Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

While the theme of many contemporary romances relies heavily on the self-actualization of the heroine, Black romances also navigate a minefield as they struggle to portray Black protagonists that are very, very different from the majority of images of Black relationships portrayed in popular entertainment media:

As Emma Rodgers of Dallas’ Black Images Book Bazaar says, “African-American romance novels are so popular because they reflect the values of the majority of the Black community [better] than most other types of media. The men and women are educated professionals, gainfully employed . . . or are entrepreneurs, upwardly mobile. The women are independent, career-minded with goals. Both are law-abiding citizens. Readers seldom see these images reflected on the evening news or in the daily paper.”

But soft! What criticism from scholars through yonder window breaks? It is the critics, and they don’t like the sex. No, seriously: the idea of sexual content in a Black romance is a target of some sharp criticism, because the “the open sexual expression in romance novels can only reinforce negative stereotypes about Black women’s sexuality. Renee Redd says, ‘I think most Black women still believe that the sexual expressiveness allowed the women in romance novels and to women of other races is not equally extended to Black women.’”

Plus, there’s that lovely old romance=porn accusation, which of course raises it’s engorged and stupid head everywhere it goes. Hooray for Shareta Caldwell who, like many readers of romance, can actually tell the difference between romance novels and pornography: “Romances portray love, romance, and sensuality in an positive adult manner.  In romance novels, a man puts a woman’s pleasure first. This is not the case in pornography.”

Jennifer Coates of Chicago enjoys the committed relationships depicted in African-American romances. “In other media, we see intimate relationships being treated casually—like a handshake, but not that personal. The romance, the courting, the mystery seems to have disappeared from contemporary literature.” Coates cites Beverly Jenkins’ Night Song among her favorites because the interaction between the hero and heroine “demonstrates their appreciation and love for one another and solidified their relationship for me, elevating their sharing and mutual respect from a by-product, to the backbone of their intimate exchanges.”

Osborne’s article also examines cover art - a graceful curtsey to Ms. Osborne because, well, that’s just plain awesome and important. Boy howdy, is it important. Black romances not only face criticism as to their content, but also the cover art - whether it’s “Black enough” or “too Black.” One article cited featured a quote from an unnamed magazine publisher who stated that romance covers featuring Black characters in “Afrocentric styles” might make white readers uncomfortable. This same publisher said that covers without people would be preferable.

(White reader Sarah says: “What a bunch of unmitigated poppycock.")

Readers cited in the article disagree: “Shareta Caldwell says, ‘I like it when there are Black faces on the books, especially if the cover is an accurate portrait of the character in the book. That is the reason I picked up Beverly Jenkins’ Indigo. I loved the picture. And I don’t like the idea of fooling people by not having real Black people on the front. If White readers can’t get past the braids, locks, bald-heads, and Black skin on the cover, then how are they going to get through the book?’”

Osborne’s examination of Black romance ends with an assessment that the genre is evolving as more authors publish in mainstream fiction, and as new authors enter the genre. But the various influences entering Black romance concerned one reader, who is unwilling to see what she views as a more courtship-and-commitment focused narrative become more influenced by “hip-hop values:” “Courtship, marriage, commitment and sex are definitely seen differently by this generation,” says reader Jeanette Cogdell who, according to the article, reviews books at Romance In Color.

Which generation, I wonder. Osborne’s final statement, that “Readers are drawn to the romance genre because the stories provide an escape and are devoid of racial conflict, gratuitous sex and profanity,” undermines and contradicts some of the statements made by readers and writers in the article itself, especially that the stories are devoid of sex or acknowledgment of racial conflict. But Osborne’s examination brought my attention to elements of Black romance that I hadn’t known about. The evolving image of Black in American popular culture is an issue that’s been examined with greater focus, it seems, in the past few years, but is the idea of books focusing on female sexual experience going to underscore or somehow validate negative sexual stereotypes of Black women? If scholars and critics distrust Black romance for its focus on Black female sexuality, what would the appropriate venue be for an exploration of the topic? Already erotica received a big boost in it’s turgid longevity by the strength and backlist of writers like Noire and Zane - I wonder what those same scholars and critics would say about the influence of those writers on the erotica market as a whole.

On one hand, it’s difficult to ask the right question. Would the presence of an interracial couple stop someone from buying a romance? (Would it stop me? Nope.) Is interracial romance solely the domain - and by domain I mean “located in the bookshop section” - of Black romance, because the minute one half of a protagonist pair is Black, the book moves toward Black Romance as a subgenre marker? Speaking solely for myself, I’m curious why interracial romance appears to be mostly found in epubs, small presses, erotica, or within Black romance publishing lines. Brenda Jackson has written several for Silhouette Desire, but those seem to be an exception among the backlist of series romance - and yet another reason how the dismissed-as-staid category romances can sometimes not just push but shred the envelope of boundaries every now and again like nothing else.

I’m also curious whether it’s a target people shop for, a type of storyline that some really enjoy the same way I am a total and complete sucker for a certain plotlines, including one that is too embarrassing to mention. If people shop deliberately for interracial romances, then why aren’t there more of them in mainstream romance (unless they’re there and my Google-fu has failed me)? Is there a difficult barrier towards publication of a romance that takes place across cultural and racial lines?  And what counts as interracial, anyway? Does a Black woman and a Middle Eastern man count as interracial? (This reader thinks so.) Or is “interracial” code for solely white/black combinations? Hell, depending on what anti-Semite you ask, my marriage would be interracial.

Mostly I’m wondering simply why there aren’t more interracial couples in romance. There’s more than a few powerhouse examples in mainstream romance across several genres, so I am curious why there’s not more of it. For example, Ward’s Brotherhood plays with race, and the question’s been asked of her point blank whether the Brothers are Black (her answer was that they are not an identifiable human race so it’s impossible to say). Kleypas’ Mine Till Midnight also crossed a racial line in the historical sense, in that her hero was Rom and the heroine was white - a combination that caused me to question the endurance of their happy ending, given the social prejudice working against them. And someone will hunt me down and kick me in the knees if I don’t mention the multi-book subplot of Brockmann’s Sam & Alyssa. All three examples were holy crapping damn successful. Perhaps the problem is that what I perceive of as “few” needs to be adjusted. Someone else might think that’s plenty.

I’m not so much asking for a list of interracial romances, though feel free to suggest some that you’ve enjoyed, but more of a “Interracial romance: what’s up with that? How come there’s not more of it?” type of random musing. So? Your thought? Ha. I crack me up. I know you have more than one.

Take us for example. We’re an LLC, so we’re a small business. One particular small press has asked to buy two advertisement spaces from us, and asked that we design those ads. I’ve done so, both times, and received neither confirmation that the proof was accepted, nor response as to when they would like the ad to run. My requests for payment were left unanswered, and my email requesting a response, any response, hello...Bueller? Bueller? have gained me nothing except time wasted and fees lost.

Since it was small potatoes in more than one sense, my elected option was and is to not do business with them from this point forward. But should I announce to all and sundry (sundry, for the record, is such a tart) that this press seems to have screwed me over? Maybe it’s a miscommunication, or maybe the URL in my email landed me in the SPAM filter, or maybe they took the ad that I designed and used it elsewhere. How the crap do I know? I don’t. So I sit and wonder.

So where does professional behavior begin and end? Is it professional of me to gripe about this press by name and say “authors beware!” since I think my experience speaks volumes as to the professional behavior of this press? Many writers will probably comment and say, “YES WE NEED TO KNOW! Our livelihoods depend on accurate information in a rumor-laden industry!”

And others will say, “That’s your business and it reflects poorly on you to make it public in this manner.”

Every time certain presses are discussed online, and it happens often with a few of them, authors email me and confirm the rumors being reported, revealing their own problems while begging that I not reveal their names, as they fear retribution from those publishers that would damage their careers. And then, on the flip side, there’s author behavior that is so breathtakingly bizarre, and not in a good way, that one wonders if anyone in the publishing end of things notices, if it has any career-based effect in the long term, or if it even should. Somewhere in the middle there are authors who speak out on their blogs about how upset they are regarding some publishing decisions. Sometimes that plays out to their benefit; sometimes it makes them look like they regularly aim firearms at their own toes.

How does one criticize one’s publisher and do so in a professional manner? Is that even possible? And on the flip side, is it ever ok to say, “Holy shit, your behavior as an author makes us look bad, and I so wish you’d shut the hell up?” Where is that line?