A writer friend told me that’s what he thinks some people outside of the culture don’t get about blackness: the sheer joy of it, especially given so many are only fixated on the struggle. There’s much more to black history than pain and hard times, and romance authors, more than anyone else, know it. Some avoid it, thinking that because of racism, the stories will be all about tragedy, drudgery and oppression. Yet even many of the folks who do read black romance often don’t read black historicals. The stereotype of historical romance as being all about dukes in Regency England has thankfully been shaken up lately by a diverse group of authors who are telling stories far outside of those confines - and black authors are a key part of that. But I’d specifically like to see folks exploring historicals right now. One thing is clear: We should be reading more romance by black authors, across the board, all year long. Alyssa Cole On the Magic of Writing Romance.Beverly Jenkins Normalizes Diversity in Romance.
As a result, despite the persistence of systemic barriers to publication and our collective neglect, the African American romance genre is alive, well, and like Biggie once said, it has so many great stories to share. Technological changes like the rise of ebooks and independent publishing platforms made distribution outside of the big five publishing houses more viable, and the unrelenting advocacy of black women writers and readers using blogs, podcasts and social media accounts like Women of Color in Romance and Girl Have You Read play a role as well. As challenging as the publishing world is for black writers, there are fewer steps between the audience and creators in print than on screen, and therefore more opportunity for the views, joys, and concerns of black people about their world to find expression in a relatively unfiltered form. Meanwhile, wonderful things are happening in the black romance world. There’s much more to black history than pain and hard times, and romance authors more than anyone else know it.
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