to acknowledge it. Further, their success is used to bludgeon black authors because then readers can claim that they have no problem with IRs because Brockmann was so successful. Totally ignoring the fact that Brockmann, by dint of being white is not ghettoized.

But also, as a reader, I can say, that yelling at the reader that I should be doing something, more something, what the crap is wrong with my because I’m sitting on my tuffet, eating my curds and whey? Pretty damn alienating.

Actually, Sara, I haven’t yelled at anyone. I’ve been online for 10 years, and it’s my understanding that yelling is signified by allcaps. I haven’t allcapped anyone. Indeed, I didn’t ask about activism until people started telling me how pointless and useless my anger is. I think it’s reasonable to ask people if they think my response is useless, what then is their response to the injustice?

I just don’t think the reverse is true, either (that white readers don’t want to read it, or only want to read a certain version of it).

I can only tell you what white readers have said. Over the five years we’ve had this discussion we’ve been told by white readers that they feel they ‘can’t relate’ to ‘those books.’ Now, call me crazy, but given that Brockmann’s book was a bestseller I can only surmise that IRs become ‘those books’ only when the author is black.

Clearly given the premise of this post, a sizable percentage of the romance reading audience was unaware that there’s a plethora of IR romances written by black women. So yes, the notion of the ‘forbidden other’ reigns supreme. IRs written by a white woman=safe. IRs written by a black woman=those books.

I personally hate the “African-American Interest” section in bookstores (unless it actually refers to books on history and sociology).  My reaction (avoidance) is visceral.  (Full disclosure—I am a black woman, although I tend to refer to myself as Caribbean-American, which opens other cans of fun worms.)

Oooooo!  Quote tags!  I was not aware of quote tags!  Here we go!!

Authors have been asked their race. Black writers have been told that they must write black characters or they won’t be published. Black writers have been told to ‘play up’ the racial aspect of their books so that they better fit into the marketing niche.

(At least one author who is black, but wrote white characters was told to change the race of the characters or she wouldn’t be published, despite having a contract. Google Millennia Black if you want to learn more about her lawsuit against Penguin.

This is one thing that really scares me, always has, and is a major part of what keeps me writing sci fi.  (Well, that and the fact that I LIKE sci-fi. :-D)  But, I mean, think about it.  LA Banks is just listed by her name under Sci Fi/Fantasy for her Vampire Huntress books (under Horror in some smaller stores).  But when she’s writing romance as Leslie Esdaile Banks, where is she shelved?

(I wonder if it’s terribly difficult for a Yank author to get published in the U.K. or somewhere first?  I never see Mike Gayle—“My Legendary Girlfriend” et cetera—shelved under “Black Interest” in Borders or B&N;.  He’s right in there with mainstream lit, author photo and all. Okay, he’s a guy, and that’s different, but then, Eric Jerome Dickey’s a guy too.)

I wonder why others aren’t as angry. You’ve been told that other authors are treated way differently than you are. They are shelved off in another zone away from the romance section white writers get shelved in. Some authors prefer it, some don’t like it at all.

Some people are upset because another person expressed their honest feelings about a situation. Being hostile towards white authors because they have better privilege isn’t a blanket accusation against all white authors. It’s bitching about a fricking situation that hurts the poster of those words.

justice91 How appropriate.

I guess the other question is: if you’re going to write an interracial couple, do you have to tackle the “issue”, or can they just be together?

on the “where does your anger and hostility get you?” counterpoint -  unfortunately, it seems a reference to the unapologetic mexican glosario is in order here. here’s a description of that tactic:

“The Drowning Maestro” - A Wite-Magik Attak that pretends to be utterly concerned with the brown person’s tone. It matters not that the brown person might be speaking passionately of hurts they have suffered their entire life, hurts they suffer as they speak, starving children, raped women or murdered millions. The person hurling the Wite-Magik Attak fixates upon the TONE of the complaint or insight. Because what really bothers them is that a brown person has the nerve to speak with such self-confidence and passion. This, in fact, scares them. If it weren’t such a demeaning move when you have something you feel is important to say, this Attak would be downright comical. Just picture a conductor waving his wand as he plummets to the bottom of a darkening sea.

• ARROGANT mexican
• SHRILL woman
• UPPITY negro
• WRONG SIDE OF THE BED
• CRYBABY
• CONFRONTATIONAL
• CHIP ON YOUR SHOULDER
• LEADING FROM YOUR CHIN
• MEAN

NOTE: This Attak often comes with a carrot. In other words, what is really desired is for the brown person to admit the desired heirarchy, to get “back in place.” To achieve this, the power-holding person will often criticize the tone of the desired subjugate while making it clear that a withheld reward might come their way if they submit to the invisible pecking order being violated.

• “We’d admit about your point if you presented it nicer.”
• “I have this work I was going to throw your way, is there a problem?”
• “People would listen to your complaint if you weren’t so loud.”
• “If you want people to care about this, you should learn to be smoother.”

yeah… to anyone who gets the urge to use this type of “argument” to prove you’re really not being racist and the person you’re addressing is overreacting? don’t. you’re proving the opposite.

I wonder about this, actually:

They are shelved off in another zone away from the romance section white writers get shelved in. Some authors prefer it, some don’t like it at all.

I’m no industry expert, so I’d love to know—why would an author prefer such a thing?  If blacks are only 11 percent of the U.S. population, it seems to me that restricting a book to a dusty back-wall section of the store, based on race, is shooting oneself unnecessarily in the foot (in a way that restricting a book based on genre simply is not, because non-majority people read books aimed at the majority, or aimed at other people’s minorities).  I’ve never seen another race cordoned off like this in bookstores.  Language groups, mainly, but that makes sense.  Not only is it “excluding the majority/whites”—it’s excluding everyone who is not part of that 11 percent. (And it can be a hostile environment.  I’ve never seen dirty/distrustful/even puzzled looks being exchanged like this in the SF, or Humor, or History section. Not even in the freaking manga section.)

So what is it that I don’t know that the authors who prefer the AA section of the store have grasped that I’m missing?

And that is why I shop online.

OH MY GOD, yes.

I guess the other question is: if you’re going to write an interracial couple, do you have to tackle the “issue”, or can they just be together?

Depends on the setting, I would think. (I was completely turned off of the film “Far From Heaven” because of the outrageously anachronistic attitudes and manner of some of the characters.)  This will determine if your “issue” will be a matter of external conflict (more historical) or internal (more modern; I’d go so far as to say timeless.)  “Will outside forces burn crosses on our lawn?” versus “will he find my pubes too curly?”  [sorry! but it’s legit]

This sort of thing is ALWAYS a case-by-case basis. (And I believe that anything that can be done can be done well.)

Yeah, I get tired of the

• “We’d admit about your point if you presented it nicer.”

as well.

Another problem may well be white authors aren’t aware of their own privilege. Or exactly why it would even be a privilege to be shelved in the main section of whatever in a book store. That is something that is assumed will happen, according to whatever genre they write.

For others to get shelved with the mainstream is not as easily accomplished for some. As an author of gay and lesbian romance and erotic romance, I can understand the problem of getting shoved to a niche in mainstream.

Mac,

You’d have to ask Ciar Cullen about the specifics on why some prefer to be shelved in the AA section.

Ciar posted earlier about it.

I can only tell you what white readers have said. Over the five years we’ve had this discussion we’ve been told by white readers that they feel they ‘can’t relate’ to ‘those books.’ Now, call me crazy, but given that Brockmann’s book was a bestseller I can only surmise that IRs become ‘those books’ only when the author is black.

I know that’s what *some* white readers have said, but you know, in every discussion I’ve read on this, those readers are in the minority (and it’s sometimes just one person who is vocal).  But others, more, in fact, have said something different.  So I keep wondering, honestly, why it’s the nay readers who come to characterize the entirety of white readers, when there is a growing community of voices (that is, people engaged in discussion) who are yay readers?  Why not focus on those readers?  Because sometimes it feels like being a yay reader gets you nothing but the need to duck out of the way of flying unfair generalizations and conclusions. 

I feel sometimes that if I lined up a thousand white readers who read or want to read IR books, they’d be dismissed as insignificant against the hundred someone else lined up who said they “couldn’t relate to those books.”  Whether or not the yay readers are in the majority yet, we’re here, and we’re reading and reviewing IR/AA books, so sometimes it feels like a kick in the teeth to keep hearing about what “white readers” do and don’t want to read.  I realize that you’ve been kicked, too, but not by those readers who are embracing IR/AA books (and not, IMO, by white authors who have written IR books, although they can fight their own battles on that front).

sorry, but slap me in the face with a wet fish, then still expect me to support your cause? It ain’t going to happen, no matter what the cause/race/creed or colour.

Leaving aside the issue of how Roslyn should/shouldn’t feel and/or express herself and/or the connotations of the word “hostile” (as discussed by Mac), it seems to me that this is not Rosalyn’s “cause,” not even just the “cause” of all non-white authors who’ve experienced discrimination of one sort or another, but an issue that affects all of us who are romance readers or authors (though obviously it affects different authors and readers in different ways).

in answer to Seressia’s question: what am I doing about it? Me, as a
reader [...] What can I do, honestly, about whether books are shelved in Black romance because the author is not white? Say, “Holy crapping damn that’s lame?”
It is. It’s really freaking silly. It’s dumb. It’s offensive. it doesn’t make any sense. But the best currency I have to effect a change? Is currency.

Sarah, I know you were speaking with your “reader hat” on, but (and I don’t want to make this sound like I’m picking on you, because in fact I’m trying to suggest that you’re more influential and have more power than you seem to think you do) I think you’re in a unique position as someone who has such a popular romance blog and a book deal to write about the genre. You’re writing The Book (which one hopes will sell well and reach a wide audience) and I suspect that how/what your write about AA romances, inter-racial romances, and race and culture in the romance genre might also help to “effect a change.”

In addition, you have a “reviewer hat.” Robin wrote that “I believe that reviewing AA/IR books on the blogs can make a difference, too.” I agree with Robin on this.

It seems to me that one big problem that exists is that at the moment it’s hard to find reviews of many of these books outside sites/groups specifically dedicated to reviewing/discussing them. So non-black readers may not see/hear/read about these books. I don’t know how review sites get hold of the books they review, and maybe you mostly review books that you’re sent by publishers, and maybe publishers don’t send you these books, but I wonder if more of them were reviewed on some of the bigger review sites whether that would help change the situation a little? It’s just that from what I can work out, authors partly become big names because of buzz, and buzz creates sales, and there’s a feedback loop. But if black romance authors’ books are (in general, though there may be a few exceptions) cut out of that loop because their books are shelved in a different places, discussed in different places and reviewed in different places, it makes it much, much more difficult for them to reach a really big audience (the sort of audience needed to get onto the NYT list, for example).

At any rate, Roslyn is talking about the U.S. publishing industry because that is the one she has to deal with. Why on earth is this such a problem? She (we) cannot address the New Zealand or European or East Asian or what have you marketing climate because we have no interaction with it or influence upon it.  But how is the fact that these disparate world markets have triumphed over the problems that we face here (or never experienced them, or experienced completely different problems) tsupposed to help Roslyn?

Actually, I would think that this exact point would be the perfect starting place for action for change—one thing everyone here wants.

WHY is there one standard for America and another for elsewhere? WHY do the bookstores propagate segregation in the USA, but don’t apply the same standard elsewhere. There is the perfect platform—if the USA is supposed to be the world leader, why on earth do American bookstores allow this type of segregation? (Of course, there is always the potential for it to be turned about face, and authors come forward and say that their sales went through their roof after being shelved as AA versus that huge whopping great big confusing pile of books known as the romance aisle - because believe me, no matter how desperately I want my name on a book in that aisle, I also despair at anyone even finding it while browsing, because frankly, my eyes glaze over when browsing all those spines)

From what I observe, as a whole, the black community in the USA seems to have quite a loud voice, why has this voice not been raised to the media to see some sort of resolution, a cause for all authors to rally behind?(I ask this not accusingly, but as a genuine question)

I don’t know that anyone posting has disagreed that the issue is wrong, just that ranting over it again and again gets nowhere. And my point, that instead of it always coming down to a heated discussion on the haves and have nots, why not yell to the roof tops with a happy voice about how much everyone is missing out on by not shopping with the cool kids out of the AA section? Like I said OWN it. Own the differences, don’t qualify it with a political agenda. As far as I can tell, the majority of readers do not shop with a political agenda in mind, they shop for the love of a good romance book. (On reading that back I sound as patronising as all hell, but I’m trying to say (very badly) how I find these discussions as a reader, and how they affect me when it comes to marketing.)

I stand corrected on the being race issue with publishers/agents based on the obvious experiences of others, and find that a sad state of affairs. And I was not inferring that anyone should hide their race to get a NY publishing contract, but that in fact race of the authors should be of little issue when it comes to romance. Romance should be about the romance, no matter who writes it.

And since I’m contrary like that - If you flipped this around, have you ever thought that a ‘white’ romance author might in fact be rather envious of the fact that AA authors have their own shelf space, and are not lumped in that big morass of books in the romance aisles? In a couple of stores around here I have a damn hard job finding the erotic romances, but if I hit the AA section WHAM, I can lay my hands on a whole heap of titles right away.

(I wonder if it’s terribly difficult for a Yank author to get published in the U.K. or somewhere first?  I never see Mike Gayle—“My Legendary Girlfriend” et cetera—shelved under “Black Interest” in Borders or B&N;.  He’s right in there with mainstream lit, author photo and all. Okay, he’s a guy, and that’s different, but then, Eric Jerome Dickey’s a guy too.)

Exactly my point - why not try off shore?

r.: ha! Yeah, that about sums it up. Replace ‘brown person’ with ‘women’ and you have my work place! hahahaha.

Robinjn: I have a couple of points: 1) can you imagine how frustrated Roslyn must be, after 10 years, to be fighting the same issues over and over? For any black woman to be facing the same issues over and over and over and over [you get the point].  Frankly, I’m impressed that she isn’t more angry. 2) Add to that that she comes up against the same defensiveness and hostility whenever she is asked to make comments about this topic. I’m going to guess that any one of us here would be angry and frustrated as well. 3) Additionally, the tone of her comments only changed when people started getting mad at her for even suggesting that there was racial profiling in the publishing industry. Then she had to defend herself.

I think, and Rosyln please correct me if this is a completely erroneous impression, that all she is asking is that people (us)  think about what her, and other black authors are saying, look around to see if she could possibly be correct, and then if so, speak up about it. *sigh* I don’t think we’d be having this back and forth is we were discussing sexism.

Shayne: There are other authors talking about it. Possibly you aren’t visiting the sites where they are. If one hasn’t heard of an issue does not mean it isn’t happening. Also, [I may have read the second half of your post wrong but this is what I got out of it]if these forums aren’t the proper medium to discuss this issue (but it is proper to discuss sexism, feminism, plagerism, fraud, et al), then what is? SB Sarah opened up the topic; ergo, isn’t this, then, the correct forum? Or are we only supposed to be light and airy and superficial here? Me? I like that this site, and Dear Author, and Dionne Galace, and Monica Jackson, and hundreds of other site, talk about important topics like this, as well as cover snark, reviews, gossip, et al.

Yikes. I guess I’ll insert my shallow comment here. I don’t even know what to say to the latter posts in this thread.

I, for one, love reading books about I/R couples. (I’m white.) I wish I could find more of them, and I’ll definitely look for some of the examples mentioned in this thread.

I look for books in the romance section because, I suppose, in the back of my mind, I’ve always thought of the AA section as for scholarly works or regular fiction, not romance. I wouldn’t expect to find romance novels there.  I don’t skip the AA section because I don’t identify with AA heroines or heroes; I skip it because I expect to find romance books in romance, despite the racial or cultural identity of the author or the book’s subjects. I guess I am naive.

Some of the books I really enjoyed with multicultural themes and characters were ones that I found in the romance section—Beverly Jenkins and Eboni Snow.

Okay, it’s The Vixenne’s turn to get in on this:

For the record—IR romances are NOT some sort of weird sci-fi hybrid, though I must confess that sci-fi and fantasy seems to have done a far better job of integrating characters of different ethnicities than has romance (sad, isn’t it)?  We all believe that love is colorblind and yet there’s this goofy resistance by some women to not read anything that doesn’t feature a flaxen-haired heroine and some virile blonde guy with rippling pecs (not that I’d kick a guy out of bed for eating crackers, but you know). 

IR doesn’t always mean different.  It means two people who don’t necessarily LOOK like each other falling in love and trying to make sense out of it.  Wow, big freaking difference, huh?

Now, I am a firm believer (as a black woman in an IR relationship with a latino male), that the race-as-plot type books have had their day in the sun.  As some of my fellow IMRR’ers will tell you, my biggest pet peeve is the twenty to thirty-something black woman who still lets her family and friends tell her who to date.  I’m sorry but that’s just nuts and any woman (regardless of color) who is self-sufficient but still allows other people to dictate where her heart goes, deserves to be with Leisure Suit Larry with the beer gut.  I want to read about a heroine who follows her own mind and her own heart and gives a big one finger salute to the opposition.  I figure the hero (regardless of color) obviously sees something he likes in the heroine and wants to be with her, so go for it.

Like most romance readers, I want a ROMANCE, especially one set in modern times.  Some people would say that taking race out of the book is pollyannish, but I highly disagree.  The fact is, ladies and gents, there are IR couples of ALL stripes who do not allow the ignorance of others get in the way of trying to build a life together.  Also, consider this—there are so many other conflicts every couple, be they IR or not, face every day.  Finances, children, religion, screwy family members—these make great conflicts for any book, including IR’s.  And let’s be honest: Guys are guys—they will leave the toilet seat up—this is a universal fact.  Women are women—and we want chocolate when we’re bleeding like the hogs from ‘Deliverance’.  Let’s stop acting as if there’s something “special” about IR couples because well, we’re a pretty prosaic bunch. 

Also, let me dispel this myth that IR ONLY means black/white.  It doesn’t.  IR can be ANY pairing—and let’s be honest—white female heroines in romances have had their shot being paired with men of other races—native american, asian, middle eastern, etc.—now let the rest of us grrls play too.  After all, us chicas of colour have been reading books with heroines who look nothing like us for decades and we’ve enjoyed them.  I’m still a huge Regency fan and I look nothing like Lizzie Bennett.

I write Erotic Science Fiction and Science Fiction Romance. My day job before I retired after 29 &1;/2 years was as a bilingual (Spanish/English) social worker.

My older son Aria is an architect in NY. He’s half-black with dreadlocks to the middle of his back. His lady friend is another Architect who emigrated here from Peru with her parents when she was three years old. My younger son, Carlos is half-hispanic, ex-Air Force mechanic attending college to be a radiologist. His ladyfriend is Caucasian.

All of my stories are multi-cultural or multi-racial because I can’t envision a future with only Caucasians. And, of course, I also have inter-species romances between humans and aliens.

SF books where everyone is Caucasian, including the cabdrivers, automatically become wall-bangers for me. Reason #1, I keep wondering what happened to all the other races. Genocide, maybe?  Reason #2, If all the characters are Caucasian, it seems to me as if the author is projecting his or her subconscious vision of a future where all the other races have been eliminated.

Needless to say, I love the IN DEATH series and one of the reasons why I love this series is because Nora Roberts portrays a realistic and multi-racial future.

Barbara Karmazin
http://www.sff.net/people/selkiewife
http://www.myspace.com/barbarakarmazin

I read 70-odd comments of this discussion last night, and went to bed impressed by the civility. I mean, a discussion of race on the internet without it turning into a giant wank-fest?

Then I woke up. Roslyn’s “tone” has not been hostile or racist. She is expressing legitimate frustration. How many times have we talked about women writers being expected to write certain kinds of things, and what becomes romance and what doesn’t? But suddenly, one person’s experience is being marginalized because she is justifiably angry about her treatment.

I’m often hostile towards men because of their unconscious privilege. It might make me uncomfortable, as a white person, to have my privilege pointed out to me, but lashing out at the person who makes that point is NOT the answer. Instead, maybe we should take a step back and thinking about what’s being said here. We should question the practices of the publishing industry, of bookstores, of our own buying habits. (For what it’s worth, I just realized that my local bookstore does not have a separate section for AA fiction or for queer fiction. We have a section for AA studies (non-fiction), but also for queer and women’s studies. No separate fiction sections for any of those. I think it’s only b/c it’s a very small B&N;in rural PA,where 98% of the population is very homogenous, and thus it probably doesn’t even enter into the bookstore’s mind that there might be a need for more diverse selection OR to create a “ghetto” for AA books. But that’s just my theory.)

And as for the non-US folks on this thread, can I ask how romance novels set in your nations treat, oh, say, your indigenous peoples? For the Australians, are there Aboriginal romances or romance novelists? Do NZ romance novelists write about the Maori? If so, where are their books shelved? I’m genuinely curious about this, but I am also making a point that problems with race relations are not limited to the US, and often the patterns of discrimination, even unintentional discrimination, are more or less the same the world over. (Of course, the issues surrounding aboriginal peoples relate more closely to our own Native Americans, and we’ve seen how well THAT gets handled in romance. I really am curious about how other nations with generally-disenfranchised indigenous populations represent those nations in their romance novels, if they do at all.)

WHY do the bookstores propagate segregation in the USA

The thing is that apparently enough AA readers have requested an easy and convenient location to purchase AA books that the separate shelving is partly connected to what some see as a positive aspect of it.  Personally, I’d like to see dual shelving to start with, to satisfy both sides, but eventually a full integration of all Romance into the Romance section. 

I think that this is one of the strengths of ebooks—there is no shelving, and while some epubs have a category to help readers who are actively seeking out IR books, lots of times the race issue isn’t highlighted, whether it be the author’s race or the characters’.  Which is, IMO, how it should be, and how certain books become de-stigmatized.  And the other thing is that I think it’s going to take time to effect a major change, because the status quo effect is very strong, and I think people tend to hold on to what’s familiar, even when they will end up liking something different even more.  In terms of the online community, I think, like Laura V., that the more prominent review sites that review IR books as a regular part of the mix, the more visibility they will get, and the more readers of all backgrounds they will get.  Which at least on the ground, so to speak, can make a difference, IMO.  Everything is a start, IMO, and change is often the cumulative effect of synergistic efforts.

Shayne: There are other authors talking about it. Possibly you aren’t visiting the sites where they are. If one hasn’t heard of an issue does not mean it isn’t happening. Also, [I may have read the second half of your post wrong but this is what I got out of it]if these forums aren’t the proper medium to discuss this issue (but it is proper to discuss sexism, feminism, plagerism, fraud, et al), then what is?

Randi,

I’m not sure what I said that you are referring to, but I didn’t mean to sound as if this isn’t the appropriate place. It very well is, which is why I’m putting in my two cents.

I agree with your assessment on why Roslyn posted. I read what she wrote then thought about it. As a writer of fantasy and straight romance as well as gay and lesbian, it never occurred to me that I would be shelved anywhere else but mainstream sections with my fantasy and straight romance stuff. No publisher or bookstore would shelf me in some ‘white’ category. I could see Rosyln had a valid point, and very good reason to be angry.

I feel like an idiot for not seeing that privilege sooner since I’m aware of it on the straight vs gay/lesbian level.

*headdesk* plz to ignore semi-colon errors. Also, in my last sentence, that second “nations” should read “populations.” ::sigh::

Whether or not the yay readers are in the majority yet, we’re here, and we’re reading and reviewing IR/AA books, so sometimes it feels like a kick in the teeth to keep hearing about what “white readers” do and don’t want to read.

Heh. Would you believe it if I said “I hear you”?  Please do.

I often feel like this, when trying to present myself as an American who is aware of the outside world or a straight person who does make a concerted effort to root homophobia out of her life.  I find I just have to know who I am and let go the (justified) anger that is not really directed at me—let the actual unrepentant homophobes/xenophobes/racists/insensitives of whatever stripe defend themselves; I won’t launch their attacks for them.  That swell of “well see here now!” self-defense doesn’t always help and isn’t always necessary.  Better for me to say “well I am this and I believe so-and-so”—full stop.

I thought I’d get back to the central question of this thread. Sarah asked where are the interracial romances? The simple response is that they’re there. Black women have been writing these books for years, most of you don’t know about it because of book segregation. If you’re interested in reading them, I’ll list some of my faves for your edification:

Rock Star by Roslyn Hardy Holcomb
Try a Little Tenderness by Roslyn Hardy Holcomb (TBP this summer)
Crush by Crystal Hubbard
Blame it on Paradise by Crystal Hubbard
No Commitment Required by Seressia Glass
Three Wishes by Seressia Glass
Love My Way by Bridget Midway (Midway is crazy prolific, go to any e-pub and you’ll find her)
At Last by Lisa G. Riley
Simply Wicked by Lisa G. Riley (TBP in June)
Caught Up in the Rapture by Lisa G. Riley
Again by Sharon Cullars
The Object of Love by Sharon Cullars
Mr. Right Now by Monica Jackson
Big Spankable Asses anthology featuring Kimberley K. Terry, Lisa G. Riley and Angie Daniels
What White Boyz Want anthology featuring Seressia Glass (and other authors I can’t remember at the moment)
Let’s Get it On by Dyanne Davis features a black woman with a Pakistani male
The Color of Love by Sandra Kitt the premiere book in the genre
A Dangerous Woman by J.M. Jeffries (this one features a female assassin, who really, like KILLS people)
No Commitment Required by Dorianne Cole

Keep in mind, this is just MY FAVES, the list is literally endless.

Something no one (well, since the OP) has mentioned is that Loving vs. Virginia only overturned anti-miscegenation laws in the US 41 years ago. It’s a little hard to wrap your mind around the idea that it was illegal to marry someone of another race just a bit more than a generation ago.

And after it became legal, it was still unthinkable for many people. Interracial relationships weren’t really common until….when? Is it common now? Not in all parts of the country, certainly. I think that romance novels are just reflecting popular culture in the US - which is still pretty messed up when it comes to race.

ok, so people have already posted my part far better than me, but i wrote this- oh, twenty posts ago:

While I see Roslyn’s point completely (she’s angry about an f-ed up system and she’s talking about that anger- talking, not yelling, which is what SBs do on a variety of issues), I do see what you mean Robin when you said

So I keep wondering, honestly, why it’s the nay readers who come to characterize the entirety of white readers

I feel like that’s for almost every issue though. One negative equates to a hundred positives (ok, totally making the math up on that).  But attempt to answer- the yays were being answered in the beginning (with recommendations), but when Roslyn used the word “hostile” it turned into a discussion/talk/argument about “her” anger and then how it needs to be justified. Was “hostile” the best word to use? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s how she was feeling, and it’s her word choice. I know I personally get more and more short with people as the years of talking about the same issue by starting at the bottom and working up, and then being dismissed, and then doing it again, and then again, and then again…well, I start to speak in generalizations too, however unfair that is, because the generalization has become my experience, not the few yays that may be out there. 

Not sure how well I said the above. I’m really, really tired, so what makes sense to me could sound like gubbily-guke to you.

I agree with Robin and Laura- review sites like these will bring audiences to new items.

From what I observe, as a whole, the black community in the USA seems to have quite a loud voice

See? Difference of opinion. Because I would argue the complete opposite.

Shayne: ooo. sometimes i feel like people who write gay/lesbian/etc have it the worse- at least i can find the AA section in the bookstore. i was looking for J.L. Langley forever, the guy working at the store was looking for her, and nothing. she’s somewhere in the store, but fuck if i know where.

r: *snort*

Thanks for all the recommendations everyone. *sigh* I really need to get into e-pubs soon, because there seems to be so much good stuff going on with them.

Beverly Jenkins’s new historical Jewel was just released, as well, and while I just started it a couple of days ago, I’m really enjoying it.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned Ann Christopher, Farrah Rochon, and Raine Weaver, either. Oh, and Shelly Laurenston’s Pack series, published by Samhain, is comprised of three paranormals featuring three kick ass heroines, one AA, one Latina, and one Anglo.  GREAT books, IMO (Pack Challenge is the first).

yeah… to anyone who gets the urge to use this type of “argument” to
prove you’re really not being racist and the person you’re
addressing is overreacting? don’t. you’re proving the opposite.

Interesting. Now I’m a racist. Thanks for telling me! I didn’t know that.

Here’s why I asked Roslyn the question and what context I was coming from, and it’ll bore most of you to death but since I’ve now been tarred with the “racist” brush I better explain what I was thinking of when I said it.

As I said in my post I’m a dog person. By that I mean that I’ve been involved in dogs for over 25 years. I own Dobermans and also a Min Pin. I have shown in conformation, obedience, rally, and agility. For those of us who care passionately about dogs, the issue of the huge number of badly bred ones (and the fact that too many are bred at all) is incredibly frustrating. Unfortunately a huge majority of those breeding dogs do a really bad job, which is why we have so many out there with tons of health and temperament problems. Then of course there are puppy mills, that pump out hundreds and thousands of puppies in truly horrific conditions.

I frequent dog boards and when one of these low-life breeders would come on advertising their “purebread rockenwilders” I used to go ballistic. I’d scream at them about how stupid they were, how irresponsible they were and how they were doing everything wrong. It was actually pretty satisfying to prove to them how much better I was. The effect? Not only did I piss them off, but I entrenched them in their positions, making them more likely to pump out crappy puppies, not less. I learned the hard way that if I really want to engage these people, I need to help them learn, and that means swallowing my bile and engaging them. In other words, I’ve learned to moderate my tone about some things that I absolutely hate.

So all that said, I guess I’m now automatically a racist for daring to think the same thing might be applicable here.

It’s a little hard to wrap your mind around the idea that it was illegal to marry someone of another race just a bit more than a generation ago.

Precisely, Sandy D. This issue comes up time and again in the gay marriage debate. I always point out how can I be opposed to gay marriage, when it’s only in my lifetime that my own marriage became legal?

As for why the naysayers stand out, I’m not sure that’s particularly strange. After all, if the question is whether or not readers will read IR romance, presumably the discussion will circle around those who won’t. I don’t know why we’d be discussing those that do. It’s a none-starter.

WHY is there one standard for America and another for elsewhere?

The business model works.

Seriously—it’s hard to generate motivation for change in the face of that.

WHY do the bookstores propagate segregation in the USA, but don’t apply the same standard elsewhere. There is the perfect platform—if the USA is supposed to be the world leader, why on earth do American bookstores allow this type of segregation?

Well, the U.S. isn’t really the world leader in many areas—this is merely excellent propaganda. Our media is way, WAY disproportionately circulated.  (Partly because it’s cheap.  We sell TV shows in predictable packets of 26, as opposed to maybe 6 for a UK show—too small to guarantee profit—or a couple hundred for a Korean soap—too large to guarantee profit, plus not a worldwide language.)

There’s also this—the writer framed it in terms of sexism, but it is also true in terms of race—newspapers and magazines (that I have worked for) that have gotten subscriber complaints that there are “too many black people on the front page/cover all of a sudden”—the idea that “true [...] equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.”  (Or, I could easily say, 11 percent black people, which would reflect the makeup of the US at this time.)

When one is used to complete absence of a certain category, sudden accurate representation looks like a much higher percentage than it really is.

From what I observe, as a whole, the black community in the USA seems to have quite a loud voice, why has this voice not been raised to the media to see some sort of resolution, a cause for all authors to rally behind?(I ask this not accusingly, but as a genuine question)

The voice isn’t monolithic, for one, and for two, much of the general population (including the black parts) has become numb to it.  (A lot of the Bad Old Days, not being relevant or immediate to the younger generations, is forgotten, or believed to be exaggerated.  (We could, ah, teach history better.) I’m far from forty—lynching was government sanctioned (as in, not investigated or just perfunctorially investigated) up until just a couple of years before I was born (in the 70s). And some subcategories of the “black” group resent being lumped in with one supposed generalized stance on everything.

Further, the “black voice” is often not only co-opted but misrepresented—portrayed as more strident, more violent, more constant than it really is. (It’s flabbergasting how happenings in New York are portrayed in, say, Georgia.  Hell, it’s flabbergasting how happenings in New York are portrayed by the BBC—I’ll never forgive them for their 2003-blackout coverage.  “New York is chaos! Pillage!  Rapine!  In contrast, gentle lovely Toronto…”  This was patently untrue, as a glance over the crime statistics for that day will indicate.)

Just think about how many times in a U.S. film you’ll see black background extras behaving in an unsocialized manner—which doesn’t even get remarked upon (most recent case, “Cloverfield”—monster attacks, 15 black dudes run in the wrong direction to loot a store—white male lead also takes something from a store, but not a big screen tv—no, a cell phone part so he can nobly call a loved one).

Caveat: All of this would require a series of encyclopedias to explain fully, not just a puny Net post.

Like I said OWN it. Own the differences, don’t qualify it with a political agenda.

Please don’t think I’m being sarcastic when I say I don’t understand what this means.

So uncomfortable that many readers don’t want to read the books because *horrors* there might actually be talk about race in them.

Safe means no uncomfortable feelings generated by reading the novel. The novel shouldnt force you to think about your unearned privileges, inequality, prejudice or anything uncomfortable. It doesnt matter if the love story is compelling and the characters are well drawn.

I don’t think the conversation has really devolved into mudslinging and line-in-the-sand-drawing (at least, not yet), so I’ll speak to this again.

I was quoted by Trumystique, and the implication was that I and several others who have posted are avoiding IR romance because we don’t want to challenge or even think about white privilege, and that we somehow see IR (specifically b/w) relationships as “exotic” and “other.” I can only speak for myself, of course, but that’s certainly not the case for me. Since I am not a very eloquent person, any attempts to defend myself or “prove” it will simply make me look the fool (and I’m quite capable of making myself appear foolish without trying, thankyouverymuch).

But it seems as if Trumystique is saying (and correct me if I’m wrong, here) that if I read IR romance and it doesn’t make me consciously question my “unearned privileges, inequality, prejudice or anything uncomfortable,” that not only has the romance failed to do its job, but I have failed as a thinking person. I disagree. I allow for some measure of discomfort in my pleasure-reading habits—nearly every book on my keeper shelf (OK, shelves) made me get that gut-wrenching feeling when something awful happened to the h/h or when the Big Misunderstanding came around, but some things cross the line. It isn’t descriptions of sex with shapeshifters, black men, Asian men, white men, m/m, m/m/f, etc. On the contrary, that’s always some of the good stuff! Instead, I avoid a couple of specific negative scenarios I have to deal with in my own reality, which I already mentioned.

I’ve gathered several title recommendations from the comments, and I’ll definitely read some of them. But I stand by my choice not to read romance novels in which brutal rape or racist hate crimes take place, even “if the love story is compelling and the characters are well drawn.” Won’t read it. Period. This is why I need recommendations from people I trust or thorough reviews. I like unconditional happy endings.

When the back of the book describes a b/w romance that takes place in Louisiana (a state my brother, SIL, niece and nephews had to move away from for their own safety), I am understandably leery of what types of situations the h/h will have to deal with in the story. Now, virtually the same book that takes place in New York—that I would pick up without hesitation because I assume the h/h won’t encounter the same level of hatred or experience the same sense of fear for their own safety as the novel that takes places in Louisiana. Hey, I could be wrong. I’m willing to be wrong, but I’m not willing to resurrect nightmares because of something I read for fun.

Maybe I’m not adding anything useful to the discussion, but that rarely stops me.  :-)

Just in the interests of full disclosure, I also won’t read books with what are, to me, almost incomprehensible written forms of dialect (which is why I avoid nearly ALL Scottish lads and lassies novels). It’s the English major in me, I guess, or just an idiosyncracy. Romances with kilts and bagpipes where the standard rules of written English apply? Those, I luurve.

Whew, and between the time I started this post and when I finished it, several others posted. Now to go back and read…

So all that said, I guess I’m now automatically a racist for daring to think the same thing might be applicable here.

But here’s the thing, in the example you gave, you were talking directly to the practitioners of the crime. (I’m a shelter girl myself. I was an adult before I realized that people actually went to stores and breeders to buy dogs.) I can certainly understand why they’d get angry and defensive. As far as I know, there are no publishers here. Publishers are the ones committing book segregation, therefore they are the ones who make it difficult to find interracial romances. Why would anyone who is not practicing the crime get angry about it simply because I pointed out that white romance writers who write IR books are the beneficiaries of white privilege. My only beef with them is their failure to acknowledge it, but my primary beef is with publishers who create the segregation in the first place.

I think that’s two totally difference circumstances entirely.

As for why some African American authors prefer the niche the answer is simple: Many readers like it. I personally do not because I find it disconcerting to see an entire mishmash of books from literature (Toni Morrison) to erotica (Zane), all crammed together in one tiny space.

You have to understand that there are many black romance readers who only read black romances, so putting black romances in with the entire genre would be inconvenient for them. For someone like me who typically reads any writer who appeals, and who generally has about 15 seconds to shop, it’s totally inconvenient. Which is why, I too, do most of my shopping on-line.

Black books are extremely difficult to find because publishers believe that they’ll only sell in certain markets. For instance, if I wanted to buy a copy of my book in a store in my hometown I have to special order it. Our library had a special section for ‘Alabama Authors,’ but my book wasn’t included, even though Linda Howard’s was. Somehow, despite having lived in Alabama all my life, I’m not an Alabama author.

Of course, these are the same publishers who until 15 years ago wouldn’t publish black fiction because they said ‘black people don’t read.’ So, forgive me for not trusting their marketing analysis.

Exactly my point - why not try off shore?

American books simply aren’t that welcome everywhere. Which isn’t even always a political issue! The pub industry of each nation will first think about what they can sell in their target—read, home—market.  Yank books will be picked up AFTER they prove they can sell on their home turf.  Not even counting if they need to be translated.  (This is the same in the movie industry, even though some films might do far better abroad than in the U.S.)

To publish in the U.K., it helps if your subject matter deals with Britain or your characters are British.  Then again, I’ve got a friend whose novel deals with Tinkers and Jews in 1920s Ireland, whose agent loves it, who was praised and pushed by Joyce Carol Oates and Andre Brink—but the book won’t sell (for a good five years now) because she is not Irish.

Okay so since I know all that you might be wondering why I freaking well asked the question to start with :-D— want to know if anyone else’s experience has been positive.  Because….. ENVY LIKE WHOA.  (He’s not American, but UK bookstores are so much more flexible with their categories—Kit Whitfield gets shelved under mainstream fiction, and she’s writing werewolves.)

I often feel like this, when trying to present myself as an American who is aware of the outside world or a straight person who does make a concerted effort to root homophobia out of her life.  I find I just have to know who I am and let go the (justified) anger that is not really directed at me—let the actual unrepentant homophobes/xenophobes/racists/insensitives of whatever stripe defend themselves; I won’t launch their attacks for them.  That swell of “well see here now!” self-defense doesn’t always help and isn’t always necessary.  Better for me to say “well I am this and I believe so-and-so”—full stop.

Yes, I know you are right about this, and it’s no small thing on the Internet, where it’s already so difficult for people to express all that non-verbal stuff that cues us to their intentions and to context, as well.  To me, this Romance marginalization problem desperately needs a solution.  And I get that we need to talk about the problem to get there.  But I also see a lot of passion that can be channeled toward building a consensus of readers who can give publishers and booksellers a push toward changing the current status quo.  And I’d love that happen, because I truly believe that it’s possible.

After all, if the question is whether or not readers will read IR romance, presumably the discussion will circle around those who won’t. I don’t know why we’d be discussing those that do. It’s a none-starter.

I guess it’s relevant to me, Roslyn, because I feel like some of the discussion of whether or not readers will read IR Romance hinges on the question of what white readers do and don’t do, a question I think is too broadly conceptualized, for reasons I already stated. 

In any case, I totally agree with you that it’s a significant problem, and one that urgently needs a solution.  And I think there are a lot of people who want to help effect that solution.  Maybe blogs could do some viral blogging campaigns, or make a commitment to review a certain number of IR books, or do some author interviews, or book giveaways or whatever, to raise reader awareness of great IR books.  What about an ipetition to a bookstore chain or a publisher? Or at least a basic form letter that people could adapt and email somewhere?  I think there are things that can be done, but readers might need some encouragement and help to do them.

I’ve now been tarred with the “racist” brush

Robinjin No you’re not, and no you haven’t. It’s merely general advice on how these types of comments have been used in the past, and how will be taken—especially in an anonymous and body-language-free Internet conversation.

I’d scream at them about how stupid they were, how irresponsible they were and how they were doing everything wrong. It was actually pretty satisfying to prove to them how much better I was.

I would caution against equating these two scenarios.  You are talking about specific people who were in fact provably, personally doing the wrong thing.  Roslyn was describing a general trend—don’t take it as aimed at you personally, especially if you know that’s not who you are.

So all that said, I guess I’m now automatically a racist for daring to think the same thing might be applicable here.

Please don’t.  This just shuts down everything.

Anyone can make an error (or be misinterpreted, even)—it’s not life-defining and doesn’t earn you a permanent label. That would take conscious and repeated choice. We are all of us in a state of personal growth—this is what life is.  Accidentally saying something that gets interpreted as racist no more makes a person A Racist than accidentally stepping on your beloved kitty’s tail makes you an animal sacrificer.

Wave hands in the air for Jewish heroes! Hello? Anyone? Ok, I’ll get back to work. If you can’t find one on the shelves, you have to write one yourself… <<

My epublisher had a call out for IR/IC romance. And so I did write one myself. But the main character is multi-racial and Jewish and his love interest is also Jewish. It’s a paranormal historical romance.
I searched the romance genre and unless you’re talking chick lit, the romance genre and the erotic romance genre has only a handful of Jewish main characters.
Frankly, I’ve found more stories that have IR/IC couples.
The other thing I’ve noticed, especially in chick lit, is a lack of knowledge or even a dislike for their Jewish roots/heritage.
I will certainly be on the look out for the EC stories mentioned.
Mainstream, yep. “women’s fiction” - yep
Romance few and far between!

But here’s the thing, in the example you gave, you were talking directly to the practitioners of the crime. .... I can certainly understand why they’d get angry and defensive. As far as I know, there are no publishers here. Publishers are the ones committing book segregation, therefore they are the ones who make it difficult to find interracial romances.

Actually I was speaking to Roslyn, and in response to my take (which I realized later from her expansion on the subject was incorrect) that she was hostile toward all white authors because they got better placement and were paid better. She did explain later that her point was that the white authors were also not attempting to do anything about it. I felt her first post was inappropriate. It turns out those of us who were offended by it took it the wrong way, and for that I do apologize.

But yeah, I also think it’s a huge stretch to imply I’m racist because I feel that a hostile tone (from anyone, of any color, including white, black, and brindle) is non-productive. I did say, and will defend, that I don’t really want to read any book that’s all about race as the primary factor. Not that I think race should be ignored, I’m just not personally interested in it as the main focus.

All that said, I never meant to try to dismiss Roslyn’s anger. I apologize if it seemed I was.

I have been loving this discussion.  And, while the IR book issue is great, it is way too thorny of an issue for ME to tackle.  Others are doing an admirable job.

BUT, I did have something to input on the shelving/classification issue from a librarian’s perspective.  We are a semi large, metropolitan library system.  We have 22 branches and a ginormous Central library.  Some of our branches are located in predominantly AA areas and serve predominantly AA patrons.  Those library branches self segregate the african american fiction from the regular fiction.  Or, they used to.  They also used to sticker the hell out of their books so you were absolutely sure you were getting an AA book.  This drives me absolutely NUTS.  I asked them, nicely, to stop doing that.  They insisted that the patrons wanted that.  They wanted to go one place, get their AA fiction and go on with life.  No browsing.  No interest in anything not already pre-selected by their only, very narrow, criteria.  My boss, thankfully, but the kibosh on stickers.  The pulling out of african american fiction was supposed to be over, but now they’re just calling it a temporary “Display”.  Uh huh.  It has been 3 years, how effing temporary is that?  I think if more people knew that african american AUTHORS didn’t like being segregated, it might help the READERS stop asking for it. 

On a related note:  I can’t tell you how many times someone (when I worked reference) came up to me and asked for “African American fiction” as if that was self explanatory.  They weren’t aware that it runs the gamut from Thong on Fire to Christian Romance.  You can have gritty mysteries with lots of violence or vampires.  It isn’t just Terry McMillan anymore.  A lot of this is simply people not knowing the range of what is available, and I’m glad to give people the opportunity to try different things.  But readers have to become more educated because they are what drive behaviors, even in not for profit machines like libraries.

For the Australians, are there Aboriginal romances or romance novelists? Do NZ romance novelists write about the Maori? If so, where are their books shelved? I’m genuinely curious about this, but I am also making a point that problems with race relations are not limited to the US, and often the patterns of discrimination, even unintentional discrimination, are more or less the same the world over.

To the best of my knowledge, no. (I am going to make a point to visit a number of book stores will in NZ next month to confirm that.) If I remember correctly there is a New Zealand author category (I’ve no idea if romance authors get shelved there too), into which authors like Witi Ihemira(author of the Whale Rider), Janet Frame, Keri Hulme etc would be shelved. And there is a Maori section, but as far as I know relates to social/historial.

Whether or not the yay readers are in the majority yet, we’re here, and we’re reading and reviewing IR/AA books, so sometimes it feels like a kick in the teeth to keep hearing about what “white readers” do and don’t want to read.

And Robin said it much better than me.

Thanks everyone who gave some recommendations - I’ll note them down and see if any of them appeal.

You have to understand that there are many black romance readers who only read black romances,

Is this because of the status quo, because of the “relate to” issue that has been brought up with white readers, or something else, do you think?  Not that I want to make any generalizations about black Romance readers who only read black Romance, but I’m curious, because I’m wondering if this isn’t seen as a problem paramount to white readers who do the same because of the whole “white privilege” power differential or for some other reason.  No matter what the reason, of course, it doesn’t change the fact that black Romance authors should be treated the same as every other Romance author.

Lest I open up another can of worms…or quite possibly no can of worms at all since it might be irrelevant…but what about non-white and non-black romance readers and writers? We DO exist, and it seems like whenever there is a question of race in ANY medium, it is always boiled down to black vs. white with everyone who doesn’t fit in either category being marginalized or glossed over.

I certainly don’t have the luxury of picking through books because of the author’s race or the characters’ race. When it comes to Indian authors who write romance-themed books, there’s Nalini Singh and Poonam Sharma. I think that’s it. Wow…that’s an impressive reading list. I’d be done reading pretty quickly, wouldn’t I? Consequently, I don’t think about race unless a story tells me to. If it’s an issue between the characters, if it’s a multicultural love story, that’s great. If it’s just two white people being white and whitely falling in love…? That’s great, too!

On another note:  I currently have one of the best jobs on earth.  I buy fiction.  All fiction.  Print fiction…..audio fiction…..I sit and spend other people’s money on books all day long.  If only I got paid more to do it (but that is another matter.)  I’ll be leaving my job someday soon (after the bar exam) but I can honestly say that it has been an eye opening experience in terms of what is out there to be purchased.  I know everyone can’t have this job, but it is MY job to make sure that I give people at least a somewhat wide range of options to choose from when they come into one of the libraries.  A lot of people surf the web, place holds on the books they want, and pick them up when they’re ready so they don’t have to deal with “is it in the AA section, excuse me, “display”  or not” issue.  Stop book segregation now.  I think we need bumber stickers and t-shirts!

Randi wrote:

Wait wait wait. Why is Roslyn getting the third degree? She came here to discuss a topic and brought up really pertinent issues; and did it well, with logic, and directness. Rather than berating her for her feelings, we should be using that as a springboard for further discussion. Because she’s right about the color of the author issue. We shouldn’t be mad at her for noticing that. We should be discussing how to change that. For everyone here that jumped all over here for being mad and disappointed and tired; that’s pretty patronizing. Hell, I’m white and I feel patronized.  If this were a discussion of feminism, and some guy came over here and patted our heads and said that our perceived inequality was all in our heads and was a social construct that was outdated and it didn’t really exist…would you accept that?! Um..no. We’d be all over his ass and for good reason.

Thank you, Randi, for saying so well what I have been feeling.  I am always glad to see the intelligent and insightful discussion that happens at Smart Bitches, but some of the dissection of Ms. Holcomb’s anger has made me personally ucomfortable. I think Ms. HOlcomb, and hell everyone else, has been pretty damn elloquent here.  But I also think Ms. Holcomb has some pretty good reasons to be angry.  Does that anger make me uncomfortable? Hell yes. But I also think it should.  Because seriously, are we still facing that damn seperate but equal argument?! Still! In this day and age. And it’s been promoted as a marketing ploy. Hell, maybe it is a marketing ploy. What do I know? I just buy the books; I don’t publish or write them.

Still for all that I admire Booker T. Washington (I went to a high school named in his honor and instilled a lot of pride and admiration on my part), “Seperate but Equal” has never worked out to anyone’s long term advantage. That said, I don’t have some polyanna belief that merely saying a thing is bad or wrong or doesn’t work will solve the problem.  Words are great, thoughtful intelligent discussion is the win and awesome. Action, however, r0x0rz my boxers. Metaphorically speaking of course.

So, Ms. Glass asked a really good question via SB Sara, and I would like to respond.  What am I going to do? I am going to scour my local book store for books by the authors who have posted here and the recommendations that have been given. I will special order those books from the brick and mortar store to make a point. I will find that damn AA section wherever it’s been hiden in my local bookstore and I will check it out. I mean, is Tony Morrison shelved there? What about Ralph Ellison or Richard Wright? Because they have written some fantastic books, but I kind of like my romance novels to be together in one section and straight up lit fic in another. If I get the opportunity, I will speak to my bookstores manager. I’ll wait on the letter writing until I see what my other actions inspire.

All that said, and boy it was a lot, I really think there are 2 topics at hand here. One is, “Where or where can I find some awesome IR romance?” The second is, “WTF, books are shelved by author race?” Of course, I paraphrase. So to bring the 2 together at least for my own benefit, Ms. Holcomb, can you give some recommendations for some kick ass authors who write romance and have been shelved in AA books? I mean, I feel like I have 3 names to go with here. Maybe I’m not culling all of the great recommendations out of this mamoth thread, and maybe I’m just a slacker.

And if I am repeating anyone up thread, I do apologize. I believe I mentioned I am a slacker, and while I believe I’ve read everything, well, that slacker gene may have gotten the better of me.

I often underestimate my own influence and currency

Sarah, in the aftermath of the Cassie Edwards plagiarism discovery, which both got the site on the national news agenda and (eventually) made a publisher take significant action, I have great faith in the combined power of the Bitchery. And I have the impression that a lot of people share your tastes and trust you as a reviewer: when you put up rave reviews about a book (e.g. The Spymaster’s Lady) it certainly seems to get a lot of people reading and talking about it. [Not that I want to minimise the importance of other review sites, because of course many of them are very influential too.]

I mentioned a few months ago that I was going to do nothing but category

I did notice that you were reviewing quite a lot of them, and it seemed to start off discussions about category romance which, I think, changed some people’s perceptions of them (in a good way). So again, that made me think that when something’s reviewed here, it can help introduce people to books they might never otherwise have heard of.

Hmm, I skipped out on this discussion yesterday because I thought it covered a topic that’s already been done here.

The topic of race/ethnicity is one that ethnic people discuss both seriously and in jest all our lives.  It is complicated.  It isn’t just what we feel, but how we are perceived.  It isn’t just what people tell us.  It is what they don’t say.

Re: the issue of putting books by African-American authors in a separate section.  I talked to thecommunity events director at the very busy Oakland, CA Barnes & Noble.  He said that customers wanted a separate section of books by AA writers so they could find (and buy) them easily.  At that time, the Oakland B&N;was the only one in the country with a section dedicated to African-American authors.

Niche marketing—setting an item is a special section—will sell more than general marketing.  Every bookseller I’ve talked to tells me this is true.

Many writers, including myself, want to believe that our books have something for readers outside our gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, marital status, etc.  We naturally resent being given a cover that will turn off any male reader, or that screams racial stereotypes. 

So there is the conflict of niche marketing and a writer’s desire for acceptance as a writer first.  “Why not put the book in two different places?”  It’s simply just not practical for booksellers. 

Do I think some people won’t pick up my books because they see my name and assume they will be all about fiery senoritas and mariachis and visions of the Virgin Mary on a chimichanga?  Sure.  It’s frustrating, but I think thoughtful conversation about the topic helps.

And thoughtful conversation requires that one listen to the other person’s experiences and perspectives.

re. Jewish heroes and heroines in Romance and chick lit:

The Dominant Blonde by Alisa Kwitney (chick lit with a strong romance thread)
Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner:  ditto
Fallen From Grace by Laura Leone:  Jewish heroine
Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel:  Jewish hero
Crooked Hearts by Patricia Gaffney:  Jewish hero

I know there are more, but I can’t think of them now.

You have to understand that there are many black romance readers who only read black romances,

My feeling is that they can look at the author photo and the book jacket if they feel so strongly about it—or go to particular areas of the city and patronize completely-black bookstores, if available.  It feels like a limitation to me, and I don’t see why I should suffer for their self-limitation.

However, I’m being bitter, and compromise is better, so for the record I support dual shelving!  (The Borders on 57th and Park in NYC does it!  Octavia Butler is in Sci Fi AND Af-Am interest.)

Lest I open up another can of worms…or quite possibly no can of worms at all since it might be irrelevant…but what about non-white and non-black romance readers and writers? We DO exist, and it seems like whenever there is a question of race in ANY medium, it is always boiled down to black vs. white with everyone who doesn’t fit in either category being marginalized or glossed over.

This is VERY relevant. The fact is, the black-white problem has been more egregious and more blood-soaked than others in this country (except for Native Americans), and the problem has been around longer (except for Native Americans) and until recently we were the largest minority—which is why it will get more attention in the U.S., bluntly—but this doesn’t automatically mean that those of us who advocate for black writers because we ARE black would disregard YOU advocating for Asian writers. (And if we do disregard it, that’s wrong.)

So let’s ask the same question, then—do white writers writing IR with Asian characters get more play than Asian writers writing IR with Asian characters?  (Actually I think that was briefly mentioned upthread.  Follow-up?)  Is the manga phenomenon adversely affecting Asian writers who are not Japanese? Are too many Indian writers forced to try to be Jhumpa Lampiri?  Where are the Korean writers?

And then, let’s supply book recs!  Please.

Is this because of the status quo, because of the “relate to” issue that has been brought up with white readers, or something else, do you think?  Not that I want to make any generalizations about black Romance readers who only read black Romance, but I’m curious, because I’m wondering if this isn’t seen as a problem paramount to white readers who do the same because of the whole “white privilege” power differential or for some other reason.

I think the reasons vary. I think it’s partly because until about 15 years ago there was no such thing as black romance, interracial or otherwise. If you read romance it would by definition have a minimum a white heroine. Sometimes they mixed the hero up a little bit, but for the most part they were white.

When that barrier came down in the early 90s, many of us who’ve been reading romances forever were almost giddy with excitement. I can remember going in a store and buying every black romance there, regardless of content. I think some readers still feel that way.

I would never consider buying a black book in a UBS. I’m too aware of the impact of my purchasing power.

Black romance readers are some of the most loyal readers there are. Many of them understand the ‘power of the purse,’ and they deliberately buy the way they do to send NY a message. They know that they’re the only support their favorite authors receive and that if the numbers aren’t there, the books will disappear.

Interracial romance readers are much the same way. For years I bought all of them. When Brenda Jackson broke through with the first Harlequin interracial with a black female heroine I immediately rushed to my nearest chain bookstores and bought their entire stock. This was a monumental opportunity and I wanted to be sure NY understood that these books would sell.

There is always a sense that having black books is a gift, something that might disappear at any moment. We understand that without our support we could easily return to the bad old days of “black people don’t read.”

Is there an issue of relatability? Probably. Especially amongst the younger generation who have grown up with black romances. With those of us of previous generations, I would say not so much.

But for the most part, I would say that that most black readers will read white romances, at least that’s been my experience. Indeed, there is a contingent of black readers who won’t read black romances. And no, I can’t even begin to explain what their deal is.

So let’s ask the same question, then—do white writers writing IR with Asian characters get more play than Asian writers writing IR with Asian characters?  (Actually I think that was briefly mentioned upthread.  Follow-up?) Is the manga phenomenon adversely affecting Asian writers who are not Japanese? Are too many Indian writers forced to try to be Jhumpa Lampiri?  Where are the Korean writers?

Mac - I definitely think IR written by white authors in general is just more prevalent. I mean, when you DO have Asian writers in fiction, they tend to err on the side of Jhumpa Lahiri and other culturally-driven “literary fiction.” There’s not a whole lot of East and South Asian writers delving into the mantitty, you know? So does that mean we’re just stuck reading about the Asian romance experience through a white author’s filter? I don’t know. I did enjoy Mary Jo Putney’s China Bride despite a few bits that rankled, I appreciate Suzanne Brockmann hitting IR notes even if some of them ring a little sour, I like all those bodice rippers set in India even though nobody is ever actually Indian IN them…

Is it okay to be satisfied with that? Is it okay to want more? And, if so, where IS the more? Is it being written? Is it being written but not published? Published but not publicized?

I write IR romances.  I actually make race a factor most of the time, because most of the time, for the story I’m writing, it is.  I once submitted BEING PLUMVILLE to an agent.  She read the query and the first chapter and she loved.  She requested a syn and the first three chapters.  She then writes back and says I focus too much on race in the story.  Keep in mind, she knew when I submitted it to her the story was interracial and set in a fictional Georgia town in 1968.  I also say what part of their conflict would be in the query and the syn, so basically, it was the fear and the trepidation that I actually “went there” and didn’t shy away from the huge pink and green elephant in the room.

This was one of the main reasons I decided to self-publish.  I knew there was a market out there for that story, even if the agents and publishers don’t have, as Beverly Jenkins would say, “the testicular fortitude” to publish it.  I’ve gotten nothing but good responses for BEING PLUMVILLE from all sorts of people from all across the board.  When my book first came out, a white man bought it from me for $50.  Another white woman from Vermont e-mailed me and told me she couldn’t put the book down.  Black men in their twenties couldn’t say enough good things about it.  Older black women who’d never read interracial in their life said a friend gave them the book and they enjoyed it from beginning to end.  There are even people who do not like where race is a factor in their stories who have told me they really enjoyed BEING PLUMVILLE.

Being a member of the IMRR board has helped expand my book list in terms of Multicultural romances.  I encourage people to check it out.  For me, the story should ring true.  If your story is set in the Southern United States in 1956, chances are you’ll have more issues with race than if set in a contemporary Western United States cosmopolitan area in 2006.  Whatever I write, I do not ignore the fact that people are of different races, because especially in this country, race matters.  It just does.  Me as a black women will always have to deal with something a white man will never have to deal with.  However, that doesn’t mean that race is THE supreme conflict either.  I’m subbing a story to agents/publishers now where it’s set in the NC, the couple is interracial (bw/wm) but the main issue is the fact she’s full-figured and he’s a former fashion model who now owns a gym.  The race aspect of it is downplayed because for that couple, the issue is body image and the perception of beauty (and trust you me, race plays a HUGE role in that).

Anytime you add or take away from a story because “somebody said so”; you are in danger of ruining it.  The ultimate people who an author must answer to are the characters and his or herself.  If someone adds race as a factor, but it’s clear that for these particular people, it shouldn’t be, or there is something more important than race, that annoys me.  Same thing if they diminish it when clearly race probably should be more of an issue than not.  I won’t even get into when authors (usually white ones) write IRs with black women, yet make the black woman mixed/so light as to either explain how in the world the (usually) white hero could ever possibly find her attractive or just be so completely insulting that I want to spit (LONE EAGLE by Cassie Edwards comes to mind).

And I think black authors’ frustrations are justified.  Many times we can’t “just do this” because our very color makes that impossible—going back to race matters.  It always matters, there’s just a continuum of how intensely it matters.  Same thing with IRs.

And to whomever upthread mentioned that Hispanic isn’t a race but an ethnicity, thank you.  I actually know more Afro-Hispanics than anything else!

Savannah

—but the book won’t sell (for a good five years now) because she is not Irish

W.P. Kinsella wrote a whole bunch of short stories featuring various characters in Hobbema (Ho-BEE-muh), a reservation in central Alberta.  They were hysterically funny (on purpose) and were made into a couple of movies and a TV series.  It wasn’t until years after I’d read these stories that I found out a) he’s not native and b) a lot of people were upset that he’d had the temerity to write about Aboriginal People without being one himself.

And this led to a HUGE discussion about the legitimacy of people writing characters and cultures they’re not from.  Which always brought up the whole SF thing; how dare Tolkein write about elves and hobbits when he’s surely human!

What I’m looking for in a story is a sense of authenticity.  Even if I’ve never been there or experienced that, I want to feel that the place and the culture are REAL (even if they’re not), and are mostly accurately depicted.

I’ve read IR romances (mostly in categories, and mostly back in the late 80’s, early 90’s) and enjoyed some, and not others.  The deciding factor was not whether or how the differences were portrayed, but how WELL.

One that I can recall featured an American woman and a Japanese man.  The fact that he was Japanese was an issue in her family on account of her grandfather and WWII, and this conflict affected their relationship greatly and was the central conflict of the story.  But it fit in the context of the story: it was a real issue that they had to resolve in order to have their HEA, and they did, and I can still remember that category (Silhouette Special Edition?) story 20 years later.  (Not the title or author or anything useful like that, just that it had a kind of purply-pink cover.)

Hm, rambling.  My point: I likes me some good romance stories, regardless of the cultural backgrounds of the h/h, but only if they’re written well.

feeling24: yeah, not really, although I might have been when I read the story…

I’m coming to this discussion late, but fwiw, my editor at Kensington Publishing has never once questioned the ethnicity of the characters in my Wolf Tales series of erotic paranormal romance. While race is not an issue in my stories, they cross the board with a mixture of White, Black, Asian, Native American and Hispanic characters who share the common bond of being Chanku shapeshifters.

It does make me wonder, if I had been an AA author writing the same stories, would my books be shelved differently? In the beginning, the books were not shelved with romance, but instead were stuck in the “Women’s health” section in most stores. It took a lot of complaints from readers to get the books moved into the romance section. I disagree with the separate shelving of AA or I/R or Hispanic romances—I have discovered a lot of authors of color I enjoy reading. I imagine I would have found their books much easier if they’d been shelved as romances or mainstream fiction or whatever. I understand some readers wanting separate shelving, but it can’t be helping the authors—I would imagine duel shelving would make a lot more sense.

ok, OT, but robinb- can i have your job? pleeeze?

Mala: you have an excellent, excellent point about it coming down to black vs white and that others are glossed over.

I can’t remember if someone mentioned Marjorie M Liu, so I thought I would. (Ooo, which reminds me, she has a TSTL hero- Blue from Eye of Heaven…ok, I realize that is not the best thing to say for a recommendation, so to clarify, I love her writing style, but some - not all, but yes, some- of her characters and plotlines…well, just not my thing).

Sarah: of course you have influence; heck, your comments are even different colors. special.

Thanks for the recs up thread.  I see that it took me soooo long to compose my comment that several lists of recommendations had already been made.  Not only am I a slacker but I am also slow. Still, I am excited. Lots of good stuff to read this summer when I should be prepping for the GRE and studying Turkish. ;)

One of the things I tend to notice when this subject comes up—or for that matter any time racism is discussed—is the “angry black woman” syndrome, which I believe is a tool created by the patriarchy to shut down the legitimate voices of black women period.  What’s appalling is that many so-called “feminists” or those who just don’t want to deal with their own ingrained privilege use the notion of the “angry black woman” to not hear what is being said, but to focus instead upon the tone.  This is a total cop-out and does NOTHING to get past the obstacles in order to change things. 

Frankly, as a proud ABW, I have to agree wholeheartedly with many of my fellow IR/AA writers/readers here who are simply FRUSTRATED with the status quo.  The thing is ladies, the endless explanations of WHY so many readers think an AA or IR romance is so “different”.  Honestly, the reasons I’ve heard are just so much bullsh*t.  Like I said, I love Regencies, but I’m no duchess or countess and I’ve only been to England once and certainly NOT in the 18th century (nor am I caucasian), and yet there’s something about that time period and the characters—a universal condition—that I relate to.  So why is it so IM-FREAKING-POSSIBLE for a reader to not find common ground with characters who don’t share the same race (or are some readers so self-absorbed that if the story doesn’t revolve around them it’s not worth reading)?  People of ALL races and nationalities fall in love every day, so I have yet to see what the big deal is.  Black love, white love, latino love, asian love—love between blacks and whites, asians and middle easterners—it’s all the bloody same at the end of the day.

Thanks, Roslyn, Isis and Viola for your kind words about my book! :) I’m just now getting the chance to catch up on posts here (darn day job, lol)—I definitely appreciate the votes of confidence. And Isis, I agree completely with you about the disservice comment: ” I find it a disservice to the romance and to the storyline, if it’s included just because the writer feels it has to be present simply because the relationship is an IR, as opposed to the story calling for it. ” Amen!

Sara