In the last entry about Genesis press and allegations of nonpayment of royalties, a discussion began as to whether African-American romance, what some call “black romance,” is different.
Well, considering that much of the time, romance heroes and heroines are white, I’d say superficially it probably is.
One commentor stated that s/he doesn’t believe he/she relate to the racist/oppression themes that must run through black romance. Monica Jackson stated that “[t]he main complaint from racists about black romance is that it isn’t black enough. They expect a different experience and are shocked when the characters are just like them and have love affairs just like they do.”
Clearly, assuming that African-American romance is automatically going to feature victim heroines downtrodden under the weight of racism and generations of discrimination is a breathtakingly short-sighted supposition. In the black romance that I’ve read, and I admit the total is not as much as the historicals I’ve read featuring white protagonists, that hasn’t been a theme. The women have been strong, ass-kicking even, and discussions of racism didn’t enter the storyline.
However, is there a sense that romance targeted toward African-American readers maintains a patina of exclusivity that turns away readers who aren’t of the targeted group? Is it more than just where the books are placed on shelves and how the authors are categorized?
Minority culture maintains autonomy through preservation of elements unique to that culture. Language, food, social customs, sometimes religion. For Jews, it used to be Yiddish, and it’s still food and culture. And food. Did I mention food? And to anyone unfamiliar with the subtleties, it can seem bizarre, and exclusive. The same can be said for any minority, or culture you’re not familiar with.
Writing for that culture can often mean subtly including the signature elements, or piling them on to the degree that they become cliches. I’ve read both, much to my dissatisfaction: to wit, “I’m going to go home and relax with a big plate of ruglach and my cat named Oy Gevalt!”.
With African-American culture, I’m can’t state with authority what the unique elements are, but certainly a shared experience, particularly in this country, of exclusion, racism, and discrimination is in the top 3. How does that shared experience play out in books or films created for that cultural audience? Is it always a prevailing theme? Probably not.
When I consider the films I’ve seen that aim primarily towards African American audiences, there are several elements that establish cultural automony, most notably language and what linguists call “code switching”. I remember channel flipping and landing on a wedding scene in a movie wherein all the characters who were just meeting each other for the first time referred to one another as “my sister,” or “my brother.” And I don’t mean in the colloquial “brutha/sista” sense. I’d never seen that before, and couldn’t figure out if it was a unique character trait for that movie.
Sister in what? Siblings in what sense? And does that actually happen outside of the movies? And why do I feel bashful about acknowledging what I noticed in a film, and what I’ve noticed about language use among people of the same minority versus languaged used by the same people in mixed company? Language, written or spoken, changes based on who one speaks to; it’s true for me, certainly, and I can name countless examples I’ve witnessed.
Is language part of what makes African-American romance seem unique? Is it even different? Is it possible that there is a subtext, not just of acknowledged heritage but of multi-faceted shared culture, that runs through the stories?
Discussions of racism and racial differences are only productive if those doing the talking can put aside assumptions and inflammatory rhetoric to discuss the actual issues, and examine the prejudices that people hold for what they are, not what they represent.
Part of the reason I ask these questions is because much of African-American romance, until recently, operated in something of an exclusive industry, almost in a vacuum. Now that mainstream publishers have caught on, there are more options for authors who want to shop a manuscript, and who want to challenge other publishers on alleged nonpayment of royalties. But with the growth of African-American romance comes my question – is it different, or is that just misperception?
Anu439 wrote:
Why is it that nobody has these doubts when writing/reading vampires, European royality, Native Americans, Asians, or like the entire 19th century. “Accuracy†has nothing to do with what sells or embraced.
Because there’s no National Association for the Advancement of Vampiric People who would protest. (that’s a joke, folks) And some Regency readers will definitely let a writer know if there are any inaccuracies in a Regency romance.
I read an excerpt where a black heroine got out of the shower with drippig shoulder length hair…and did nothing with it! I was immediately discouraged from buying the book. Even when I wore my hair natural, I didn’t just towel off and go on my way. I assumed the writer wasn’t black, and I was right. I figured that if she couldn’t get that detail right (black women and their hair) then the heroine wasn’t believeable. So accuracy is important.
I think the argument that you have to be *pick an ethnicity/culture/gender*
to write about *pick an ethnicity/culture/gender* is utterly stupid. If such an argument holds water, then no one has any business complaining that TV and movies have no people of color in them.
With that said, I have to say that I could not finish Elizabeth Lowell’s “Tell Me No Lies.” I LOVE Elizabeth Lowell; I have most of her books in fact. But I could NOT get past the Chinese dude who kept speaking in Confucian like idioms. I know lots of wise old Asian people and I don’t know ANYONE who speaks like that. For me, it seemed like she was just exoticizing the Chinese and that completely ruined the book for me.
As Seressia said, it’s passe and trite to focus on race in IR. (Wading in, but keeping strictly to the topic of books).
I’ve been writing IRs lately and never considered using that as a theme for any of them.
In my new release, a novella, I wrote a Jewish hero. I had a Jewish male friend read it and was floored when he told me my character wasn’t Jewish enough! I asked him for suggestions, listened carefully and made changes. Then I had another Jewish guy read it and he said it was spot on.
I think that’s what you have to do if you’re not sure about cultural nuances, but it really isn’t that hard to take a little effort to make the check.
‘I reckon I need to hit you up then!’
Please do!
‘LOL, you should. What would people think if you showed up with Fabio all over you?’
Who told you I skinned Fabio? Oh, wait…
My agent is currently shopping an IR for me, and it’s with the A-list editors in NYC. I’ve read on other lists that I’m going to have a hard time selling this. It’s only been out on sub around a month, though, and I’m not the type to borrow trouble.
Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but a lot of my heroes are inspired by someone I know in real life. I find something in a man I admire and I think, ‘Yeah, I could make a romance hero out of him.’ I’m not saying I transplant a real man verbatim to the page, but in the case of Ash, I was inspired by a black man I knew. He’s a wonderful person, lives in New Jersey, and he’s a successful IT professional who is close to his family. Listening to him talk about his mama and his auntie moved me profoundly; he is a man who was raised by a pair of strong women, and he credits them utterly with the success he knows today. I wanted to honor him, I guess, by immortalizing him between the pages of a book. Not his clone, but someone who represented the qualities that impressed me. It’s also a way of living a dream too because who wouldn’t fall a little bit in love with a man like that? And I do fall in love a little bit, every time I start writing about a new hero.
‘I was inspired by a black man I knew. He’s a wonderful person, lives in New Jersey, and he’s a successful IT professional who is close to his family.’
Oh, SWEET—a geek hunk. I LOVE that.
Seressia, very few white women just towel off their hair and go. We straighten/curl, gel and spray our hair into submission too.
Racyli said:
“I think the argument that you have to be *pick an ethnicity/culture/gender*
to write about *pick an ethnicity/culture/gender* is utterly stupid.”
Stupid perhaps. But it’s easier to accept the “truth” of that character from someone of the same background, unless you do your research or run that character by someone of similar ethnicity.
The heroine’s mother in Three Wishes is Vietnamese and her father is black. The heroine and her brother in Through the Fire identify as black. The mother was based on two people I knew, and while she isn’t figured prominently, I wanted to make sure she was accurately portrayed. So it’s important to do that, or you get an Asian character spouting Confuciousisms.
Kaite – You MUST write that book. I hooked up with that guy twice in college and he TOTALLY deserves his own book. OMG, if I had the writing skills I would give him a trilogy!!! That boy just flat knew what the hell he was doing! Ahhh….Memories.
Why can you kick back and relax with a novel whose setting was around the bitter tragedy of Culloden, or the devastation of the Black Plague, or just a romance where the heroine is dreadfully poor in a time where she couldn’t just get public assistance or get a job, but when the protagonists are be of color, their HEA is deemed too “tragic�
Um… Did I say that? I did not, you know. And in fact I can’t. I don’t. The romances I’m reading right now tend toward Regency fluff and romantic mystery, with a little m/m thrown in for variety. I don’t think I would pick up a book set in any of the situations you mention, not as escapist reading. I didn’t enumerate every situation I find unromantic, across all human races and cultures, because—well, first, there’s not time enough, and second, I didn’t think that the disasters of Anglo-European culture was the topic. As long as we’re going global, though, I don’t think foot-binding in ancient China was particularly romantic, and clitoridectomy? Absolute Zero on the romance scale. I’m not big on Mormon polygamy, either, though I suppose there could possibly have been a happy, romantic household where it was seven brides for one brother.
FYI, I mostly look like my Irish ancestors, but some of my family died on the Trail of Tears. Those that survived had to erase their native identity as much as they could to survive, because if there was anything worse than being Black, it was being a “sand n——r.” Romantic? Sorry, I don’t find it so. I can’t change that just because you don’t approve. And I don’t see why I should be expected to.
Take umbrage if you must. There seems to be plenty to go around. You can have my share, if you like; I’m just not in an umbrage mood this evening.
I don’t think, therefore, that cultural differences pose an insuperable barrier, but people have to want to make the effort, and they probably won’t if they think the novel is going to be about issues which they’d rather not think about, or if they don’t consider that setting ‘romantic’.
But I could NOT get past the Chinese dude who kept speaking in Confucian like idioms. I know lots of wise old Asian people and I don’t know ANYONE who speaks like that. For me, it seemed like she was just exoticizing the Chinese and that completely ruined the book for me.
Actually, it’s quite desirable in Chinese culture to be able to pull off idiom dropping. That’s what the entire school system here is all about. You get idioms drilled into you as a child, taught to use them in everyday speech and writing. And people do. I wouldn’t say everyone, but someone who’s been paying attention to their Chinese teacher would probably be able to, in Chinese.
Exoticisation and romanticisation serve exactly the same purposes, to create a fantasy. Vampire, Werewolf, Alien and whatnot do exactly the same with their genres. Paranormals don’t deal with a gritty realistic view on being
, they deal with a fantasy, one that you have to buy into. In most cultures, the concept of “true love” as we know it and can identify with it don’t exist. The Chinese have multiple wives and concubines, others have a culture of “walking marriages”, most of Europe in the middle ages believed in Courtly Love and marriages for political gain… the list is endless. To create the Happily Ever After and the identifiable feeling of Romance, you need some fantasy and lots of tweaking. It’s not that love can’t happen, it’s merely that a love that we can identify and decide is “happy” is more difficult.
Our conecept of “Romance” is firmly tied with Western (and yes, “white”) culture. The whole one-man-one-woman-forever-and-ever business, for a start. For most of Chinese history, they’re quite happy about multiple wives (not the standard HEA) and if one took a gander at various Chinese heroes of soaps and novels and whatnot, one’d notice it’s not especially frowned upon for him to have multiple wives. Wei Xiao Bo of “Duke of Mt Deer” famously has seven wives, simultaneously, all of whom he loves very much. Various tv series feature two wives fighting over their husband and then ganging up on him afterwards. Probably not something one can export easily.
So one has to reconcile Romance with the culture one is trying to write in. If one is trying to write realistically, it’d be less of a problem, but the need for a conventional and identifiable love story with a happy ending isn’t always easily writable. It’s not easy to write honestly about a culture and write romance at the same time. Push it too far one way and you get wallpaper romance, push it too far another and, well, you get gritty, painful realism.
Most medieval stories don’t deal with Courtly Love or the state of the privies. They don’t deal with the high chances of death. Or ridiculous age differences. Or the sheer amount of tapestry one has to do. Just because they’re not around to complain about it…
I don’t mind exoticisation of my own culture (or anyone else’s, for that matter) much, to be honest. I know everyone does it, to their own cultures, at least. The British like to look back bleary eyed at King Arthur and their Golden Age, the Americans have their heroes (ala “The Patriot”), the Chinese have their world of martial arts and dresses. The French probably have pre-revolutionary France and the Japanese their samurai. Some are more stupid than others and some are more readable than others.
I personally like gritty fantasy, mud huts and magic, if you will. I read romance to be reminded that love can exist despite the difficulties reality throws at it. Though what I get more and more seems to be people who believe love can only exist in the fantasyland of their creation, between fantasycharacters without emotional reality. But that’s a different chain of thought altogether.
From what I know reasonably well to what I know less well: African American Romance (and I do know I’ll be shot down for this) has, perhaps, less potential for historicals, pirates and all the other such forays into the past. Not through any fault of their own, merely the way history has panned out. Does rule out most of the pirate/viking/regency-reading audience. Does generally rule myself out since I generally avoid contemporaries.
Equally, you probably aren’t going to be reading about hopping long-tongued Chinese Vampires anytime soon. Though do tell me, I’d love to see how they get jiggly with rigor mortis.
But then, some argue that pirates and regencies are one their way out.
If there were enough of them, other minorities would probably get their own section. Happens here, in Hong Kong, heart of Asia, “world city” (or whatever else they call the bloody place). Walk into any English bookstore and you get “Asian Interest” and “Asian fiction”. Now, whilst you might argue that it’s some vestige self-hatred from colonialisation, but it’s really more because it’s another section.
Oh, and something anyone who’s curious, OSC reviews romance: http://hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2006-09-03.shtml and I, daresay he’s not very flattering.
My book is filled with characters from all manner of ethnicities and backgrounds, but a lot of them sound very similar, and it’s because they’ve spent the past three years of their lives educated at the same college, soaking up the same campus slang and idiom and learning from the same professors. For me it would have been disingenuous to pretend that they’d picked up nothing from this period in their lives. For many people, college is as big an influence on what happens in their lives as what happened before.
But the reactions have been interesting. One reader will say, “I love that you wrote an Asian-American hero” and another will say, “he was Asian?” And then I think about a movie like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle where the filmmakers were sure they’d have to rewrite it for some white boys, because TPTB woudln’t go for minority headliners in a teen comedy. But I went to college with harolds and kumars, and if I didn’t have ethnic names or physical descriptions that indicated race, you wouldn’t know. But I think that was the filmmaker’s concern—that Hollywood would say, “well, if you aren’t going to make their race a point of the story, then why can’t they just be white?”
‘But I think that was the filmmaker’s concern—that Hollywood would say, “well, if you aren’t going to make their race a point of the story, then why can’t they just be white?†‘
And I think that skews perspective of other races. An aspect of racism, is assuming the generalizations are true about all of that race. This happens to ALL races and creeds. Being raised poor white trash, I speak from experience.
Sometimes this media is people’s first exposure to other races close up. Not everyone has a huge, diverse group of friends or a multicultural family.
When filmmakers and authors perptuate these myths, opinions are colored and expectations can be set. So when people of that race write something else, they’re told the characters aren’t ‘realistic’.
This may be part of the issue that Monica refers to: seperate markets for certain genres. The AA market is fine with the characters, because they know. So are those who run with those groups. But a large section of the market is expecting the cliches, and don’t purchase them when they don’t see it.
I personally accept that people are people, and so are characters. Mine tend to tell me who they are anyway.
What bothers me is when you have one dimensional ones. Like, you have three different women in a story and they literally read like clones—there’s no different voice, no real distinguishing characteristics that make you see different people. Particularly when it’s written in first person from several POVs.
Mmmm, Ken Watanabe… *drools slightly* I’d take me some of that. Yeah, I’m pretty egalitarian when it comes to guys. If they’re hot, they’re hot. *shrug* I’m real easy to please like that, I guess. 😆
So I really am not the only woman out here to have a serious thing for Jewish guys? Wow. Well, I’m signed up for NaNoWriMo, so maybe I’ll do 50,000 words of hot, hunky Jewish snog. Gah. I’d spend the month in some severe frustration, but oh, my. Yes. What wonderful frustration!
And you want to know something weird? I was told in my youth by my FATHER, that I could bring any man home I wanted and he would be welcomed. Black, tan, red, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, Santaree, whatever. EXCEPT for an Italian guy. I bring an Italian guy home, I deserve everything I get and I’m on my own. I was told this twice, once when I got to high school, once again when I turned 21 (with the caveat that it was my final warning—Daddy wouldn’t bother reminding me from that point on.)
Considering my Daddy grew up in the Bronx, I wonder what he saw as a child that made him feel this way? :bug: I guess it really is a subjective sort of thing, the whole who we mix with/who we don’t, isn’t it? The only slur I remember hearing in the house (aside from calling us “kraut-sprouts” or “baby mickeys” because of our German-Irish heritage) was the d-word, which I won’t even spell out here.
Perhaps this is why I have a lot of trouble understanding people who judge each other based on skin color alone—my family’s prejudices were cultural.
‘Mmmm, Ken Watanabe… *drools slightly* I’d take me some of that. Yeah, I’m pretty egalitarian when it comes to guys. If they’re hot, they’re hot. *shrug* I’m real easy to please like that, I guess.’
Ditto…if it’s pretty, it’s pretty.
‘So I really am not the only woman out here to have a serious thing for Jewish guys?’
Nope. I’m not sure what it is in particular, but yeah. Maybe it’s the Hebrew. I have a thing for accents and people who speak foreign languages. Probably stems from this guy I dated briefly who used to sing love songs to me in French. Dressed up like a pirate, no less. Gotta love Faire musicians.
Holy crap, me too! Mmmmm, so good!
I also have a thing for big dumb yankee red heads (who I like to think were raised Catholic) ala Michael Rappaport.
And I take umbrage at the assumption that there were no HEA’s for people of color.
Me too. I’ve been toying with a couple of ideas for writing an historical with black protagonists . . . there are many examples of successful, free blacks in England and France. Lots that could be done with those characters. I’m deep in the middle of rewrites for my second books and plotting my third, but I’m SERIOUSLY going to pitch an 18th century romance with a black hero and heroine as my fourth book.
And I take umbrage at the assumption that there were no HEA’s for people of color.
I’ve got proof a HEA was possible: during the Civil War era, one of my ancestors – a French immigrant to Canada – married a Cree woman. We’ve got pictures of them, young and old, and I must say that they look unusually happy for people who are having to stand still for several minutes for a photograph.
‘. . . there are many examples of successful, free blacks in England and France. Lots that could be done with those characters. I’m deep in the middle of rewrites for my second books and plotting my third, but I’m SERIOUSLY going to pitch an 18th century romance with a black hero and heroine as my fourth book.’
Kudos. I think this is an area of historicals that is long overdue.
Seressia, very few white women just towel off their hair and go. We straighten/curl, gel and spray our hair into submission too.
Crap. Why didn’t anybody tell me? I knew I was doing something wrong…
‘Crap. Why didn’t anybody tell me? I knew I was doing something wrong…’
I have waist length baby fine straight hair. My styling routine consists of rubbing in leave-in conditioner, brushing it, glaring at it, then walking out the door. It dries in about half an hour and pretty much just hangs there. But I like it.
As for interracial…if there are books featuring interracial couples who don’t have Race As The Main Issue (which, frankly is just silly in this day and age), I haven’t seen them.
BEYOND A SHADOW (a December release) will be out at the end of November, and features a white heroine and a black hero – and neither character is correctly portrayed on the cover, so readers not knowing this is an interracial romance will get a bit of a surprise!
All these women jonesing for Jewish guys . . . where were you when I was in college? That’s what I want to know.
The romance I just finished writing (and am editing) has a Jewish guy as its hero. Not neurosis-free, but hardly incapacitated by his neuroses. He’s certainly not modeled after Woody Allen, that’s for certain. And the only reason I made him Jewish was I wanted him to have a Jewish mom 😉
After reading this post and the one before it, I’ve made the following observation: It seems that a big problem for AA books reaching wider audiences is that not enough people know about them. As an African American author, I need to reach out more.
Yes, there are some out there who aren’t interested in reading black books. I’m not worried about those people. If a reader doesn’t want to read a book based on the race of the characters or my race, that’s her problem, not mine. I’m also not interested in arguing over the intracacies of race. I’m interested in action and communication. I want to move forward. I’m interested in communicating with the readers who do want to expand their horizons, who are curious, but don’t know where to begin.
In the interest of taking action, I’ll recommend some black authors you might want to check out. If you don’t want to invest with your cash, then check books out from the library.
Zane: top erotica author
Noire: urban erotica author
Beverly Jenkins: AA Romance historicals
Francis Ray: AA Romance
Donna Hill: AA Romance
Niobia Bryant: AA Romance
Steven Barnes: Sci-Fi/Spec
Tananarive Due: Spec/Horror
Brandon Massey: Horror/Suspense
L.A. Banks: (Great Vampire Huntress series)
Sharon Cullars: IR Romance
Kimberla Lawson Roby: Urban Comtemporary
Carl Weber: Urban Contemporary
Eric Jerome Dickey: Comtemporary
And my personal favorite: Octavia Butler. If you want to read an excellent vampire story, pick up Fledgling today! And Kindred is mind-blowing!
If you want more suggestions, I’d be more than happy to share.
Ooh… Thank you! Who would you recommend for romantic comedy? I am hopelessly addicted to humor, I’m afraid.
Thanks for the list of authors & genres, Ms. Knight. I copied & printed the list.
Humor is harder, must come naturally, I think.
Reon Delaudat
I’m funny too, but not in a slap-stick way, more snarky.
I would say I prefer a more tongue-in-cheek humor. For instance, the humorous authors I like are Jane Austen and Terry Pratchett. Words as opposed to action, I suppose. There’s a lot a so-called humor out there that I don’t find funny at all (esp. in Chic Lit.) so it’s very difficult to feed my need, so to speak.
‘There’s a lot a so-called humor out there that I don’t find funny at all (esp. in Chic Lit.) so it’s very difficult to feed my need, so to speak.’
Same here. I like wit, puns, wiseacre comments. Monica, is that what you mean by snarky?
I read an excerpt where a black heroine got out of the shower with drippig shoulder length hair…and did nothing with it! I was immediately discouraged from buying the book. Even when I wore my hair natural, I didn’t just towel off and go on my way. I assumed the writer wasn’t black, and I was right. I figured that if she couldn’t get that detail right (black women and their hair) then the heroine wasn’t believeable. So accuracy is important.
Heh, I knew my hypocrisy would bite me in the ass. I recently heard about a romance in which the English heroine grew up in India. Even if I had been inclined to read such a story—which I’m not—I’ve seen enough comments about the liberties the author takes in cultivating the heroine’s exoticization that I know I’d grit my teeth through the whole thing. Other people feel the same way about how things familiar to them are portrayed.
I agree with you that accuracy is important to the integrity of a story. But that’s a reader’s preference and an author’s commitment to her work. It has nothing to do with the ultimate success of the story. That story about the English heroine from India will prolly satisfy many readers—maybe the book that you picked up and put down did too—because it’s either being marketed to those who either don’t know about the inaccuracies and don’t care or who know about them but still love the fantasy.
It’s like Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Most of them are so bastardized they bear only the most vague resemblance to the real stuff. But only the people in the know notice, much less care about the difference. Everybody else is just happy to satisfy the craving.
But yes, I agree that solid research is key to a good story.
I don’t really know. I can’t tell about my own writing and I never set out to be funny, that’s just what other people say, sometimes to my surprise.
I was trying to be all scary and wrote a HORROR story and this is what a reviewer wrote.
Veteran writer Monica Jackson, loved by her many fans for her quirky sense of humor, outdoes herself in “The Ultimate Diet” a tale of one sister’s quest for the perfect body that has hilarious results.
–Review
I take it she/he wasn’t scared.
Also, thank you kiku for the recs! I’ve written them down.
Now that’s funny.
Christine, I would suggest Dancing on the Edge of the Roof by Sheila Williams.
Amanda, you’re quite welcome.
I forgot to mention some good mystery writers:
Paula Woods
Pamela Thomas-Graham
Angela Henry
Monica, hehehe.
And where can I get this title, Monica?
Online, or you can order it at any bookstore. It’s out in mass-market now, cheaper.
Oh, Mr. Right Now will be out in mass-market in November.
Becoming a vampire—the ultimate diet. Love it.
The one thing I do find funny, is that every once in a while, oodles of readers will take umbrage over “outsider” encouragements of romance novel stereotypes, or they will get up in arms about the sexual content of their romances, but when it comes to topics (among many others) such as this one, or even the debate of historical accuracy vs wallpaper historicals, or setting books outside of Regency England, or writing the same character types and cliched plots over and over, most readers skew towards what’s easy: ignoring AA romances and their authors, buying wallpaper historicals by the pounds, gobbling up Regency Historicals and “feisty” heroines and “rakish” heroes. It seems as though the romance genre as a whole prefers the bland, easy route, instead of variety and trying new things.
And Tonda/Kalen, I’m looking forward to your proposed romance!
Shay, I’m looking forward to it also. I’d love to see some more variety too.
But I truly hope publishers will start categorizing the AA and MC categories, distributes and maarkets by the race of the characters rather than by author as they do now.
It would be wonderful welcoming these new authors to our niche.