Black Romance Novels: From Historical Romances to Ghetto-Lit

What about Patricia Kendalls? She has a wonder Black romance set during the Harlem Renaissance that tells about Black love in the twenties? It is called Harlem's Passions. http://amzn.to/t6vOyp

I think we need ALL the accounts of black life and love.I've read THE COLDEST WINTER EVER, and I loved the book; however, I would not call it one of the best accounts of "real" black life because it's not the life I know of. All the facets of black life - and not just middle-class and not just upper-class and not just lower-class - need to be represented to see the TRUE vision of what black life and black love is.

(to refresh your memory or, possibly, expand your horizons ;)The blog White Readers Meet Black Authors ( http://welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com/ ):

Your official invitation into the African American section of the bookstore! A sometimes serious, sometimes light-hearted plea for EVERYBODY to give a black writer a try.

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PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer )
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For the younger crowd, Asian romance is alive, well, and caricatured in Manga. :-) 

I've got offspring who eat it up.

I think Laina's answer was great. Mine's tongue in cheek.  Everybody seems to have a section at the book store lately.

Nordette ( http://blogher.org/blog/nordette ) is a BlogHer CE, personal blog WSATA ( http://bigsole.blogspot.com ). Also @ Twitter ( http://twitter.com/nordette_verite ).

 To media (films, books, magazines, etc) representing contemporary Asian life. Obviously they are there, as the entertainment industry in China and Japan and other East and South Asian countries are huge and profitable, but not too many movies make it to North America - unless someone makes a concerted effort for them to be shown. Or, unless they have elements of what North Americans think is 'Asian'- martial arts, Geisha's, etc.

I also think that the de-sexualization of Asians in popular culture and the emphasis on racial / cultural stereotypes, such as being overly-educated and only concerned about business and entrepreneurship removes the 'sexy' and 'emotional' attributes as as important parts of the representations of Asian life in North America - minus the hypersexualization of the submissive Asian female. I'm totally talking out of my ass here......someone, please join in?  I do think that Asian men are totally de-sexualized in North American popular culture.

Because of the hisorical sexual stereotypes that still exist about the American black population- most often because of circumstances that existed during slavery - as being willing and free with sexual transactions, more emphasis is needed to represent African-American relationships as being 'normal.' Not only is it important to provide this dialogue to the general public, but also to provide it to those black folks who are ingrained to believe the stereotypes and perpetrate them, due to lack of self-esteem.  

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Writing is Fighting: www.lainad.typepad.com ( http://www.lainad.typepad.com/ )

and I probably have nothing really interesting to say but I will be back to say ... something. Seriously. I have to refresh my memory about black authors (and hispanic authors) I've read, wondered about, loved and hated...

And I have questions about why we seem to treat Asian authors and storylines (even romantic ones) differently than we treat black and hispanic authors and storylines but I don't really know what my questions are, exactly. I just know that we do (we = white American readers) I need to think on it a bit more.

~Denise
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When I started writing this last night, I realized I didn't know what the hell I was talking about!

As mentioned in my post, I have never read a black romance novel. I was one of those women, though, who read Waiting to Exhale and subsequently all of Terry MacMillan's books, and I've read most of Bebe Moore Campbell's books. While I think that they are inspiring, talented writers, it amazed me to hear from some of my black female friends that said it was more about the class issues, more than cultural (Canadian / American) issues that led them to scoff and throw the paperbacks away (figuratively, that is).

They would never be independently wealthy as the characters in Waiting to Exhale were. But more interestingly, they (and I) felt that no 'delicious dark chocolate-skinned' or 'caramel-hued' brotha would walk in and miracously erase the years of built up cynicism, resentment and abandonment that we had built up over years of rejection. On a side note, why do we still equate skin color to chocolate and candy?

When MacMillan's husband (read when Stella Got Her Groove Back) came out as a gay man, many of my sista-friends laughed. See? Ain't no love story for us. THAT senario, sadly, seemed more realistic.

But despite that, I think that black-centric romance novels do serve a purpose. In the pre-Michelle / Barak Obama world where there was few representations of black-on-black love, a sista had to dream right? They give / gave women an inspiration that love can exist, despite all the news reports and articles that said we were destined to be alone, raising our children alone because no man would ever want us. Perhaps those fantasies will/ would inspire women to search for those men who would treat us like the queens we are. I dunno. I think it's a bunch of hooey but I'm trying to be optimistic!

Contributing Editor - Race, Ethnicity & Culture

Writing is Fighting: www.lainad.typepad.com ( http://www.lainad.typepad.com/ )

I've been waiting for your post on this, Laina.

They do not discuss picking up your husband / wives' dirty underwear, what to do when you find condoms in your husband's wallet, or vivid descriptions of the bloody beatdown the protagonist gives her partners'
girlfriend / boyfriend when she finds them in bed together in a seedy motel room.

Made me laugh there.  These situations are rarely included because there's nothing less romantic than picking up your man's stained drawers, which is why romance novels are escapist lit, as you suggest. I'm up for distractions too.

I used to be a romance novel addict in my youth, and I'm sure it ruined me for real relationships in some respects because romance novels, like romantic comedies, hide the hard work that goes into real-life relationships as they focus on the infatuation stage of love and rarely go beyond that.  After being a married a while, I found I couldn't make it through a romance novel unless it was the super-romance type that had subplots and intrigue.  Straight romance bored me and after reading them for so many years there were few writers who could surprise me with new twists.

Nevertheless, I pick the books up sometimes and try, try hard, to read them because it doesn't hurt to know how to put a romance novel together. Romance novel writing can be bread and butter for someone who wants to be a working fiction writer.  The challenge is would you use your real name if you want to be taken seriously later as "a writer." Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb answers that question @ $65 million per year, but to my knowledge no black chick lit authors are making that kind of money yet.

This is not to say that the romance field doesn't have excellent writers of all colors, but that literary critics still think writing is more valuable to culture when it illuminates real life, not clinging to formula make-believe love stories, and once you've been pegged as a romance writer, they may not take you seriously.

I've been looking forward to your post to see which writers you mention. The whole black romance novel/urban lit genre has exploded to the point where navigating bookstore shelves labeled "African American Literature" is a nightmare. Few voices exist to help you select a book because no one wants to be truly critical of the black writer, it seems, and say what's good and what's trash. (When Omar Tyree said he'd created Frankenstein ( http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2008/06/street-lit-... ) with urban lit, whew, the backlash.) Consequently, the reader has to bite the bullet and buy trash to find gold.

The reason so many critics either go easy or stay mum?  I think it's guilt on the part of some, family love on the part of others.  For years Harlequin and the big dogs on the romance novel block would not listen to women of color who said I want to read about me.  I'm sick of reading stories about British women being carted off by Arab sheiks fascinated with blond hair and blue eyes. What about me? Ain't I a desirable woman too?

I went to a romance writers convention in the 80s after Harlequin had published its first black romance novel, which didn't do well because it wasn't promoted.  I talked to the author, a black journalist, who said it had sold about 25,000 copies. Since then, how the world has changed.

I think Waiting to Exhale proved our point. Black women do read and will read about black women in love. Now if I could just bring myself back to the point of caring about romance longer than a poem written to me ( http://www.authorsden.com/categories/story_top.asp... ), maybe I could earn some money. And I say that despite dabbling in romantic poetry myself, the quick fix for romantic leanings. Maybe I should take Ritalin before picking up the next romance novel.

Coincidentally, when I went on my book hunt yesterday at the new Borders on St. Charles in New Orleans, I picked up my first Beverly Jenkins book, not one of her historicals but a contemp. mystery The Edge of Midnight, which was near a novel by the late Bebe Moore Campbell ( http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/campbell... ) that I also bought. I was amused by the young clerk who wanted to educate me on the virtues of a Campbell novel.  "Yes," I said finally, "She's my generation. I know her.  Shame she died so young." But I didn't tell her that Campbell's in a different league from most of the authors surrounding her books on the shelves, that she was a gifted novelist with scope and vision, not simply a romance writer in the usual sense.

Bottom line though, I applaud anyone who can finish writing a novel, good or bad. It ain't an easy task.

Yeah, I guess for some people MacMillan was too uppity.  I suspect it's the same people who tell me they don't get Toni Morrison either. To me MacMillian is just a good, straighforward writer.  I don't pick her up looking for depth. 

It's hard for me to get on the egalitarian lit wagon that asks that we look past craft.  After years of being taught words and how we string them together matter, this resistance to critique within some black writers circles continues to bug me. Not that we don't each have stories to tell or that the tales that come from different walks of life don't enrich us.  It's that I prefer to read tales told well, really well, and hope to see more black novelists who go for literary gold instead of titillating brass get the shelf space they deserve.

Oh, blah blah blah, I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said by people looking at the romance novel in general, blacks and whites included. And having grown older, I find black sci-fi or speculative fiction, such as the work of the late Octavia Butler ( http://octaviabutler.net/kindred-audio-drama ), is probably more to my taste.

Nordette ( http://blogher.org/blog/nordette ) is a BlogHer CE, personal blogs are WSATA ( http://bigsole.blogspot.com ) and The Urban Mother's Book of Prayers ( http://urbanpsalms.blogspot.com ). Also @ Twitter ( http://twitter.com/nordette_verite ).