Bitchery ScholarDr. Frantz sent me a link to Erica Jong’s call to arms from an April 2007 Publisher’s Weekly directed at talented but marginalized female writers:
Critics have trouble taking fiction by women seriously unless they represent some distant political struggle or chic ethnicity…. But deep down, the same old prejudice prevails. War matters; love does not. Women are destined to be undervalued as long as we write about love…. We may glibly say that love makes our globe spin, but battles make for blockbusters and Pulitzers.
Jong (I just typo’d “Jung” – oops!) doesn’t necessarily offer battle advice, though she does offer some possible reasons why American women writers are marginalized based on subject matter. But there’s no path to eradicating the prejudice.
I would like to see the talented new breed of American women writers—my daughter’s generation—protest their ghettoization. We need a new wave of feminism to set things right. But we’d better find a new name for it because like all words evoking women, the term feminism has been debased and discarded. Let’s celebrate our femaleness rather than fear it. And let’s mock the old-fashioned critics who dismiss us for thinking love matters. It does.
Certainly, as Dr. Frantz points out, Jong’s call for action matches Robin’s assertions as to why Romance matters, and Laura’s examination of Rev. Melinda’s sermon on romance novels, love, and personal sense of worth.
Now that is a lot of reading-and-thinking material for a day off, eh? I think what makes me most pleased and causeth me to bounceth in my chair with glee is the growing number of vocal people who eloquently and intellectually defend and discuss romance novels as being important and equally worth critical analysis as any other subject of literature, despite or because of the many facets of prejudice leveled against them. It’s one thing to point to the sales figures; it’s another to be able to classify and examine individually the literary, historical and societal strengths of romance as a genre, and the latter defense of the genre is very very powerful – sort of the literary analysis equivalent of throwing the tea in the harbor.
Coming late to this, but …
But I do think one would study it in a very different way than classical Texts. There is a certain facelessness to genre fiction that makes the study of individual books more difficult
Uh-oh. I take it that you’ve never studied popular fiction of any kind. Because for some reason or other, people have managed to write loads of books and articles, sometimes even whole encyclopedias (okay, half of an encyclopedia), on individual books of genre fiction.
Laura, you study this question at a professional level. Do you think we in the industry restrict ourselves if we don’t work to try to convince people we’re writing something more than genre literature?
Darlene, as an academic and writer I don’t really see a problem with the label “genre fiction”. I don’t see myself as writing mainstream literature; I write within a specific set of rules or conventions, and these are the parameters of one specific genre. And no, this does not automatically result in less diversity. Or are all sonnets the same? Or all classical tragedies?
I don’t think the label “genre fiction” or “popular fiction” is the problem. Other genres of popular fiction have gained a wide acceptance in the past years (e.g., mysteries and fantasy) and have been the focus of a number of good, insightful academic studies. For some reason or other that did not happen with romance.
So the problem is, as Laura has already pointed out, the perception that romance is “fluff” and “soft-porn for women” and that therefore it’s perfectly okay to make wild generalisations about romance. Even today there are academics who think they can write about romance without ever having read a romance novel (*sigh* and I met one of them last week). Luckily enough, the tide is changing, and parts of academia have begun to take the genre more serious.
>>I write within a specific set of rules or conventions, and these are the parameters of one specific genre. And no, this does not automatically result in less diversity. Or are all sonnets the same? Or all classical tragedies?<<
Excellent point, and worth remembering the next time I hear “They’re all the same!” I know they’re not all the same, but trying to explain that (in simple terms) to someone who doesn’t read romance is difficult.
And simply because something is ‘mere’ entertainment does not mean it has to be badly written, badly edited, badly bound and covered, and badly marketed. I wish that some *inside* the genre seemed to respect it more.
True. But a lot of this is outside an individual author’s control. She may have proof-read her novel and sent in detailed suggestions for the cover only to see it come back with errors introduced during type-setting and a cover which makes her recoil in horror but which won’t be changed because the art and/or marketing department(s) are convinced that man-titty sells. And the pressure on many romance writers to produce frequently may also affect the quality. Some authors can produce quantity and quality, but not all.
What, in your opinion, are five great romance genre novels that meet your personal criteria for great literature?
I hope I’m not going to sound evasive, but I’m not going to give you a list. For a start I haven’t got a definition of ‘great literature’, other than that it should be thought-provoking, entertaining, provide some insight into the social context in which it was written and be ‘well-written’ (but that last one is very subjective, because although obviously no-one wants to see typos or malapropisms – incidentally, I just saw this youtube video about the ‘impotence of proofreading’ and it’s very funny – tastes can vary). Because tastes vary, there usually has to be some kind of consensus that the novel really is ‘great’. I think we’re heading in that direction with Crusie’s oeuvre because there were enough of us eager to try to get together a collection of essays just about her novels. I think it’ll take time for scholars studying romance to build up a core of authors who are often studied and generally acknowledged to be ‘great’. We’re really only just beginning to do the necessary work, and there are so many romances we haven’t yet read or re-read. I tend to notice more of the layers in a romance the more often I re-read it. I’ve been re-reading Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels for example, and the second time around I spotted symbolism which I hadn’t seen the first time. So I’m sure there are times when I fail to realise the extent of a book’s ‘greatness’ simply because it’s too much fun/too emotionally absorbing and I’m going along for the ride and not noticing all the other levels on which it functions. And similarly, but in a negative way, there may be times when a book is well-written and has merit, but because I dislike something about it, I skim it or even refuse to read it, simply on the basis of what I’ve read about it. One doesn’t get the choice to do that when one’s told what the set texts are in school or at university 😉
It’s also difficult to compare category romances with War and Peace because their lengths are so different. There are some Harlequin Mills & Boons which are real gems but maybe in some ways it would be better to compare them to the sonnets that Sandra mentioned rather than to some of the longer, weightier prose tomes of great literature. I’m fascinated by category romances and there are many I think are ‘great’. I’m hoping to do more work on them in the future.
And the pressure on many romance writers to produce frequently may also affect the quality. Some authors can produce quantity and quality, but not all.
Oh, I definitely agree, Laura, which is why I didn’t say “authors” specifically in that little rant. Authors, publishers, editors, etc., including—to some extent readers—enable the IMO too low standard for production values in genre Romance. Ultimately, I think the buck stops with the publisher, who IMO is MOST responsible. But I’m not convinced that everyone else in the chain is free of some responsibility, either.
I think romantic love and sex (and the possibility of a HEA) are pretty much integral to being a human being, right?
No, seriously: I’m not trying to argue that a person is less of a person if they aren’t married or if they don’t have kids or whatever, but love and sex are huge driving forces in most people’s lives, right? This is like – not to get all pretentious and stuff, so please excuse the capitals – but it’s part of the Human Experience (TM).
And I’m preaching to the choir here, aren’t I. Um.
So why is a book somehow less worthy if it deals almost exclusively with those concepts? I mean, we can say most people will experience sexual desire from puberty until they are dead. So sexual desire is a big huge part of being human, and fiction that explores that part of being human is just as important as any other driving human urge, correct?
And romantic love (and the Happily Ever After) is about how we connect with other people, y’know, how we’re not just monkeys or dogs or horses who go into heat and get knocked up to continue the species. We are people, and love can be terrifying and glorious and savage, and it can be deep and calm and it can last for decades, and it can be bittersweet and worth all the pain it brings. And dude, I’m a sucker for romance that changes a character’s world, for better or worse. (Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a thing for creepy codependent romances. I. Um. Own my shameful lit-kinks!) And love can have a happy ending!
Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m wondering if maybe that’s where the prejudice is coming from—the idea that romance ends on a happy (or optimistic) note. I come from a really geeky, scifi-fantasy background, so you’ll excuse me, but: could this be the problem? I mean, romance in other mediums – like scifi and fantasy and literary fiction and thrillers and horror and whatnot – exists. It’s often an integral part of the plot, right? But it’s either ill-fated romance, or it’s the kind of romance where someone’s partner proves their love or their worth as a human being by sacrificing themselves. Or it’s the kind of romance where the happy ending is justified because yes, they’re together, but they’ve also saved the world or blown up the Russian spies or killed the demon or had some serious angst. I mean, just to take one example, most Stephen King books do have the situation where a man and a woman survive and they are romantically interested in each other, but that man and woman have been through five hundred pages of fire and blood and rotting eyeballs and all of their families being decapitaed or disembowled or whatnot, so you can’t really accuse them of getting a Happy Ending ™.
(I. Um. Not to mock other genres. I love other genres too!)
And I think that’s – hm. I mean, the ultimate goal in romance is your HEA. And I think part of the prejudice against Romance, as a genre, is coming from this idea that a romantic happily-ever-after is not enough, in itself, to fuel a story. Or the idea is that it shouldn’t be the ultimate goal, it shouldn’t be the McGuffin that your characters are working for, if that makes sense. I think somewhere along the line people decided that it was. Hm. Selfish, maybe? To have a character who wants to fall in love and live happily ever after, and is willing to spend time and effort and energy to achieve that goal? Because obviously your characters’ main priorities should be to stop demons from eating people or keep the Russian spies from poisoning the president’s toothpaste or blah blah blah; and then, when they’ve done something suitably heroic, they can be rewarded with a romantic relationship, but it’s not something that they should actively want or seek out or work for, if that makes sense. (And that kind of romance usually feels tacked-on and gratuitous and out of the blue.)
(I don’t know, maybe I’m totally missing the point. If so, feel free to tell me to get my head out of my butt.)
~And I’m frankly not sure how much *extra* time this takes, because a lot of it seems more about attitude than specific actions.~
Yes and no.
I couldn’t agree with you more that it’s a lot about attitude. It is, it is, it is.
But it’s also about going over the same ground again and again. And again and again. It gets old, and it gets frustrating to feel CONSTANTLY compelled or obligated to defend and explain. And that does take time, and energy, and at least for me, a certain amount of restraining the desire to say fuck it. Just fuck it. I write what I write. Take it or leave it.
I’m not Austen. I’m not Tolstoy. I’m a fairly talented writer of popular fiction who chose the Romance genre because I believe in its core message. That love matters most. And the hope of finding it, working for it and attaining it—and enjoying it—sustains us.
That’s it, and that’s pretty much all.
I can’t control what others write in or out of the genre, or the quality thereof. Or how publishers publish or cover art is used. I sure can’t control perception of an entire genre. I control what I write, and I write what I believe.
What an interesting discussion, thank you, everyone. (I’m a different Molly from the one who posted up-thread, BTW.)
Personally I agree that the covers of romance novels have an awful lot to do with the perception of them, especially considering the number of people who feel qualified to comment without actually reading one (or after reading one crappy Cassie Edwards their grandmother gave them, or whatever.)
But the covers. My god. People bitch about the clinch, but I have to say I can’t think of a single romance cover which I would consider actually GOOD design. There seems to only be a range between “breathtakingly awful” and “inoffensive.” Like it or not we do judge based on visuals and the visuals the industry uses are sending a certain message, which has got to turn off, or at least fail to attract, almost all younger readers.
I would love, by the way, to see examples of what any of you consider good romance covers. I wish I could think of some.
Anyway, aside from that, if you ask me romance is absolutely sneered at because of the prejudice against “women’s” themes, love story and HEA, etc. But the second main argument I hear against them is that they’re stupid. That reading a romance novel is for people (women) who don’t have the brainpower to handle “real” fiction which is supposedly messier, less formulaic, written at a higher level…although this is totally false as a description of the whole genre it is true that there are some pretty freaking stupid romances around as well as smart ones, and that they sell.
Are they stupider than the worst of other genres? I doubt it, but hell if I know, I’m not interested enough in mystery or scifi to do a survey of their dregs. But that’s the rep.
Maybe the problem is that because of the sexist mindset, romance novels would have to work twice as hard quality-wise as mystery to get equal respect, and they don’t.
Sometimes I wonder if clinch covers aren’t just a huge “fuck you, go away” to literary critics & snobs anyway.
I control what I write, and I write what I believe.
Which, in the end, is what counts, IMO. Because as much as I bitch and moan about what “the market” is offering, I actually don’t think that any market trend, any publisher priority, or any editor’s preference NECESSITATES bad books (contributes to, perhaps, but doesn’t create outright). Great books can be written quickly, under great market pressure, and within strict limits. Those conditions may not be optimal, and they may have detrimental effects on the genre in general (e.g. by privileging quantity over quality), but no author is coerced into writing Romance; it’s a voluntary tour of duty, after all.
I lovelovelove the cover for Chicklet says: July 6, 2007 at 7:06 am Angela says: July 6, 2007 at 9:50 am Angela says: July 6, 2007 at 9:56 am Kerry Allen says: July 6, 2007 at 11:06 am Laura Vivanco says: July 6, 2007 at 12:23 pm snarkhunter says: July 6, 2007 at 5:20 pm snarkhunter says: July 6, 2007 at 5:29 pm Monica says: July 6, 2007 at 6:38 pm Seressia says: July 6, 2007 at 9:03 pm Robin says: July 6, 2007 at 9:13 pm Monica says: July 6, 2007 at 9:54 pm Robin says: July 6, 2007 at 10:42 pm Monica says: July 6, 2007 at 11:06 pm iffygenia says: July 7, 2007 at 1:28 am Angela says: July 7, 2007 at 1:47 am iffygenia says: July 7, 2007 at 2:01 am Robin says: July 7, 2007 at 2:27 am Robin says: July 7, 2007 at 2:40 am Laura Vivanco says: July 7, 2007 at 3:46 am Angela says: July 7, 2007 at 4:02 am Angela says: July 7, 2007 at 4:04 am iffygenia says: July 7, 2007 at 4:56 am Robin says: July 7, 2007 at 8:05 am iffygenia says: July 7, 2007 at 11:15 pm Seressia says: July 8, 2007 at 8:40 am Robin says: July 8, 2007 at 8:09 pm Seressia says: July 8, 2007 at 10:35 pm Monica says: July 9, 2007 at 2:18 am Robin says: July 9, 2007 at 3:43 am azteclady says: July 9, 2007 at 3:58 am Sarah Frantz says: July 9, 2007 at 7:13 am
Let’s try that link again, shall we?
The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes.
I’ve only been typing these things since 2001. Blame it on my Ewok fingers.
Feminism at it’s heart only applies to white women. Black women are even more marginalized because they are female and they are black. Latinos and Asians can “pass” if they “assimilate” into “white” culture, but for most white people, black people will always be “The Other”.
White women fight against this patriarchal society—the white male—which is why the romance genre is gloated over by so many of its fans and writers (it’s for women, by women, ergo, we’ve “beat” patrimony with this genre). But black women are left out in the cold because they deal with a white patriarchal and matriarchal society. The very white women who marched to defend THEIR rights lay down their arms and call the battle conquered when the male power structure gives way to WHITE women.
Hell, from the entire year I’ve been in this online community, the VERY second someone appears “intolerant” of erotic romance or menages or gay romance, everyone’s hackles are up, claws come out and the words “bigoted”, “Conservative”, “Christian”, “Right-Wing” fly about the blogosphere as quickly as some people tend to claim Monica brandishes the word “racist”.
The fact that people either ignore or challenge Monica or anyone pointing this out or even the negativity shown towards WoC feminism from white feminists is the proof in the pudding that for all the so-called “Liberalism” and “Feminism” floating around this website and others, the buck stops when it comes to marginalized women(or even people) of color.
And it’s ironic that my code word is “black45”. Maybe people need to check out websites such as racialicious.com, rachelstavern.com, angryasianman.com, antiracistparent.com and come off their high horses.
And oh yeah, I agree with what Monica says. Everyone is so apt to defend this genre against marginalization by outsiders while marginalizing anything that doesn’t conform to “white” American mindsets (and that includes the stereotypes in Harlequin Presents, “Native American” romances, fantasy Scottish romances, the stubbornly cavalier disregard of history, etc). You may think books like HP’s are all fun and games and “fantasy”, but they are ethnic stereotypes no matter which way you slice it, and stereotypes people of color or of non-WASP extraction have been fighting against from the media for decades.
And um, if you’ve been following Monica and other black romance authors, you’d be aware that they’ve spent their money on the RWA and have submitted their books to the RITAs to NEVER final and for their voices to be completely shut out of the organization that is supposed to embody every author and book who uses the word “romance”.
Maybe they aren’t screaming loudly enough to be heard through the glass ceiling the “fortunate” romance writers are proudly standing upon.
Najida, I printed out your comment and taped it to the edge of my monitor. You’re the kind of reader I’d want on the other end of my book.
And as a reader, a big “what she said.”
Feminism at it’s heart only applies to white women.
Bell hooks writes that
For years I witnessed the reluctance of white feminist thinkers to acknowledge the importance of race. I witnessed their refusal to divest of white supremacy, their unwillingness to acknowledge that an anti-racist feminist movement was the only political foundation that would make sisterhood be a reality. And I witnessed the revolution in consciousness that occurred as individual women began to break free of denial, to break free of white supremacist thinking. These awesome changes restore my faith in feminist movement’ (2000: 58)
So I don’t think it’s that there was a problem with feminism as an idea (as defined as ‘a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression’ (hooks 2000: 1), rather the problem stemmed from the fact that many white feminists while campaigning against one form of exploitation and oppression couldn’t see other forms of exploitation and oppression and didn’t draw out the parallels between them.
Similarly, as the RWA fulfills its mission to ‘advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy’ it needs to be aware of ways in which it may be marginalising particular groups of romance writers. I’m not in the RWA, so I haven’t got much knowledge of how it functions, but I suspect that many/most members would be upset to think that black romance writers are being excluded. At the same time, they may not be aware that the exclusion is taking place or of the processes by which it happens. I’m not saying that I know the processes either – like I said, I’m not in the RWA and I don’t know very much about it, apart from what I’ve read on a few blogs and websites. But clearly many black romance authors are feeling unwelcome in the RWA and/or feel that their works would be discriminated against during the judging for the RITAs, and I think that’s something the RWA needs to tackle.
that includes the stereotypes in Harlequin Presents, “Native American†romances, fantasy Scottish romances, […] they are ethnic stereotypes no matter which way you slice it, and stereotypes people of color or of non-WASP extraction have been fighting against from the media for decades.
Yes, there are definitely some racial sterotypes which are used repeatedly within the genre. The Smart Bitches have made their opinion of many of them quite clear. For example, here’s a quote from their review of Red Hawk’s Woman:
It’s an Indian romance. Of COURSE the heroine is going to be white, and of COURSE she’s going to have red hair. The slightly rebellious may write a blonde heroine, and the really, really crazy might have a brunette or even a half-breed heroine, but I’m pretty sure that if you try to go beyond the bounds and write a historical romance between, say, two Native American characters or (SHOCK! HORROR!) a black person and a Native American, the Indian Romance Mob will send Tony out to break your kneecaps (or possibly to throw you into the trunk of his Caddy) and remind you of your place.
So there are some readers, writers and reviewers in the romance community who are aware of the issue of racism in the romance genre and the romance community.
Whether we’re all doing enough, whether we’re aware of the problem enough of the time, whether we notice the racism by omission as much as the more overt types of racist stereotypes, and how many of us there are, are questions to which I don’t know the answers.
[I was quoting from bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge MA: South End Press).]
I feel like there are two separate discussions going on here, so I think I’ll post two comments.
Angela, maybe as a white woman I lack the ethos to respond appropriately to the charge that “feminism is for white women,” but I’m going to try.
To a certain extent you’re right. Traditionally, feminism has been dominated by and limited to issues peculiar to white, upper-middle-class women. In its Second Wave form, it was not always open to the real concerns of non-white or working-class women (and that’s working-class women of any race—don’t get me started on the situation of day-care workers in this country). It was a movement supported and driven by white academics—many of whom were not consciously racist, but were exclusionary simply because they didn’t think about the real problems of non-white or working-class women.
But that doesn’t mean that feminism, at its most basic level, which demands equality for *everyone*, is solely a white movement, and the Third Wave, at least, struggled to try and find the inclusiveness that the Second Wave forgot. I admit that I always get frustrated by black women who dismiss feminism as “only for white women,” even while they espouse what are clearly feminist principles. Is it merely a matter of terminology? Is it a question of finding a new word, one that isn’t laden with such emotion and judgment? Or is it a question of trying to find a way to force a redefinition of feminism that is much more aware of the different and, in my opinion, more difficult situations of black, Latino, Asian, or Middle-Eastern (or whatever) women today, who face both racism and sexism. Can we find that redefinition and salvage the idea of feminist equality?
B/c, I assure, when I espouse my feminism, I don’t just mean I want it for me and for all the other white girls I know. I want it for every woman—maybe especially for those who face the double bind of racism and sexism on a daily basis.
My little feminist rant over, I do want to say that I think Angela had some fair questions about the response to Monica’s charge (and Monica also had a fair point).
And it’s not just romance, either. I’m often a bit confused by bookstores that have an entirely separate section for “African-American” fiction. Is the segregation necessary? Are you afraid white folks will have their precious little worlds confused if they accidentally read a book by a black man? Or do you think that African-American readers only want to read books by other African-Americans? I don’t know. It just annoys me.
Whenever we get on the discussion of romance versus Great Literatoooor, I find my teeth being set on edge by the utter lack of definition. What on earth do we mean by “literature”? I have the feeling the definition of literature is the same as the definition of porn—“we know it when we see it.”
This bothers me because my work focuses on the nineteenth century’s version of Harlequin Presents—sentimental poetry. It’s no longer considered great literature, and yet sentimentality was a crucial part of literary history. Dickens wrote sentimental literature, for heaven’s sake. But, as one critic (I’m blanking out on who—I’ve got 200 library books in my office. Ask them.) said, we read Dickens now in spite of his sentimentality, rather than for it, as they did in his own time.
Dickens is one of the authors I turn to when the discussion turns to literature. He was wildly popular, wrote for cash, and yet he’s considered great today. Why? What has made him transcendant—everyone would accept Dickens as literature, and just about everyone’s probably heard of him—while someone like Mary Elizabeth Braddon or even Wilkie Collins have not managed to “transcend”?
This is a very muddled comment. Bah.
My other thought, and it comes up every single time we turn to romance vs. lit fic, is—what do you do with a novel like A. S. Byatt’s Possession? It won the Booker Prize. It’s literary fiction in a very literal sense—it’s fiction about literature. And yet, at its very very heart, it’s a love story. A dual love story, at that. I’d even call it a romance novel, were I in the mood.
What makes Possession a romance novel/not a romance novel?
I have made myself scarce mainly because I’m tired of being the only black woman speaking up in the topic of race in online romance.
I see Angela is here tho’. Hi, gurl!
Generally in discussions that involve romance and race there are thoughtful comments, as most of the ones here are.
But you must realize that it’s taboo in this society for blacks to speak out against injustice towards us. That’s why one of MLK’s right hand men, Jesse Jackson, who is one of the few left who speak out, is so hated by whites. They don’t listen to what he says, there is only the gut reaction of hatred towards a black person speaking out on black issues.
I get beat on for an activist point of view towards blacks with few realizing that just because I’m the only black person there with the guts to raise that point of view among nonblacks doesn’t mean I’m alone in my opinion.
I’m aware of the realities of publishing, but those realities are screwed as far as black authors.
The prejudice towards romance works on both sides of the divide. As a black romance writer, I feel it particularly hard from without the genre, but also from within the genre. All the prejudices folks say are visited on romance are also visited on black authors within the genre.
So since you readily say you don’t mean to do it against blacks, you can see how subtle the denigration towards romance is without the genre as a whole. They don’t mean it either. They do, but they really don’t. That means they don’t do it consciously and don’t appreciate being accused of being prejudiced against women, of course.
Does that make romance prejudice invalid? Romance says doing the same thing against blacks makes it invalid—as long as you don’t mean it and do it intentionally, right?
There are other genres with formulaic covers, popular writers who don’t fit the accepted definition of “good writers” a la Connie Mason, and whose genres stick to a formula (what mystery have you read lately that doesn’t include a murder and a solution?), yet are more respected than romance.
Is that not literature’s fault since they don’t do it on purpose?
And it makes it only worse the way romance as a whole, the RWA, readers, other authors (check out Karen’s survey for how often the few black authors who responded say they feel dismissed by white readers and authors), the online sites and blogs, diss black romance writers for the most part.
Any denigration towards other sectors of romance, erotica for instance, is met with much more passion. Degrading and denigrating black romance is a matter of routine and even worth an eye roll here or there if brought up.
We had one of our writers pass away, a young woman who had written six romances, mainly romantic suspense, published by a major publisher. This writer joined and participated in he places for romance writers, and had a website and a blog, but few romance readers knew who she was. The major romance online venues, such as AAR, never bothered to notice or review her. Six books! I can’t imagine a white romance writer being regarded in the same way after six books from a major publisher. Our writer was unknown in romance after having six books published by a major publisher, only because she was black. There can be other excuses raised, but you know as well as me that’s the reality.
So the prejudice against romance is wrong, but it’s also a little bit of poetic justice in it, wouldn’t you say?
Speaking as someone who posted comments on the AJC article and blogged about it, I think it’s important to illuminate those with opinions in the Dark Ages.
I think the calls to arms for respect for the romance genre is admirable, I really do. However, I think you should realize your house is made of glass before you chuck that stone.
I’m not sure how we can dare approach the problems outside the genre, especially when we have to step over the quagmires and black holes (no pun intended) within the genre.
Y’all go ahead. Run with it. For me, I’m kinda feeling what Nora Roberts said:
“But it’s also about going over the same ground again and again. And again and again. It gets old, and it gets frustrating to feel CONSTANTLY compelled or obligated to defend and explain. And that does take time, and energy, and at least for me, a certain amount of restraining the desire to say fuck it.”
And it’s not just romance, either. I’m often a bit confused by bookstores that have an entirely separate section for “African-American†fiction. Is the segregation necessary? Are you afraid white folks will have their precious little worlds confused if they accidentally read a book by a black man? Or do you think that African-American readers only want to read books by other African-Americans? I don’t know. It just annoys me.
I actually think it’s a by-product of the rise of ethnic studies within academia, what was initially seen to be a protected rather than marginalized space. I live in what is likely the most liberal area of the country (Northern CA), and I can tell you that EVERYONE has their own shelf in our bookstores. That doesn’t mean the dynamic won’t be different in other geographical areas, but I think the rise of special shelving was to protect a) the niche market, and b) the cultural integrity of groups who were similarly fighting for specialized academic departments and FTE appointments.
The thing is, though, that I think there are differences between a) how AA authors are treated by the industry b) shelving practices c) the books themselves and d) reader responses. Not that there aren’t crossover aspects of the analysis, but I don’t think the same dynamic is at work in every part of the race and Romance puzzle.
For example, even if publishers initially wanted to meet what they perceived as a niche market by creating separate lines for AA authors and not simply racially exclude them, the effects of the exclusion have clearly been discriminatory. Clearly. I very much see the AA author situation as one of outright discrimination that is no longer protecting AA Romance, but is instead marginalizing it based solely on race. Is this racist? Opinions will differ on that conclusion, depending, for example, on whether one requires a certain level of intent on the part of the discriminator.
As to race within the books—one of the points Angela raised—that’s a much more complicated deal, IMO. For example, I’ve done a ton of work on Indian captivity narratives, one of the major precursors to sentimental fiction and Romance. The purported aim of these narratives was to racially, religiously, culturally, and/or geographically separate and denigrate Native Americans from Anglo Americans (initially to validate Puritan settlement and later to promote Manifest Destiny). Ironically, though, the narratives often undermined the very differences they were trying to draw, especially those based on race. Native American Romances, on the other hand, seem to begin with the premise of making the “other” not-other, but the eroticization/exoticization process (aka process of imaginative colonization) works, IMO, to further otherize Native American characters. So yeah, those Romances are heavily published, but they UTTERLY FAIL as examples of cultural diversity in the genre in any serious or real way. *NOTE: I’m not talking about every Romance novel that features a non- white character, but rather those subgenres of Romance characterized by the “noble savage” or “billionaire sheikh,” etc.*
Then there’s the question of why the genre so easily mainstream these Native American and sheikh Romances but doesn’t AA Romances (or many interracial Romances, which is probably the most accurate corollary here). That question to me boils down to why certain cultures/races are eroticized in that Romance novel way (which is often so deeply offensive and horrifying). Which in turn leads to the question of how many real sheikhs are running around the US? What is the population of Native Americans relative to African Americans?
Isn’t it easier to eroticize an “other” you know much less about—to virtually create them as imaginative constructs? Is it any coincidence that the physical desecration of the Native American nations heralded a nostalgic mytholigization of the “noble savage”?
Thankfully, AA Romance isn’t the eroticized mess that, say, Red Hawk’s Woman is. So on one level its marginalization seems completely baffling and racially discriminatory. But at the same time, I wonder if the same readers who snap up Red Hawk’s Woman are going to read AA Romance? Because I’m a reader who will much more readily read AA Romance than Red Hawk’s Woman, and so I’m guessing that negative association works in reverse, too. And I’m thinking that but for the marginalization of AA Romance, it WOULD be much more widely read, at least by those readers who aren’t into the exoticized/eroticized imaginatively colonized Romance “other.”
I think it was Angela who made a comment on blog, or was it Barbara B? They said that publishers had done the work of separating black fiction from the rest so nonblacks didn’t have to think about it. It’s naturally avoided. The comment rang really true to me.
It goes back to the fact that folks don’t diss blacks intentionally, but they do diss us. Does that make it better? Not really.
At least it doesn’t seem better to you when done to romance.
I call BS to the statement that other ethnicities are separated the same way blacks are. There might be a Hispanic or Asian studies shelves, even a Judaism section, but romance, mysteries and all other books by Hispanics, Asians and Jews aren’t thrown on those shelves nor are most romances, say by Asian writers, only marketed to other Asians. They don’t have racially based imprints. There might be language based imprints, but that’s hardly the same thing.
I do agree that the ethnicity within romance does depend on who’s eroticized. Fake half British Lord sheiks are sexy to some white chicks as are mythical (usually half-white) Indian savages.
JR Ward’s thuggish vamps can be fantasy material, same thing, but marrying a real black guy for one’s HEA raises considerably more complications than marrying a white fantasy vamp or shapeshifter who at least, is still white.
The thought of marrying a black guy intrudes into the fantasy, bigtime for a lot of white readers, I’d think :-D.
At least it doesn’t seem better to you when done to romance.
“You,” who? “You,” me, or “You,” “most white women” or “everyone”?
I’m not a passenger on the “Romance is marginalized because women write it” train, so I’m certainly not jumping on the “AA Romance is marginalized because “everyone” or “most white women” are “dissing” blacks. That doesn’t mean I think race and gender are irrelevant, but it also doesn’t mean I think they’re dispositive.
I am way disturbed by the assaults on women of color lit fic writers as a strategy for defending Romance, though. THAT seems borderline racist to me, even though I don’t think it’s intended to be. At the very least, it feels somewhat misogynistic to me, even though I don’t think it’s intended that way, either. And since some of those comments are made toward lit fic writers, I am sure that some people in Romance DO feel hostile or simply dismissive of AA (and any non-white) Romance authors. So I’m not saying racially discriminatory attitudes don’t exist in Romance—just that I object to the invocation of “MOST white women” or “everyone,” or other overgeneralized terms.
I think AA authors should speak out about discrimination, but I also think it’s difficult to get on board as a non-AA author/reader when one is simultaneously being implicated as racist AND asked/challenged to support/assist the mainstreaming of AA Romance. Not everyone who doesn’t read AA Romance is racist, in the same way that not everyone who does read AA Romance ISN’T racist.
One thing I’m curious about, also: how much Romance featuring non-white characters features non-white hero AND heroine? And does this change the analysis?
Also, it’s my understanding that AA Romance imprints were initially formed to promote AA Romance and ensure it had a place for publication. True or false? I’m not talking about what anyone thinks it’s become—I’m just asking about the origins, because I read an article about AA Romance that made that claim.
I also wonder, seriously, if Romance publishing were centered in LA or SF rather than NY would there be such a marked divide between AA and white Romance? Because that’s not our racial reality out West, and I really think the racial dynamics of who gets published where would be different if the locus of publishing were in the West rather than the East. CA, after all, is the land of the Chinese and Japanese exclusion laws, Prop 189 (denying public services to undocumented Mexican immigrants), and Prop 227 (the anti-bilingual education initiative).
I also think it’s difficult to get on board as a non-AA author/reader when one is simultaneously being implicated as racist AND asked/challenged to support/assist the mainstreaming of AA Romance.
You is not necessarily you, Robin, nor is is anyone here who knows it doesn’t apply.
Who is them and they? They are whom whatever applies. If it doesn’t apply to you, don’t worry about it.
I do get hinckty when people apply the same realities to those who are Hispanic or Asian and writing romance to those who are black and writing romance. It’s so different for them. You can go to any romance site and it’s evident that they aren’t being set apart the same ways blacks are.
It’s more pro-active to discuss solutions. I’m open to them. It’s not an easy fix, especially since that’s the way publishing is set up.
And to answer your question, yes, AA romance started because we weren’t allowed to publish romance in any significant numbers as recently ago as the early nineties. However the demand that black women have for romances that reflect themselves has always been there. Black women used to read other romances, the ones with silken-haired, creamy-skinned heroines.
Kensington became aware of this demand and launched a line of separate black romances in 1994. There was a black-owned line of romances before that that was doing well for a small publisher and I believe Kensington bought it.
Thus separate black romance began. Why didn’t Kensington, Harlequin and the other publishers simply begin acquiring more black authors for their regular romance lines once they savvied the demand?
Your guess is as good as mine.
I’ve used that Erica Jong quote too, but I think it’s problematic as a call to arms, because there’s such a generation gap between “old” and “new” feminists. So many younger women don’t understand, and are turned off by, the anger and overt activism of their predecessors. In my experience, that cultural barrier closes ears in an instant—even though anger is often the appropriate response.
For a discussion on romance and why we love it, my current favorite Jong quote is the newest piece of writing advice she put up this week. I think she gets at the heart of why we read, write, love, and discuss romance. It’s about what’s within; what we love; what we want to be. That’s a realm where “rules” don’t really fit, so no wonder we have this chronic tug of war between what’s “industry defined” romance, what’s genre or cross-genre, what’s transcendent.
I think most of us have an implicit definition of “romance” that’s entirely in the affective dimension: it’s literature with emotional content of a certain type (not unlike porn, in that we know it when we feel it, not just when we see a specific type of cover). When a book that elicits that type of reaction, that book becomes part of our personal set of emotional/romantic literature. It gets confusing to discuss “what is romance” because such a variety of books can give us that feeling. That reaction might come solely from the relationship of the h/h, or might be enhanced by some theme in the book: a spiritual theme, or a particular type of struggle that speaks to us.
So for me, reading some bizarro metaphysical fiction might put me in a similar state because the protagonist’s struggle has a similar emotional trigger; it might be Romantic literature in the old-fashioned sense. Or—something I was thinking about on RtB earlier—a less developed h/h relationship could hit the sweet spot of high emotional impact if it’s couched in a vampire/romance or inspirational/romance blend, because those settings and character types invoke ultimacy and eternity in a way that “realistic” contemporaries typically don’t.
Hey Robin, I live in NorCal too!
I think AA authors should speak out about discrimination, but I also think it’s difficult to get on board as a non-AA author/reader when one is simultaneously being implicated as racist AND asked/challenged to support/assist the mainstreaming of AA Romance. Not everyone who doesn’t read AA Romance is racist, in the same way that not everyone who does read AA Romance ISN’T racist.
Like Monica stated, if it doesn’t apply to one’s self, why get offended?
My main thrust in this conversation is the blithe return to the status quo once everyone’s feathers are smoothed and appeased. Phrases expressing wanting to disassociate oneself from this topic because of generalizations or feeling that one has been personally attacked have been used since what…the Ja(y)ne’s attempted to enter into the fray?
It’s such a cop-out and a slick way of extracting oneself from an uncomfortable topic one is on the fence of just plain old caring about it.
It isn’t a lie that online readers will rush to research an unknown or new author if just a name is mentioned, but repeat the refrain of “what can I do about it?” when this topic is brought up. So maybe I’ll just toss out some names.
Leslie Langtry
Yahrah St. John
Debra Cowan
Cheris Hodges
Joanne Skerrett
Violette Malan
Kristen Landon
Robin: I also wonder, seriously, if Romance publishing were centered in LA or SF rather than NY would there be such a marked divide between AA and white Romance?
The minority ethnicities are different in the west, but AA would still be a pretty small minority voice in that region’s publishing culture. How about if Romance publishing were centered in, say, Atlanta? Or anyplace with a larger black population. Though as I write this I get mini-hives for fear I’ll sound separatist.
What I mean is, I imagine the dynamic of inequity is affected by how “minor” a minority is in the local publishing culture. As a woman, I’ve experienced a sort of critical mass effect: culture is very slow to change until there’s a certain number of women present (even if that number has to be disproportionately high relative to the population). My employer has struggled to get that critical mass of women, with mixed results but overall a distinct improvement. They’re now working to do the same for black employees. It’s more difficult in part because there are fewer black people in this region than there are women, but since they’ve become aware of the critical mass idea they’re getting more creative.
Monica: I do get hinckty
New favorite word.
I didn’t realize the AA Romance lines were that recent (Kensington in 1994). That gives me some hope (Monica may find this totally naive) that some of these issues are partly growing pains. I remember finding AA romances (not called that) shelved in with all romance a few years before that, and (white) librarians recommending a couple of the AA authors as particularly strong (some of the old Loveswepts, I think – quite a few of those were well written and edited). Since then I’ve been out of touch with AA romance—yeah, because they’re shelved elsewhere.
Like Monica stated, if it doesn’t apply to one’s self, why get offended?
I’m not so sure it’s about being offended or not, but rather of motivation. I’ve worked professionally for basically my whole career on racial, cultural, gender, and religious divisions (in a higher ed environment), and one thing I’ve learned for myself over the years is that a) it’s very easy for people to feel overwhelmed at the systemic breadth of a problem, and b) it often takes more than an abstract notion of the common good to motivate someone to reach beyond their comfort zone on a long term basis.
So I look at what’s the goal: if it’s change, real systemic change in the way AA Romance is treated, both in terms of the books and the authors, then how do you want others to participate in that? Do you want them to help change it? And if the answer is yes, I think it’s a challenge to motivate people by pegging them as the problem. Some people are motivated by this, but my own experience is that a lot of people aren’t. Or that some are motivated in the short-term, but not past when the initial bout of righteousness wears off. Heck, my entire 20s were basically spent going from one social change high to the next, looking for the perfect place to channel my idealism. It took me a long time to understand that real change required a much deeper and less sexy level of commitment and participation.
I understand how Monica fluctuates between giving the big f-you to the Romance community and speaking out for change, because I see her frustration and I recognize her vacillations as common in certain activists, especially reluctant activists. I even understand the inclination to overgeneralize and the spill-over anger and frustration. But in terms of fashioning solutions—if it’s solutions that are indeed wanted—then I think it’s tough to motivate people who aren’t natural activists to help solve a problem they’re being accused—however indirectly or remotely or even accidentally—of causing, especially if they don’t see the immediate benefit to themselves in being an agent of change (in however small a way that might be). It’s like what Derrida said about selflessness: even so-called selflessness is full of self (i.e. selfish) because it still has the self as the point of reference. So I see it as a pragmatic issue more than anything else.
Also, I think that one of the most fragile times is when change starts, because no one can really control or predict it at that point, and I think it’s sooooooo difficult to resist the urge to try to direct it—and risk squelching the momentum altogether.
So many younger women don’t understand, and are turned off by, the anger and overt activism of their predecessors.
What’s interesting in my own experience in the Romance community is that while I’m technically part of the new feminists, I appreciate the extremism and militancy of my fore sisters, because without people like Andrea Dworkin, contemporary feminists would not enjoy many of the privileges we have, inside and outside the academy (and in society in general). If anything, some of the younger readers I’ve encountered have been more open to that old feminism (as valid), while some of the older Romance readers I’ve debated with have argued along the lines of “we’ve moved too far away from the time when men were men and women were women.” So maybe it depends on context and orientation of specific readers. Because some aspects of Romance are clearly socializing gender in specific ways, and one of the dividing lines seems to be the issue of women being “too masculinized” or not “feminine” enough—and that divide doesn’t always square with the chronology of either academic or socio-political feminism.
I agree with you that sometimes anger is the appropriate response, but I’m not always comfortable with it myself, especially when I don’t understand it (like the all out assault Jennifer Weiner made on Curtis Sittenfeld, linked to by ReadforPleasure: http://www.readforpleasure.com/2007/06/nostalgia-irony-incest-legitimacy.html).
The minority ethnicities are different in the west, but AA would still be a pretty small minority voice in that region’s publishing culture. How about if Romance publishing were centered in, say, Atlanta? Or anyplace with a larger black population. Though as I write this I get mini-hives for fear I’ll sound separatist.
Now see, your spin is the opposite of my mental machinations, because I was thinking about how many authors seem to come from Southern states and wondering if that was somehow implicated in the white/black dynamic in Romance (and I wince that that thought, too, but I’m really trying to understand something that is so very different than the cultural/racial dynamic of where I’m from). Because do AA voices/issues have a smaller presence than Asian, Latino/a, Native American, Arab, Jewish, etc. voices/issues? It seems to me that WHITE (and Christian) is the overwhelming presence in Romance, but I tend to be more conscious of AA authors as a presence, than, say, Asian American authors. But I wonder if anyone has done some kind of statistical analysis of the diversity of authors in the genre and how it does or doesn’t relate to the diversity of characters in the genre (because it seems to me that the race/culture issue is relevant on at least two levels).
If AA imprints started as a place to foster AA Romance, then the question becomes what can we do to mainstream AA Romance now? Is it about asking the main houses of these publishers to mainstream AA Romance? About asking bookstores to shelve differently? There must be ways to move forward from the segregation, especially if the segregation was itself motivated from a place to give AA Romance a chance to begin with. And is the AA Romance reading community on board with mainstreaming? That’s another question that seems relevant here, too.
It isn’t a lie that online readers will rush to research an unknown or new author if just a name is mentioned, but repeat the refrain of “what can I do about it?†when this topic is brought up. So maybe I’ll just toss out some names.
Was that a trick (she asked, suspiciously 😉 )? As you expected, I saw the list and immediately rushed off to google all the names you mentioned (with the exception of Yahrah St. John, whose name I already recognised because I’ve seen her novels on the Kimani part of Harlequin’s website) and some of the authors look white to me and some of them look like they don’t write romance.
Asian(especially) and Latino authors get to “write white” if they so choose with no complaints from anyone. Tess Gerritson blogged about this a year or so ago. That new author Sherry Thomas is Asian writes British historical romances; Marjorie M. Liu is half-Chinese and while she has a multi-cultural cast, her first and breakout book featured a white heroine and a technically “white” hero; Nalini Singh is a New Zealand-raised Fijian and “writes white”.
Based on Millenia Black’s experience, as well as hearing somewhere that an editor/agent asked an author—when wanting to sign them—what their ethnicity was, black authors cannot do that unless they want to hermit themselves from the romance community (and Monica has blogged about that as well). And someone on an old Dear Author post said that people have felt “betrayed” when they find that the webmistress of their favorite romance website is a black woman.
In general fiction, any other ethnicity or religion or sexual orientation or socio-economic level is dramatic fodder for memoirs, or chick-lit, or anything other avenue of fiction and non-fiction marketed to and read by a wide cast of readers—everything that is, but black American/British/etc experience(unless it has something to do with racism or slavery[as Mat from Niggerati Manor complained about in terms of literary fiction]).
Like I said in my previous post, stop saying “what can I do about it?” and utilize the same actions you use when wanting to find or research a new or unknown author. (Much like the fact that when Karen and Jane blogged about that horrible Carol whatever erotic romance, tons of people went to buy it solely to snigger over how horrible it was. Hopefully what I’m trying to do on my own blog will cause the same mass exodus to buy a book if it’s mentioned…)
Lol Laura…I did insert some non-black authors and non-romance titles in there just to test my theory *GGG*
Angela, you got me too. Glad to have helped with your sociology experiment :p
I appreciate the extremism and militancy of my fore sisters, because without people like Andrea Dworkin, contemporary feminists would not enjoy many of the privileges we have
Absolutely. I doubt that I can even comprehend the kind of environment they were enmeshed in. And I thank them for making that so!
If anything, some of the younger readers I’ve encountered have been more open to that old feminism (as valid), while some of the older Romance readers I’ve debated with have argued along the lines of “we’ve moved too far away from the time when men were men and women were women.â€
That’s a good point. I tend not to hang out at sites with a strong presence along those lines, but romance readers are infinitely varied.
I agree with you that sometimes anger is the appropriate response, but I’m not always comfortable with it myself, especially when I don’t understand it (like the all out assault Jennifer Weiner made on Curtis Sittenfeld, linked to by ReadforPleasure
That’s exactly why I linked that. I had a similar reaction and I’m still mulling it over. My take at the moment is pretty much “Pot? Kettle,” i.e. Weiner positing that Sittenfeld feels ghettoized and inadequate sounds like… well, Weiner feeling ghettoized and inadequate. I haven’t come up with another explanation for the level of vitriol. I thought Wolk’s description of his genre’s “slightly miserable striving for ‘acknowledgment’ and ‘respect’” pretty much described it. That attack expressed a LOT of misery and striving.
That’s exactly why I linked that.
Okay, so that’s you; good to know. I agreed with your assessment of Megan Hart’s Broken, by the way.
Asian(especially) and Latino authors get to “write white†if they so choose with no complaints from anyone. Tess Gerritson blogged about this a year or so ago. That new author Sherry Thomas is Asian writes British historical romances; Marjorie M. Liu is half-Chinese and while she has a multi-cultural cast, her first and breakout book featured a white heroine and a technically “white†hero; Nalini Singh is a New Zealand-raised Fijian and “writes whiteâ€.
Based on Millenia Black’s experience, as well as hearing somewhere that an editor/agent asked an author—when wanting to sign them—what their ethnicity was, black authors cannot do that unless they want to hermit themselves from the romance community (and Monica has blogged about that as well). And someone on an old Dear Author post said that people have felt “betrayed†when they find that the webmistress of their favorite romance website is a black woman.
I didn’t see the post you’re referring to on Dear Author, but I’d appreciate it if you could link to it.
As for “writing white” and Millenia Black, I’m anxious to see what the outcome of her lawsuit is going to be and whether that will change anything within the industry. Dictating what ethnicity of characters authors write based on the ethnicity of the authors themselves is, at the very least, racialist. No argument there. As to profiling authors for placement in an imprint, though, I think there might be other things at work. For example, if a publisher has an imprint for AA authors, they’re going to place their AA authors there, and I imagine that editors are actively looking for authors to submit to those imprints, which then leads to the racial profiling question. So on one level it seems discriminatory, but on another it seems like a recruitment.
For example, I remember reading the Avon submission guidelines a while ago, and they talked specifically about how they were actively seeking AA authors, and how each AA author would be individually treated. It was interesting, because it very much seemed a recruitment call. In fact, here it is:
What do you make of that, especially the disavowal of an imprint or a “line”? Has Beverly Jenkins spoken about any of this? She seems to be at least on AA author who is mainstreamed in the same sense of Marjorie Liu. I assumed that there were AA authors who were “writing white” just as there are authors of other ethnicities doing it. Is that not the case? I am finishing up a series by Shelly Laurenston about three friends, one white, one black, one Latina, and I have no clue what ethnicity Laurenston is, but I love her series, and was especially impressed that she had these three different women in her books without making a big ass deal about the racial differences. In fact, IIRC she never actually called Miki, her black heroine, BLACK—the hero commented on her appearance in such a way that it was obvious. It seems to me that we need more of that kind of thing in the genre.
As for the question of buying more AA books, is that really going to do it? I mean, are we talking about more sales here or more integration, and will higher sales necessarily lead to more integration? How will publishers know that a more diverse readership is buying AA Romance? Or is it the idea that AA Romances will be talked about on blogs and boards that editors/publishers read (although numerous reader blogs are now reviewing AA Romances, so that trend seems already to be starting, and Romantic Advances includes AA Romances along with every other type of Romance).
I would also think that directly communicating the desire to see AA Romance integrated, and to see AA authors treated in the same way as other authors (i.e. no more AA imprints) would be an effective way to go here, too. Not that more sales won’t help, but is it sales per se that keeps AA Romance segregated or the existence of AA imprints that began as a way to promote AA Romance and are now cordoning it off from the rest of the genre? It seems to me that more sales, and even more discussion of AA Romances won’t lead to the demolition of these imprints unless readers express their dissatisfaction with them—or Millenia Black succeeds in her suit against Penguin.
I agreed with your assessment of Megan Hart’s Broken
That’s good to hear. Others tell me it was a Major Fiction Event and criticism is inappropriate. Whatever.
This morning I saw that my local bookstore has created an AA section. They said they caved after many requests from AA readers. That seems like a double-edged sword: being shelved separately guarantees those books an AA audience, but cuts them off from others. Sure, there’s nothing stopping me from going over there, but I don’t normally have to do that. Normally in the Romance section I can find stories of white/white, f/f, m/f/m, white/pseudo Native, moron/smart, Asian/white… pretty much any configuration. They’d always had a special shelf in Romance for “New AA”, but now I would have to cross the store to find genre AA. (Maya Angelou and Richard Wright are still in Classics.)
I get 3 messages from that.
1. I’m not the primary audience for AA novels. That’s OK; not all fiction needs to be written or marketed to me. But if that’s so, don’t be surprised if I don’t always make it over to the AA section. My intentions are good, but if it takes work, sometimes I don’t get there.
2. Creating special-interest sections allows buyers to get in to the store, browse through a limited variety, and get out. It increases the likelihood of finding books that suit the reader, and I’m sure increases sales. But it also translates to readers reading only what they already know they’ll like—what they’ve pre-judged as “their” kind of fiction. You see where I’m going with this. I find so many new authors because of serendipitous shelving—I go to look at Author A, and notice Author B next to her. But if I go to look at White F/F Space Alien Author A and all that’s next to her is Author A clones…. That reinforces the racial/lesbian/space fantasy/whatever schisms in my reading.
3. Do readers only care about where genre fiction is shelved? Are “genre buyers” really different from “classics buyers”? Is there more “get in, get out” mentality among “genre buyers”, or less tolerance for browsing and trying the unfamiliar? For me, the answer is no; but sometimes I wonder when I see the number of niches set up for buyers to zero in on.
A couple of things in response to Robin’s post:
Just because Avon won’t have a line, doesn’t mean that their AA authored books will be any place other than the AA section if present. Beverly Jenkins started in the regular romance section, which is where I discovered her (Try to find Indigo somewhere if you can—it’s going for up to $280 in pristine condition) but she’s been moved. Same with Octavia Butler. Maybe these ladies are still in romance and scifi, but the majority of their books will be in the AA section.
As for Shelly L (whom I do not know), all Samhain books are racked together at the end of the romance section in most Borders or even BN, being treated like a romance line. One can “discover” her work by browsing romance. And not to pick on Shelly but all of her covers feature a nice white male torso. Few years down the road when Samhain is bigger and they have more AA romance being published and AA people are put on the covers—who knows where those books will be shelved?
BTW, my interracial No Commitment Required features a nice white male torso, but it’s in the AA section. Wonder how many people have looked at that and thought it was mis-shelved?
Robin, please let me know the names of those sites/blogs reviewing AA romances. I would love to put them on my ARC list.
Verification code: maybe37, as in maybe I should take my behind to bed.
Just because Avon won’t have a line, doesn’t mean that their AA authored books will be any place other than the AA section if present. Beverly Jenkins started in the regular romance section, which is where I discovered her (Try to find Indigo somewhere if you can—it’s going for up to $280 in pristine condition) but she’s been moved. Same with Octavia Butler. Maybe these ladies are still in romance and scifi, but the majority of their books will be in the AA section.
I’ve always found Butler shelved in sci/fi and Jenkins in Romance, but that could just be my local stores.
I get the sense that the exclusion is tied up *primarily* with marketing issues, and after reading iffygenia’s post about her local bookstore’s response to why they’re shelving AA fiction separately, I wonder how much of it is about a *perceived* *separate* market of AA readers. But even if that’s so, at the very least I think those books should be stocked in BOTH sections.
One of the things I adore about ebook buying (which is how I got a couple of those Laurenston books) is that I have no idea what race the author is. OTOH, some epubs have categories for “interracial Romance,” which again seems a double edged sword. I am sometimes grateful for that label, because I am often actively seeking out those Romances. But at the same time, it cordons off those books from the general population, so to speak, unless they are likewise listed in other categories, too (which might very well be the case, since a lot of those epubs seem fond of multi-categorizations). I can see, though, why AA readers might want a section where they can find AA Romances—after all, they KNOW that the general Romance section is a sea of whiteness! Which leads me to this question: IS IT the perceived niche market of AA readers that drives the segregation or is it the perceived majority market of non-AA readers? Because maybe similar pressure on bookstores from non-AA readers to integrate the books would lead to at least double shelving.
Analytically I keep feeling the need to start there so I can break down all the parts of this and figure out for myself where the target points should be. In other words, there seems to be a difference—at least in my understanding—between what happened to Millenia Black and shelving practices at iffygenia’s local bookstore. Is that a fair conclusion, and if not, why not?
Robin, please let me know the names of those sites/blogs reviewing AA romances. I would love to put them on my ARC list.
Seressia, since I know you’re a regular on Karen Scott’s blog, you know she reviews AA Romances. But so does Dear Author, despite the IMO inexplicable (and unfair) thrashing Jane has gotten from Monica. In the last two months, Jane has reviewed The Object of Love by Sharon Cullars (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/05/09/the-object-of-love-by-sharon-cullars/), Rock Star by Roslyn Holcomb (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/05/18/rock-star-by-roslyn-hardy-holcomb/), and Just about Sex by Ann Christopher (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/04/12/just-about-sex-by-ann-christopher/). This is not a new trend for her, either, as I also found a review from last year for Deanna Lee’s Still Waters (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2006/08/10/still-waters-by-deanna-lee/) and Undressing Mercy (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2006/09/12/undressing-mercy-by-deanna-lee/). I also review over there and am very interested in reviewing AA, interracial, and other non-white Romance. Also, the folks who put together Romantic Advances (http://romanticadvances.com/) are also putting up the release dates of AA Romance right along with all the other Romances—you can browse by publisher, genre, date, or manual search. Tara Marie (http://romancereadingmom.blogspot.com/) has been quite outspoken (she did a RtB post not that long ago) about integrating AA Romance, and I suspect any of the other folks on the RA list would be open to reviewing AA Romance, if they don’t already. Some of them may, even though I’m terrible at keeping track of who’s reviewing what over time. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but my own sense is that there is great willingness in the online community to read and review all sorts of Romances. As I said to Monica a few months ago, though (on Sarah Frantz’s personal journal), I don’t believe there needs to be unanimous agreement on why the segregation persists (e.g. I’m not on board with the assumption that it’s all about racism) for there to be substantive cooperation to change the situation.
Thanks for the list, Robin. I’ll pass it on. Since more than 100 AA romances were print published last year, we could use more exposure!
As far as what readers want, I don’t know how to answer this. Black women read white romances too. It’s what we read when there weren’t any AA romances, and we still have our favorites today.
And if we’re going to separate, why not give in to other readers’ wishes and separate out the subgenres? I’d love to have all the paranormals racked together—it would make MY shopping trip a lot easier. I mean, if publishers and bookstores and MBAs are going to do me a favor, actually go all the way and separate it all. Make it easier for EVERYBODY.
Robin, What are you talking about? I ain’t never bothered to thrash Jane.
I really don’t worry about defensive snits. I just call it like I see it, generally and bite my tongue (or restrain my fingers) more often than not.
Like I said it is a taboo subject for black folks to discuss without us getting beat up on. We have to be careful to the point of ridiculousness, and I sometimes don’t bother. Beating up on anybody else is so much worse than beating up on a black person uttering the R-word, who cares if it’s justified or not?
Generally, the folks who are defensive on the topic invariably have something to be defensive about, I (and surely others) notice.
Some of the feminist bloggers noticed the difficulty the romance crowd has with the issue. It’s astounding, really.
And if we’re going to separate, why not give in to other readers’ wishes and separate out the subgenres? I’d love to have all the paranormals racked together—it would make MY shopping trip a lot easier. I mean, if publishers and bookstores and MBAs are going to do me a favor, actually go all the way and separate it all. Make it easier for EVERYBODY.
I’m not a big fan of segregation no matter what the reasons. At my local Borders, for example, trade sized books and categories are shelved separately from MM Romance. I can appreciate that readers want to be able to go to a certain place quickly, but I think segregated reading practices are simply empowered by allowing people to narrow their choices based on shelving practices. I buy at least half of my books on impulse, based on cover or blurb or something else that captures my attention (remembering an author’s name from a blog, for example).
But then, my experience with online readers/bloggers is that they’re sometimes more progressive than so-called traditional Romance readers. As someone who is always hoping for more diversity within Romance, I’ve gotten somewhat used to feeling that Romance marketing is at least five to ten years behind where the market truly is, inclusive of the variations among readers that are not necessarily reflected in those RWA statistics.
Generally, the folks who are defensive on the topic invariably have something to be defensive about, I (and surely others) notice.
I guess it’s all a matter of perception, Monica, because one of the things that flummoxes me is the fact that when there are bloggers and readers who say that they are interested in reading and reviewing more AA Romance, they’re not really acknowledged as loudly as the various complaints lodged about “white racism.” When someone (Laura Vivianco?) announced the establishment of Romantic Advances on your blog, you basically said that while it would be nice if someone actually listed AA Romances right along all other Romances, you also said you didn’t believe it would happen. Well, it is happening, but that doesn’t get any recognition. So sometimes it feels to me like there’s more investment in declaring the Romance community racist than willingness to qualify that view.
I have no doubt that there are white readers who are prejudiced against AA Romance, but it also seems sometimes like there is some strong prejudice against non-AA readers, too. And I think the defensiveness runs in both directions.
(threadjack) Robin, I sooooooooo want to be you when I grow up! (/threadjack)
Now to the point of segregation and how to solve it.
In an old SmartBitches discussion on this, it was mentioned that bookstores for the most part won’t have neither the space nor the number of copies to double shelve. Robin’s well thought out comments on iffygenia’s post just now have gotten me wondering… would printed posters, in lieu of physical double shelving, help any? Could readers encourage bookstores to do this?
From what I gather from various booksellers, the segregation is a response to perceived desire by AA readers to have one section to go to to find “their” books. But our local B&N shelves the AA books in General Fiction. Although Monica’s latest edited volume, “Creepin’” is definitely in the romance section. As is Beverly Jenkins. I don’t know how valid my anecdotal evidence is about the segregation, but that’s what I’ve heard from booksellers. FWIW.
Comments are closed.
By posting a comment, you consent to have your personally identifiable information collected and used in accordance with our privacy policy.
↑ Back to Top