There have been some pretty heated discussions going on lately at the Romantic Times Readers’ Roundtable Messageboard and at the AAR Potpourri Messageboard about Anne Stuart’s new book, Cold as Ice. Apparently, Stuart had the audacity to write about…oh, steel yourselves and be sure to have your hartshorn ready, ladies…a man who’s had them homosexual encounters.
The threads are huge, and I admit, time and my blood pressure aren’t allowing me to read through all of them. Some of the old standard canards have been brought up, from “OMG IT’LL RUIN ROMANCE BECAUSE IT’S VIOLATING THE ONE MAN/ONE WOMAN RULE!” to “OMG IT’LL RUIN ROMANCE BECAUSE HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABOMINATION!” Sigh.
The kerfuffling began with this report from LLB on the 2006 RWA conference included this snippet about Stuart’s upcoming book:
…the hero, a spy who slept with a man in Black Ice, has total control over his body, which allows him to have sex with men or women, whatever the job entails, without any emotional feelings whatsoever. At one point in the upcoming release, the hero informs the heroine that he kissed her to distract her in order to knock her out. When she asks what he would do if he needed to distract a man, he answers, “I would do the same thing.” Cold as Ice will be released in November. Given Harlequin’s sometimes old-fashioned reputation, I asked what the editors at MIRA thought about this. Stuart indicated hers loved it and that other editors who heard about it thought it was “cool.”
I noticed this bit of information when I first read the conference report last week, and it raised a brow, sure—but probably not for the usual reasons why anyone would raise their brow at the idea of a bisexual hero for a mainstream romance novel.
Why can’t a guy in a romance novel just enjoy cock because he enjoys cock, and not be a freak, emotionally cut-off to the point of pathology or a sociopathic villain who’s looking to shag anything that moves and a great deal that doesn’t? Not that Romancelandia is populated by the healthiest of heroes, but c’mon, now. A guy can like cock or cock AND pussy without being a sociopathic freak, you know. No, trust me, I know this, if you know what I mean, and I think you do..
I’m here to explode some myths about bisexuals. Hold on to your panties, people, because they are ground-shaking revelations of the first order.
1. Not all of them are polyamorous.
2. Not all of them are into group sex. Just because they’re omnivorous doesn’t mean they want all of it, all of the time.
3. Not all of them are indiscriminately slutty. Liking both sets of bits doesn’t mean they’re sex fiends, or that they don’t care who’s attached to those bits. That’s like saying omnivores don’t care about the quantity or quality of their food, simply because they enjoy both meat and vegetables.
4. Being bisexual doesn’t mean they’re wishy-washy or unable to make up their minds about what they want sexually. That’s like saying an omnivore is somebody who can’t make up their minds whether they like meat or vegetables, so they must be confused vegetarians or carnivores.
Furthermore, having a sexual encounter with the same sex doesn’t, in my opinion, immediately make somebody gay or bi. A lot depends on context of the encounters. Would a man who was raped by another man be considered gay, or bi? What about a man who had sex with other men strictly for the money? What about a man who was in a confined situation in which women were scarce for extended periods of time (as in jail or a ship)? What about a guy who was curious about what it would feel like to sleep with another man, but otherwise felt no real attraction to them?
And to flip this around: would a person who self-identifies as gay but married and slept with somebody of the opposite gender so the person could serve as a beard be considered bisexual?
People have this tendency to immediately go “AHHHH TEH GAY GERMS!” and label somebody bisexual or homosexual based on a few encounters, when to me, the true test boils down to: are you able to fall in love with a person of that gender? Does your interest immediately perk up when you see an attractive specimen? In short, are you attracted at a primal level to people of that gender? By that standard, I’m not sure that the hero of Cold as Ice is, as described, bisexual—he just happens to be willing to take on the cock for king and country.
But back to the debate. Of all the objections I’ve read, the one about “OMG IT VIOLATES THE MAN/WOMAN COVENANT OF ROMANCE” to be the most puzzling, because dude: it’s romance about a man and a woman. Just because it makes you go “EW, he touched peener in the past!” doesn’t make the hero any less monogamous or any less in love with the heroine by the end of the book.
And I won’t even begin to address all the “you can write it, but don’t call it romance—it’s actually EROTICA!” claims I keep stumbling over in the discussions. I’ve ranted plenty over that issue already.
Something else I keep stumbling over: people keep vigorously complaining about their right to be asshats without being called out on their asshattedness. “Stop judging the judgmental” etc. etc. etc. And true, people have their right to their opinions—but we also have a right to call you on your bigoted reactions. Look at it this way: if the hero to Stuart’s book, instead of shagging men in the past, had shagged black women in the past, and some people railed against the book in disgust, what would you think of those people? In that context, let’s look at some of the comments I’ve culled from various messages:
“…it [sic] warped , dysfuntional and abnormal …”
“I won’t be buying it because it’s too far outside my comfort zone.”
“Either way, it sounds gross”
“No thanks, I had trouble with this with Laurell K Hamilton and Anne Rice, but got past it because the men in question were not human.”
Mmmm-hmmmm.
I’m glad a mainstream romance author has a protagonist who’s had some homosexual encounters in his past, but I’m disappointed that Stuart, who’s pushed some interesting envelopes in the past, seems to be sticking with tradition in making those same-sex encounters traumatic.
Yeah, and all that…but is the book any good? A good plot with interesting characters, or just controversial drivel?
I think where your book is classified is dependent first on if you write for a black line. Then it’s automatic. But most black lines will only publish black authors. Most black authors are published by black lines that are distinguished from white ones.
If you’re not, where ever the bookseller throws your book is often where they go. They do go a lot by what’s on the cover.
It also matters how known you are. If you’re known as a white author, even if you write a black hero, you’ll go in with the majority books, even if you have blacks on the cover (Suzanne Brockmann). If you’re not known, they will probably assume you’re black with blacks on the cover and you may get thrown in with the black books.
Why not a white girl on the cover?
How it feels to be a black women
I think a white woman can accurately portray a black woman if she’s imaginative enough. I’ve written many white characters.
The strongest thread that connects is the experience of being black in America—how other people treat us differently because we are black.
There are all sorts of black women with all sorts of upbringings and socioeconomic backgrounds. Class would have a strong influence. Whether she was light or dark, raised around blacks or whites would have an influence. The black accent is borne out of isolation. So the underclass women who grew up in the inner city and has little exposure to whites will be very different from a woman with a Condi Rice sort of upbringing who went to a black university and traveled abroad. She will even sound different.
There’s the hair which is the main physical difference since our natural texture isn’t considered acceptable. Straightening it is an incredible hassle and usually burns it off short unless you take extreme care and spend lots of money. It takes a women of conviction to take a stand and wear it natural (yeah, I do). We tan, but seldom burn. I think that’s it on physical differences. We don’t wrinkle up nearly as much but tend to be a bit fatter.
Most US blacks cultural heritage is rooted in slavery and the south. Soul food is simply southern food. We’ve established other institutions such as the church and the Greek system if the whites didn’t allow us in theirs.
That’s about it, really, other than the experience of being a minority. If your character is middle-class and lives and works among whites, you have to think about how’d you feel if your boss, all your coworders and peers were black, and everywhere you went? If everywhere most of the people you had to interact with were black.
Blacks more often have white friends than vice-versa because there are more white people around.
That’s about it. Otherwise, it depends on the character you write.
Well, I think it’s gonna be Beverly Jenkins! Not only does it seem she’s the Queen of AA historicals, but the sex between the h/h is so good that bouquets of flowers spring from their loins while they’re doing it. Awesome!
I have kept my mouth shut and my fingers still while I have monitored this debate but I have a story to tell and a question to ask so please bear with me.
My grandma is in her 80’s. She is a lovely woman who has never had a rude thing to say to or about anyone as long as I have known her. She is a religious woman and reads her bible and believes what it says.
My cousin, Jen, is a lesbian. She came out to the family 9 or 10 years ago. She has a son from a previous, heterosexual relationship and a daughter that she has had with her wife Alli. Alli also has a child from a previous relationship and son she has had with Jen. Both women have given birth to a child since they got together if that needs to be clarified. Grandma has supported Jen. She has defended her to other family members. She gives all four children in this family the same love and attention. She has loaned them money. She has been the same Grandma to Jen she has always been and the same Grandma she is to her heterosexual grandchildren. But she is also heartbroken. If she spends too much time dwelling on the subject she starts crying. She knows Jen is a good person, but she truly believes in her heart that Jen is committing a mortal sin. This does not come from a place of hate or a desire to consider herself morally superior. She WANTS to be okay with it she just can’t, because her strong faith won’t allow her to be okay with it. She does not believe anyone has the right to judge Jen but God, but she feels she knows what that judgement will be because she thinks God has made his feelings on the subject pretty clear.
My question is, how okay does a person have to be with homosexuality or anything else another person does in order to be an “okay person” or achieve this sense of enlightenment that we seem to be striving for here? Is it really not enough to just live and let live if you can’t find it within yourself support a cause wholeheartedly?
Why can’t it be as simple as this—I’m a white chick, and I like reading about people who look like me?
I don’t think it can be this simple, because how many romance heroines really look like you? I don’t want to be rude about your appearance, or make any assumptions, but unless you’ve got the face and figure of a beauty-pageant winner, it’s not very likely that you’ll look like most romance heroines. Yes, I know there are some plumper heroines, and some heroines with less than perfect features, but there are still rather a lot who are room-stoppingly beautiful.
It seems to me that it’s more likely that some people read these heroines because they aspire to look like them than because they already do look like them.
Also brought up by someone whose comment I can’t find, she wanted more romances about over-50 women who are still passionate, vibrant and looking for their HEA. They want characters who look like them. That’s my take on the, “I don’t read AA romances†schtick.
Ah, now this I think is a somewhat different issue. It’s not just about appearances, it’s about the character’s social context, the sort of problems she’s likely to face etc.
I managed to find a couple of romances with black characters in them in my library (I’m in the UK, in an area with few black people, and the library doesn’t have that large a romance section anyway, so I was quite agreeably surprised to even find a couple). What came across to me (from my tiny sample of 2 novels) was that there’s a different setting. The characters (or their mothers) went to church. That was unusual compared to what I normally read. There were other things that were unusual for me too, for example, the economic hardships some of the characters were facing. Even in the one where the heroine was a high-flyer, other family members weren’t all doing as well for themselves. Given that I’m used to reading Regency historicals, this is a bit different. The colours and fabrics they chose to decorate their homes was also a bit different. But I also find contemporaries set in the US with white characters very different from what I’m used to. There are the small towns (and the way people behave there seem really strange to me), the guns, the lack of a free, universal health service, different cultural mores, and different ideas about interior decoration.
It’s taking a bit of adjustment for me to read contemporary romances with white Americans in them. I’m never really sure what’s a cliché and what’s an accurate representation of life in the US. And, of course, what might be a reality of life for some people would be a huge luxury for others, regardless of race.
So I can see how some people might not want to have to adjust to learning about a new setting (or a perceived new setting), or a different type of challenge faced by the characters. There are lots of romance readers who read for ‘comfort’ i.e. they want what they’re used to. And if someone’s looking for comfort, they’re not going to seek out a new setting, whether that be a historical one (e.g. 18th-century France, medieval Italy, ancient Greece) or a contemporary that’s set in a milieu they’re not used to or among people whose particular issues they’re not used to (whether that be heroines over 40 or people who have to live in a racist society).
Now, clearly, all romances with black characters are not going to be the same, but they probably are going to be a bit different from the run-of-the-mill regency era romance. I’ve also read Monica’s Love’s Potion, and that was a paranormal romance with black characters. Because the setting was magical, and the whole world had to be built by the author (rather than her being able to make the assumption that I’d know about the particular powers that a djinn has) it was easier for me to get into that book than the contemporary non-paranormal romances with AA characters. Or it could just be that Monica’s books are more fun.
Anyway, what I’m saying is that to read books one has to adjust to the culture portrayed in that book, and the particular issues that the characters face, and it may not simply be racism which puts people off reading a setting that they’re not used to, though it may often be.
What’s going on with the heroes with bandy legs, though? To me, that makes me think of someone who’s been riding a horse for too long, and now walks a funny way, but in the AA romances, it seems like this is a very attractive feature for a hero to have. Quite how bandy legged are these heroes? Or does it mean something slightly different from the sort of bandiness I’m thinking of?
I’ve just thought of another issue – in romance I get the feeling that some readers like to identify with the heroine, or feel they have something in common with her. So some authors have the heroine say something which they think will resonate with the reader’s experience (e.g. her hair frizzed in the damp, she found it hard to find a pair of shoes to match her handbag, she couldn’t resist another Crispie Cream). But this doesn’t work on a reader who couldn’t care less about her hair being frizzy (or whose hair is always frizzy, as mine is), doesn’t match her clothing to her accessories and has never seen a Crispie Cream. Instead of bringing me closer to the heroine, these details make me feel more distanced from her. And I wonder if some readers who usually feel comfortable with a white heroine who has the same background to them (or a background they aspire to) feel all lost and left out when they read about a heroine who’s discussing hair straightening, admiring her brown clothes (in romances with white heroines, brown is usually seen as a boring colour) etc.
Thanks for the answers! By the way, Monica, the answer to your question:
Why not a white girl on the cover?
is very simple. Because I’d rather look at a gorgeous man than a gorgeous woman! And I’m not alone—two of my publishers monitor such things, and they say that having a lone woman, or even a couple with the woman dominating the picture, on the cover means the book will sell LESS than a lone man or couple with the man dominating the picture.
Call me shallow, but I’d rather see a hottie mchunky hero than a pretty woman any old time.
And thanks to this discussion, I had a dream about participating in a lesbian threesome last night. LOL!
I don’t think it can be this simple, because how many romance heroines really look like you? I don’t want to be rude about your appearance, or make any assumptions, but unless you’ve got the face and figure of a beauty-pageant winner, it’s not very likely that you’ll look like most romance heroines.
Actually, this isn’t what I meant at all. In my comment, I pointed out Monica’s observation that AA readers were thrilled to find romances with characters who looked like them because they were AA, not because they looked exactly like those characters. Actually I have won beauty pagents years ago (tho alas, the figure isn’t what it once was after 2 kids!), that wasn’t my point. What I understood from Monica’s observation is, it’s comforting to read about people who share the same general appearance.
This is a sweeping generalization, but I would also assume that (using myself as an example again) white readers can identify with the life experiences of white characters in general, and other skin tones/cultures likewise. I probably am treated about the same as any other white chick when I go into WalMart or the doctor’s office or apply for a job. So the culture of white romances is something I’m familiar with, I understand, and makes it easy for me to pick up a book and just tune out of the world for a few hours when I need to let the ol’ brain veg.
I’m not always in the mood for brain candy, though. When I want a deeper read, I’ll pick up a longer romance, one with characters who don’t share my general life experiences. Reading about a white woman’s experience in Mexico on this thread is a great example—yes, she’s the same color as me, but that’s not an experience I’ve had. Same with romances rooted in a culture other than the caucasian. Reading those is a chance to learn as well as be entertained.
Being more familiar with the white culture in books doesn’t make me prejudiced, it just means I was raised in a mostly-white area. That’s *my* culture, and I think being comfortable in it sometimes gets equated with thinking it’s superior to any other culture. It’s not—no culture, IMO, is inherently better than any other—but it’s mine and I know the rules there. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know the rules in others, which is why I read some of everything.
(Added that bit because looking at my 1am comment there, it looks like I said that *I* won’t ever read AA romance or any other where the characters aren’t white, and that wasn’t my intention. Another clumsy way of using myself as an example, brought on by sleepiness.)
This is a sweeping generalization, but I would also assume that (using myself as an example again) white readers can identify with the life experiences of white characters in general, and other skin tones/cultures likewise. I probably am treated about the same as any other white chick when I go into WalMart or the doctor’s office or apply for a job.
Okay, I see what you’re getting at. You think of white people as having a particular culture, so the skincolour of the heroine and hero gives you an indication of their cultural background. It’s interesting that you say that, because it suggests that you maybe come from somewhere which is pretty homogeneous, or at very least that there are lots of other people with both similar skincolour and similar cultural backgrounds living near you. Is that the case?
Because of where I live and my own background, I’ve always been very aware of class/religious/national differences and the fact that these occur among people who look ‘white’. So I’d always separate out skin-colour and culture. Italians are ‘white’, Spaniards are ‘white’, Irish are ‘white’ etc, ‘white’ people can be rich, poor, Christian, aetheist, agnostic, bisexual (to get back on topic very briefly), middle class, working class etc etc. I suppose my experience of life is that skin-colour isn’t a good indicator of a common cultural background (and neither is nationality, for that matter, since there are so many other variables which contribute to make up one’s ‘culture’).
the culture of white romances is something I’m familiar with, I understand, and makes it easy for me to pick up a book and just tune out of the world for a few hours when I need to let the ol’ brain veg.
That sort of preference was what I was trying to explain/understand in my last post. I think people do often choose a book which has a familiar setting because it requires less work, and so a preference for a particular kind of romance (be that Regency historicals or contemporaries in a particular series line) is not necessarily due to racism (though in some cases this may be a factor in the reader’s decision-making).
Okay, I see what you’re getting at. You think of white people as having a particular culture, so the skincolour of the heroine and hero gives you an indication of their cultural background.
No, actually, that’s not what I said at all. I said that I can identify with how they are treated and that many “white” people have similar experiences.
One thing that sort of bugs me is the assumption that whites DON’T have any particular culture. When I fill in school forms for my kids, there’s spots to check for African American, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, Asian American… and white. All those distinctions of Italian Americans and Irish Americans and Czech Americans Jewish and Greek and Muslim and so on and so on and so on… no one ever gives a THOUGHT to making those distinctions. The official assumption I take from forms like these are, if you’re not some shade of brown, you’re all the same. And to be honest, that ticks me off.
However, that wasn’t the point of my comment. To be honest, I don’t really enjoy reading books where any character of any flavor spends a ton of time in retrospection about how this, that, or the other has affected them. (Which is why I can’t read Anne Rice—her vampires are WAY too introspective and melancholy for me!) No, the point is, the books I read show the characters moving through a world which is, while fictional, pretty much the same as this world the rest of us inhabit. I can understand how they are able to deal with this world because the checker at WalMart can’t tell by looking if I’m Czech or Italian or Jewish or whatever. She sees a white chick, and that’s how I’m treated.
Does that make sense? Actually, I live outside of Austin, which is one of the most liberal cities I’ve ever been in. Gays, lesbians, interracial couples, and distinct cultures of all flavors blend together with a minimum of eyebrow-raising or judgementalism. (Is judgementalism a word?) So I really wasn’t raised in a very homogenious area. Actually, where I live, I am very much a minority.
One last comment. A person who frequently interviews authors and features their books labels her self as a romance blog. She’s pissed because I used her as an example in something I was wondering about—should a black author link to romance blogs that exclude them?
She posted a while back on another blog that was attacking me for daring to mention race that she wouldn’t read AA romances. She wrote it in black and white, very concrete, and I remembered. That’s why I referred to her.
All she did was get mad, and someof her peers too. But it’s as if she thought I was out to hurt her personally by alluding that she was the R word.
But I was only trying to communicate a point. Sometimes race is raised as an attempt to communicate, not attack.
But it seems that the ones who are most defensive about race, ALWAYS look at a black person bringing up race as a heinous personal attack.
And sometimes saying the R word or alluding to it isn’t an attack on them, but a reality for us.
Amy, I see what you’re saying.
The official assumption I take from forms like these are, if you’re not some shade of brown, you’re all the same. And to be honest, that ticks me off.
It ticks me off too. White is the norm and everything else is different and must be categorized. But white people are different from each other too.
I also see how it’s easy to think romances by black people would deal with racism or other depressing issues or have a different tone. Most of them don’t though. They really aren’t that different and you could relate. We operate in the same culture and go to the same Wal-Mart, even live in the same neighborhoods. There’s probably not that much difference in the details of your life from a black women of a similar socio-economic background in the same circumstances.
I’m a bit confused now. On the one hand you think differences between white people should get more recognition, because you say that
One thing that sort of bugs me is the assumption that whites DON’T have any particular culture. When I fill in school forms for my kids, there’s spots to check for African American, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, Asian American… and white. All those distinctions of Italian Americans and Irish Americans and Czech Americans Jewish and Greek and Muslim and so on and so on and so on… no one ever gives a THOUGHT to making those distinctions. The official assumption I take from forms like these are, if you’re not some shade of brown, you’re all the same. And to be honest, that ticks me off.
But at other times you say something like:
Being more familiar with the white culture in books doesn’t make me prejudiced, it just means I was raised in a mostly-white area. That’s *my* culture
Maybe I’m misreading/misunderstanding, but that seems to imply that there is only one sort of white culture.
Maybe what you’re saying in the second quotation is that you haven’t experienced racism against you? Is that what you’re meaning when you mention your culture in the second quotation? Because you say that
the point is, the books I read show the characters moving through a world which is, while fictional, pretty much the same as this world the rest of us inhabit. I can understand how they are able to deal with this world because the checker at WalMart can’t tell by looking if I’m Czech or Italian or Jewish or whatever. She sees a white chick, and that’s how I’m treated.
Sorry, I probably sound really silly. I’m just confused and not understanding you, but is it that when you’re choosing romance if the heroine would be treated as ‘a white chick’ at Walmart then that, to you, makes her feel similar to you? Is that what you mean by ‘culture’ in that context?
But it seems that the ones who are most defensive about race, ALWAYS look at a black person bringing up race as a heinous personal attack. And sometimes saying the R word or alluding to it isn’t an attack on them, but a reality for us.
But, Monica, calling someone a racist IS an attack. Saying, “What you said comes off as racist and this is why it feels that way to me,” is a conversation. Saying, “YOU’RE A RACIST BECAUSE,” isn’t gonna start anything but a fight. It’s pretty on par with, “You’re a BITCH because. . .” Oh, yeah, let’s have that heart-to-heart conversation now.
Does saying anything about another race make someone a racist? Are YOU a racist for calling out a white person?
dl snarkily said of Amy E’s AA vampire tale:
Yeah, and all that…but is the book any good? A good plot with interesting characters, or just controversial drivel?
I wondered the same thing IN MY HEAD but c’mon – what’s an author gonna say about her own book? “You got me. It’s drivel. I just threw in a black stud to get noticed.” Even if it was true, who would admit that??
I wasn’t actually sure what book dl was talking about, to be honest.
In my hardcover for ‘07, the hero’s best friend is a black guy. More, their dynamic and emotional connection is that of brothers—and the bf’s family IS the hero’s emotional family.
I’ve written black characters before, but haven’t written a southern black family, of which some members are key to the story. And did worry and have some concerns over the family bbq scene while writing it that I was getting the tone right, the rhythm of speech, the interplay.
or just controversial drivel?
I didn’t get the question at all, frankly. Was there something controversial about it? Because it’s interracial? Or—Jesus—any indication that it was drivel?
Just wanted to comment on something I read through out.
Very true. My husband is homophobic. Not in a blatant hate way, but he’s uncomfortable with anything male and homosexual. It’s like, personally, he’s against gay marriage, but he wouldn’t vote against it because he feels they should have the right. It drives me nuts sometimes, but I still love him.
That’s how it is for me. I find both men and women attractive, equally actually, but I don’t find myself thinking of them sexually unless there is more there.
Will everyone hate me if I say that it doesn’t often bother me? I grew up with it and now, basically, unless it’s blatant, it doesn’t even register.
It was kind of weird when I first moved down to Arkansas to be with my husband. It was a very rural area with small towns. The town we lived in had a population of 69. Everywhere we went, people stared. I mean really stared … like they would stop what they were doing to watch us walk by. It was trippy, but no one was mean or purposely rude.
Two issues here. 1) That first quote makes makes me wonder if you have some issue that you may be projecting into the situation. It just seems that maybe you’ve had people look down on you because of where you come from and you see that in their treatment of you whether that is the case or not. I mean, have they said anything about your upbringing or education? 2) Chilangos have a reputation for being snobby towards anyone not from Mexico City. So says my aunt, who is married to a Chilango.
And on the in-law track … several of my in-laws actually asked my husband if he was sure I had my green card when he first intorduced me to them. My husband told them he didn’t think someone from Chicago needed a green card to visit Arkansas. When we got home he went on a tear about how his family was bunch of ignorant hicks. I think he was more upset about the whole thing than I was.
That whole thing strikes me as kind of funny. Maybe because I’m Mexican American and have very little in common with the pale, creamy skinned heroines that run rampant through the books I read. I love historicals, paranormals, and mysteies. Most of the heroines are some flavor of white and the rest are either black or some ethnicity other than hispanic. There are very few hispanic heroines out there … not that I’d gravitate toward them if there were. It’s all about the story for me, not about seeing myself in the story.
Anyhow … thanks again to Candy for pointing out that we’re not all indiscriminate hobags. 😉
I understand the concerns about writing black characters.
I couldn’t write a southern black family BBQ scene either without trepidation.
I was raised by a biracial single mother who was raised by a white women who never really has had a clue about being “black.” Thank God my hair wasn’t too kinky for her to handle or I’d have gone to school looking like Buckwheat.
Could I pull off a Greek or an Irish Catholic family? I’d have to do research and make up a lot. My philosophy so far has been families and people are so different and weird I can get away with making stuff up.
But I’m wrong sometimes and might be about that.
I’d make it up the black southern BBQ (watching Tyler Perry’s DVDs would help) and I know I’d get over because I’m black.
It bugs me that white folks have to walk on eggs about stuff like this.
I get it. It’s stupid we have to be on so on guard about race.
I didn’t like it when Brockmann was jumped on because Alyssa was supposedly “too white.” There are black women like Alyssa. Were they saying all black women are supposed to be alike? I guess I should speak up in defense in debates like that, but I do tend to bow out of confrontations with folks, um, who actually read my books. Not good, I know.
You know, there are AA characters in my books, but I’d hesitate for a long ass time before I’d write AA point of view. And I grew up in a very racially mixed area. I’ve been to black family reunions in very, very small Arkansas towns where I was definitely the only white person wearing a family t-shirt. But I’ve heard so many times over the years that someone like me could never understand what it’s like to be a black woman in America. And I’m positive that’s true.
So could I write an AA h/h? Probably. But I’d be pretty damn worried about getting something wrong and feeling like I should never have tried it. Then again, I don’t know what it’s like to be a man and I don’t worry about them.
I wasn’t actually sure what book dl was talking about, to be honest.
Now that I look at it – yeah, the book in question is ambiguous. Quality is SUCH an issue to consider for publication, purchases, reviews, etc. But I thought dl’s tone sounded belittling, as if an unknown/unpublished author has to qualify the quality of her work before offering an element of it for discussion. No one is going to jump on La Nora’s BBQ reference like that.
Admit it, Roberts – you’re just doing that black thang to be controversial! 😉
of course you (and I mean any of you, not just Monica)could write about a Greek family or a Russian family or a black family or a WASP family.
You wouldn’t be writing a generic family—it would be YOUR invention, YOUR people. If the traditions are slightly off—well, maybe granny got it wrong from her mom. You’d know where it all came from because it would be YOUR FAMN DAMILY. YOURS.
I never got a gold star so I had to say something at last.
I mean what is it with all the generic shit here? “EVERYONE WHO DOES THIS IS THAT” ?? Tchah. It’s a huge universe of Individuals and no experience is going to come off sounding Just Like another.
Go watch Rashomon. Although really, I think that’s a matter of people lying to look good.
Okay, talk to my husband about his parents and then talk to his brother about his parents (same parents). The two couples they describe aren’t even from the same planet, much less the same race.
No more with the Generic, dudes!
Robin wrote: One of the interesting things coming from a CA university is that the literature in higher ed that comes out of the Eastern US often refers to the “race issue†as specifically black and white.
Monica wrote: Most people don’t go to the extreme of “I hate black people.†It’s more subtle such as “I don’t relate to black people,†or “They are different from me, too different and dangerous to be in close contact with.â€
Maybe I come at this all sideways (as Robin does) cause where I’m from racial tension and racism in general is NOT a black/white issue. We have Asian on Asian on Latino on Latino on black on black on white gang was and racial tension (the Hmong and the Laotians hate each other; Norteños and Sureños hate each other; black Muslims are currently attacking Middle Eastern Muslims; many blacks in Southern California have it in for Koreans; The Aryan Nation [as seen in American History X] hates pretty much everybody; the list goes on and on). It’s just far more complicated out here than “white folks just don’t get it”.
Currently, I happen to live in a largely black area (Oakland, CA). I get called “white bitch” and “white devil” on a pretty regular basis just walking down the street. I get threatened by armed twelve year-old black girls at the BART station (purely because I’m white, they aren’t messing with any of the 30-something black women getting off the same train). Is this racism? Is it opportunism? Is it both? I sure happen to think so.
It’s not that people of other races are “too different” for me to relate to. It’s that the subgenre that most minority writers choose is something I don’t like. I do no choose to read urban/contemporary fiction for pleasure, regardless of the race of the author. Sometimes race/culture can be an issue, though. At Nationals I got a book called No More Playas. I swear it took me a few minutes to figure out that what the title meant. Where I live a “p-l-a-y-a†is a dry lake bed (like the famous one that Burning Man takes place on). Why on earth was I handed a book called “no more dry lake beds†with a hot black guy on the cover? Total cultural dissonance. I have the same problem with books by a lot of white folks (I just don’t “get†Laurell K. Hamilton’s books; Culturally they’re just SOOOO foreign; I don’t grok the whole Mid-Western thing).
I mostly read historicals (its all about ESCAPISM) and I’ll read anybody out there who writes a good historical (Beverly Jenkins ROCKS!). If more non-white authors were writing historicals, I’d be reading them. But historicals seem to be overwhelmingly written by white authors (regardless of setting or the race/culture of the characters).
Harriet Tubman, Freedom Train romances? Bring ‘em on! Samurai romances? Oh please, oh please, oh please! I just heard that someone sold romance set in ancient Rome. I’m drooling already . . .
sorry candy and sarah…
Monica there is no reason to have a long memory on the ‘net. Cuz it is still here. No need to try and decode what I said cuz it is
here FROM A YEAR AGO!
And I still think you are a bully, a whiner and need to get over yourself.
I still think I don’t have to do shit because you are trying to make me. And I won’t get into explaining why I didn’t say what you give me credit for cuz it is in black and white.
Good luck using me to replace your feud with LLB cuz hon I am not even close to being as popular, concerned or as nice as LLB. Hope it sells you a book but I won’t be buying it.
and here’s something not entirely relevant but shows what a diversity of experience one person gets in the world: I could write confidently about a Southern Black Baptist minister’s family. Why?
Until I went to school, and actually until I was a preteen, I spent more time with a Southern Baptist Minister’s wife than I did with my own mother (who worked more than full time). I went to at least 50 funerals at the Baptist church over those years. I went to south carolina with the family. I spent a whole bunch of nights in her house.
I probably know that culture—from a kid’s point of view—better than a northern black person who’s never been south.
Do I know the racial tensions etc? No. But I know the food, one family’s traditions, the fly-paper black with flies, the back of the brush used on miscreant’s bottoms (including mine), how we weed the garden patch, the horrible mattress with visible springs to sleep around, the church services. . .the terror of being caught doing something evil by a minister’s wife!
About Monica and harping on a theme:
Did I miss the news and racism suddenly came to an end in the last year?
She does rather go on about it, but then again, someone should.
and yes, I contradicted myself
“every family is different”
and then
“I can write about this kind of family” (implying that there is a “kind” after all)
But what I meant was we all can write about any kind of family AFTER you do the basic research. Heh. That’s it.
I mean you wouldn’t want that devout Muslim mother serving her kids bacon and eggs. Well, maybe she would if she had just come from another country, doesn’t know the language and thought all pork products were labeled with a picture of a pig.
Next time give me the goddamn gold star.
You can shut up now Kate 😆
My question is, how okay does a person have to be with homosexuality or anything else another person does in order to be an “okay person†or achieve this sense of enlightenment that we seem to be striving for here? Is it really not enough to just live and let live if you can’t find it within yourself support a cause wholeheartedly?
I was determined to stay out of any further discussion on this topic, but of course I can’t and just want to comment on this, IMO, very important question.
KariBelle, I think your grandma sounds like a good woman who is caught between her own nature as a loving woman and her religious beliefs, which she views as authoritative. That she can live in both realities must be a really difficult think, IMO.
Reading everyone’s comments here makes me realize that not everyone views the “isms” the same way. I’ll use racism here, but I think it’s the same for misogyny, homophobia, and other ism like labels. Monica can use the term racism, for example, and not have it be a monumental thing. A couple of other posters have indicated that racism is either a belief or a behvaior or both. I believe it’s a pattern of beliefs and behaviors, not one single incident or belief or behavior. In the same way that each of us has our own experience of race and culture—depending in part on where we live, who we’ve grown up with, our ethnic background, the diversity of our formative communities, etc.—we each have our own views on what constitutes discrimination and bigotry and prejudice.
I know I’m late to this discussion but all this talk about Stuart’s next book makes me want to read it as it sounds interesting to me. I read with an open mind.
But to judge a book’s worth before anyone has even read it seems rather silly and jumping the gun to me. But then, it’s not the first time this has happened online. I find this practice rather silly and amusing to judge a book based on *one* aspect of the novel in this case, the hero has slept with men in his past. Who the f. cares? It’s fiction. Outside your confort zone, don’t read it.
Oy, my head is spinning. I’d say I am looking foreward to reading Stuart’s book because it reminds me of LaFemme Nikita, the series; use sex as a weapon.
Oh and if anyone’s interested I am working on a Forever Knight (The Vampire Cop TV Series) Fanfic with my own original characters thrown in that contains, so far m/f, m/f/m, and f/f pairings. 🙂
~Admit it, Roberts – you’re just doing that black thang to be controversial!~
You betcha. I drink controversy for breakfast. Wait, that’s Diet Pepsi.
Never mind.
BTW, there were a terrific series of books a few years back set in ancient Rome, with strong romance elements. I just can’t think of the author—have to go see if I can find the books. Hero was the ancient Roman version of a P.I., and she was the daughter of a high-ranking aristocrat.
Nora
there were a terrific series of books a few years back set in ancient Rome, with strong romance elements. I just can’t think of the author—have to go see if I can find the books. Hero was the ancient Roman version of a P.I., and she was the daughter of a high-ranking aristocrat.
The books about Falco, by Lindsey Davis. Her website’s here.
It bugs me that white folks have to walk on eggs about stuff like this.
I get it. It’s stupid we have to be on so on guard about race.
Although you used these phrases in a different context, they sum up nicely, IMO, the answer to your question about why people get all wonky over the “R” word.
It is, IMO, the burnt out feeling people (I hesitate to say only white people, because in CA it’s across the board) have over feeling so self-conscious about doing and saying and having the “right” views on race. I’m NOT, BTW, defending this, simply pointing out that I think the Right’s ability to co-opt the term “political correctness” and get otherwise politically liberal people to grab onto that phrase like some moral lifeline has to do with the overuse of the “R” word from the Left.
Now I realize that there is a fine line between racial consciousness—that is, being conscientious enough to recognize unconscious racism and racialism and to change one’s thoughts and behaviors—and an oversensitivity to race, and for each of us this line may be placed a little differently. Unfortunately, I think sometimes people who get lumped into the racist category become completely unnerved and insecure or defensive because they feel—rightly or wrongly—that there’s some standard they can’t or don’t want to live up to. And then they either become hyper-self-conscious or certain that everyone else is just too sensitive to race. And then you’ve got the very problem on your hands that you were trying to solve in the first place.
As I’ve read through the entirety of your comments here, though, I think I’m understanding that you’re approach to the “R” word is more pragmatically resigned than, say, mine is. I get the sense that you feel you can use it in a way that really is, from your POV, non-accusatory. Because I think you use racism like I tend to use sexism sometimes. When some guy tells a joke I think is at the expense of women, I will casually say, “that is so sexist!” and it doesn’t feel like an accusation, even though the dude in question will be like sputtering a defensive, disbelieving reply. To me it’s like saying, “wow, you just made a comment that’s totally discriminatory against women” and not feeling like I’ve just condemned that person to the 9th circle of hell.
So now what I realize is that I have to be more careful about how I use that particular ism, because when I use it, if I’m not really, really serious about it, I’m going to make the recipient of that word feel he has to be more careful around me. And for the most part, at least in my case, I don’t think the actual guy is sexist, just the comment (and FWIW, I make sexist comments all the time and believe that most of us, women and men alike, tend to create stupid stereotypes about ourselves and each other). But if I don’t want that guy to get all “wonky” and IMO unnecessarily uncomfortable, I’ve maybe gotta find a better way to express that thought.
Do men get as upset at the word sexist as others do about the word racist (and in my state, Black people are NOT okay with that word, at least not what I’ve witnessed)? I don’t know. But I think culturally it’s much more loaded now, and I don’t agree with you that people who get all wonky over the word do so because they’re racist. Somtimes they do so because they already feel like they’re walking on eggshells, and that appellation is the kind of thing that can push them over the wrong sort of line. But I do think I understand better your own experience and your different take on using the word and defining racism in general.
PHEW.
Thank you, lovelysalome. I owe you—and such a nice star it is, too.
Sybil, you’re a real nice person there. Talk about true colors. And you’re right about about being no Laurie Gold.
kate r, I get tired of it myself, but I bring it up because nobody else is going to and nothing else affects my writing career more.
I notice folks tend to harp on things that affect them. How much have I read about reviews for instance, from both sides?
If those people got treated the way Sybil and her like treat me, what would happen?
Reading comments here re: wanting both the elements of cultural familiarity (and realism in the details depicted of that culture) and fantasy in romance books has me wondering something. That is, how much does the knowledge of the hero and/or heroine’s financial status play in how much we can relax into a story? I mean, if it’s a Regency historical, it’s pretty much a given that it’s set at the highest level of society as respects wealth. I think this serves a couple of purposes: the first being that whole fantasy element where we want the dream version of life, the other being that it allows the story to ignore everyday worries like food and shelter so the story can focus on the emotional side of things.
But taking it a little outside of Regency historicals, it occurs to me that, in certain situations, if the main characters are to be financially secure, it feels to me that they have to be white. [I’m ignoring reality here where there can be wealth regardless of race. But then again, how many non-whites run the world’s largest companies? How many are on the Forbes richest lists? Statistically speaking, not a lot of Latinos or Asians or blacks represented there, no?]
It’s interesting how these things can fold back in on themselves…the details in a story that I’d consider both real and fantastical at the same time – the ideas and settings that are necessary and “comfortable” to me – can back me into a certain kind of story without me even realizing it. (Sorry, I just brought this back to “comfort zones” again.) I do seek out things outside of my reality (or, more truthfully, the fantasy version of my reality) because I find it fascinating to learn things about other cultures. But when I want that pure fantasy element that’s not a “fantasy” book, I want to know these people are financially secure and it seems I have this idea in my mind that I never realized was there that in order to get that element of financial security I’m gonna have to pick up a book about whites.
I’m sure I’ve just displayed more kinds of ignorance there about AA romances than a person should admit to, but I hope there’s some truth in there too about what can motivate people without them even realizing it.
And finally, Monica your comment about your hair and Buckwheat gave me such a laugh – not just for the image itself, but because one of the funniest things ever was watching my mother – the kind of person one thinks of if the phrase “white bread white” comes up – doing her damndest to conquer the hair of my sister’s childhood best friend. She was the only black person my mom ever had any kind of intimacy with and she went with my family on a lot of trips and vacations. Anyway, each morning saw the use of at least a half of a bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s spray on detangler accompanied by that expression of face that says “If I could, I’d be making up swear words that would embarass a sailor right now, but there are children present so I have to keep my mouth shut.”
Madd said:
This may very well be true. There’s also a certain amount of evidence to indicate that my trouble here is class-related. I’m from lower middle class people and his family has money. However, when you’re set apart from everyone else and you’re the only person of your race in the room, the only person being treated like that, it’s hard not to react.
Well, I’ve enjoyed this intelligent discussion. I’ve been out of college for a while, and there’s not a lot of time in my every day life where I get this kind of give and take. I do get to say, “Because I said so!” a lot at home though, and that’s something.
Robin said,
”(snip) racial consciousness—that is, being conscientious enough to recognize unconscious racism and racialism and to change one’s thoughts and behaviors (snip”
I prefer “self-awareness.” A lot of people who are good and decent people overall also happen to hold unexamined prejudiced views and values.
Very often these otherwise decent folks do not act on those unexamined values, but instead react with kindness, compassion and generosity to other people’s plights.
I like to think that these people would be open to a conversation*** about those unexamined values, their true feelings about them, and whether their actions and words reflect what they’ve always thought they believe.
Often, what one thinks one believes has very little to do with what one’s actions proclaim.
Slightly unrelated: up thread someone qualified someone else’s comment as “ignorant.” If I understood the context correctly, the commenter meant “ill-informed,” or even “close mindded,” rather than true ignorance.
I think that people are rarely ignorant by choice (all too often time and re$ource$ limit one’s ability to broaden one’s horizons). Either way, it might behoove those of us who feel that prejudice is much too common for our peace of mind to gently educate the willfully ignorant, and to try to ease (or sllllllooowwwwwlllly pry, depending) open the thinking of the close-minded.
***As opposed to a diatribe—honey and flies, and all that jazz. (hope that makes sense)