Friday, May 29, 2015

African-American Historical Romance and the Imperative to Protect




"It's mighty hard when you can't protect your woman."





One of the major themes running through all the different genres of romance fiction is that of protection. In particular, the naturalness, nay, even the inevitableness, of heterosexual males' need to protect the women they come to love romantically. Just this month, I've come across the theme in one form or another while reading science fiction/fantasy romance (in the first story in Robin D. Owens' Hearts and Swords collection), comic literary romance (Grahame Simsion's The Rosie Effect), category romance (Maisey Yates' Married for Amaris's Heir), and urban fantasy romance (Kit Rocha's Beyond Innocence). If I'd read more historical romance this month, no doubt I would have found the theme there, as well. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to add to this list from your own recent romance novel reading.

Whether the story offers the promise that a hero physically or psychologically protects the woman he loves, or, more often these days, demonstrates to the hero that his need to protect his woman is getting in the way of said woman's self-actualization and must be restrained, if not given over entirely, in romance, the hero's desire to to protect his mate is rarely called into question. More importantly, neither is his ability to do so.

Perhaps that's why the line above, used as this post's epigraph, made such a striking impression on me. It's from Piper Huguley's African-American inspirational historical romance A Virtuous Ruby, the first volume in her "Migrations of the Heart" series. I'm not usually drawn to Christian romance, given its tendency to embrace traditional patriarchal (i.e., anti-feminist) values, but there is so little historical romance with African American characters currently being published that I decided to give Hugeley's series a try. And I'm glad I did, not only because Hugeley's story features characters and histories rarely seen in popular romance, but also because it got me thinking about whether there is an inherent opposition between genre romance's protection imperative and the realities of African-American history. Or at least the pieces of African-American history that are most often taught in white classrooms.

Set in a small Georgia town in 1915, A Virtuous Ruby tells of the romance between two light-skinned African-Americans, one a doctor trained in the north, the other the oldest daughter of a local farmer and a laundress, a young woman whose outspokenness on behalf of factory workers' rights and against lynching met with white retaliation in the form of rape, impregnation, and the scandal of bearing a bastard child. Right from the very start of the novel, then, we are given a female protagonist who has not been protected—not by her father, not by her family or community, and especially not by her white male best friend, who, in a vicious inversion of the typical romance trope, is the one who is chosen to commit the violent attack upon Ruby Bledsoe's person.

Does the arrival of doctor Adam Morson in town signal a change for Ruby? Does Ruby just need the love of a good man, a man committed to her protection, to guarantee she will be free from future harm?

Amos 'n Andy's Sapphire
Stevens, whose character first linked
the name "Sapphire" with the African
American woman as domineering shrew
If the characters in this novel were white, the answer would more likely than not be "yes." But though Ruby and Adam are as light-skinned as any of the officially white citizens of the small Georgia town in which they live, they are not white; they are black. If an African-American young woman in 1912 does not conform to the one "positive" stereotype held by the majority of white Americans—that of the nurturing "Mammy"—then she must fall into one of the two negative stereotypes—the sexually promiscuous Jezebel, or the angry, in-your-face Sapphire. Or, even more upsettingly, embody a terrifying combination of them both (See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, and Carolyn M. West, "Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire and Their Homegirls" for more on these stereotypes).

A racist license plate deploys the Jezebel stereotype
to denigrate black Democrats
The white anxiety that the stereotypes of Jezebel and Sapphire simultaneously create and evoke leads not to a desire to protect another, but to lash out in fear, to protect one's white self against a black threat. Such racist anxieties, combined with the historical reality that enslaved black women were often overworked, beaten, and raped, make it more than a little difficult to deploy the romance theme of male protectiveness in historical romance featuring characters of African descent.

The word "protect," or one of its other forms ("protection," "protected," "protectiveness") appears 43 times in the NetGalley version of Huguley's book. Black characters protect themselves from the elements ("The wide brim would protect her too pale skin from the June heat" [43]); they express a desire to protect family members ("you know we want to protect our little man," says Ruby's younger sister, referring to Ruby's baby [664]); they bemoan the ineffectiveness of others' protective efforts ( "the solid nature of the wood that John Bledsoe used to protect his family struck him. What a good man he was, and still, despite his protections of building this big porch for his daughters, they were still terribly vulnerable" [1030]; they grieve their own inabilities to protect ("It was four or five of them. They all beat me down and had their way with me. I tried to fight them off, but I couldn't. I just couldn't.... "And they knock me out so I couldn't protect her." [1624]). Whites use the word as a form of threat: "I'll do what I have to do to make sure he's protected" [1882].

As this is a Christian romance, ultimately the characters must give themselves over to God's protection: "God will protect me. He will keep me," Ruby tells herself when she fears her former friend is about to attack her again [33-8]. Yet even God can't keep Ruby safe in her small Georgia town. Nor, significantly in romance terms, can Adam. Though Ruby pictures running "straight into the protective arms of Adam" as she flees from her potential attacker, ultimately Ruby and Adam must promise to move out of their town completely, and migrate to the north, in order to ensure their own safety.

Towards the end of the book, Adam can not only not protect Ruby, he cannot protect himself: he is shanghaied onto a chain gang by a malevolent (white) sheriff. While working on the gang, he hears the words used as the epigraph above, spoken by a fellow prisoner:

     "It's might hard when you can't protect your woman," James said.
     Many of the men around the table nodded, agreeing. "Don't nobody blame you." (3047)

I wonder, though, if that "nobody" includes the average romance novel reader? Do expectations raised by romance as a genre, expectations that male heroes must and will always protect their women, make it difficult for some romance readers to embrace stories where such protection proves problematic? Might the woeful lack of African-American historical fiction be due in some small part to this opposition between, on one side, romance's protective imperative, and on the other, the painful historical realities of the African American experience, and the stereotypes whites have developed to protect themselves against acknowledging it?


Photo credits:
Sapphire Stevens and LBJ license plate: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
Psalm 91:4: Spiritual Inspiration Tumblr


18 comments:

  1. A very thought provoking blog. Thank you for tackling the topic and Ms. Huguley for writing about it. Most readers read for escape, so a book that includes the harsh reality of Afro-American history is probably not one they'd reach for willingly. A pity because Ms. Huguley paints a soul touching portrait of the black American after emancipation.

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    1. Thanks, Connie. One of the reasons why I read romance is to escape, but it's not the only reason. I like to find out about people who are different than I am, and about histories that I haven't encountered before, too. Here's hoping there are other readers who have similar reasons for reading, and will be intrigued by Piper Huguley's book.

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  2. Thank you, Jackie, for your thought-provoking review of Piper's book and examination of this topic. Even with contemporary romances, cultural differences can make it harder for readers to understand a story or to sympathize with the characters. An interesting dilemma not easily resolved.

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    1. You're welcome, Reese. Yes, it's a matter of cultural differences, but also of genre expectations, too, I think. If romance insists on always having a protective hero, what should romance authors interested in writing about African American history do? Show the harsh reality that black men were not always able to protect "their" women? Or push against the boundaries of romance's genre expectations?

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  3. What an interesting take on things, Jackie! Definitely got me thinking. I use that protective nature in my heroes all the time without giving it much thought.

    I'm excited to see that this book is out (or coming soon). I read the first chapter or so in a contest a while back and wanted more. I love romances that tackle eras, events, and themes that are often ignored in romantic fiction. Thanks for showcasing A Virtuous Ruby and giving me a new perspective. :-)

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    1. Yes, the protective hero nature theme is probably even more prevalent in the romantic suspense subgenre that you write in, Gwen. Can you imagine writing a romantic suspense where that protective urge WASN'T the primary characteristic of your hero?

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    2. I think a hero--especially in RS--who didn't have protective feelings toward the heroine wouldn't be very well liked by readers. Unless that was part of his arc, maybe, like in Romancing the Stone.

      I also think heroines generally want to protect those they cares about too, but it probably manifests differently.

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  4. I love historical romances and realizing that to protect could leave her even more vulnerable. The hero proves his heroism by doing what is best for Ruby even as it goes against what he, as her man wants to do.

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  5. I look forward to getting to know this author!!

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  6. I think African American historicals push us to reconsider what "protect" could mean in any given situation. These books also highlight the fantasy of protection in historicals with white heroines. Very often the hero is able to offer protection because he is ungodly wealthy, or powerful, or important. Any regular guy would unable to offer the protection a duke can offer. The romance duke is a fantasy of protection against the vagaries and oppressions of sexism and misogyny in historicals. We don't discount romances with heroines being saved from poverty or violence or ruination by a fantasy duke just simply because this didn't happen in real life for the overwhelming majority of white women. The same is true for African American romance--it is a similar fantasy of protection (and true love and amazing sex and all the other fantasies offered by romance). I don't think the genre expectations are any more at odds with realities of African American history than thy are at odds with other histories. I think the problem is reader expectations, and their singular sense of African American history as always and only degrading and tragic.

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    1. Yes, Conseula, that's just what I was trying to get at. It's not just that the genre expectations are at odds with African-American history; it's that "singular sense of Af-Am history as always and only degrading and tragic," when faced with the "protection" genre expectations, that causes the disconnect. What other situations/events in African-American history do we need to teach kids about, so they won't become adults who come to historical romance already primed with this "singular sense" of Af-Am history?

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  7. Great post and discussion! So much to think about. What this makes me think about is how often romance novels a) erase or b) subvert structural oppression so that it's not the real conflict in the story. In those cases, it's easier for the hero to protect the heroine because the story turns on their individual lives and prevailing over the villain, who is an individual (or small group) with malevolent intentions. So it got me thinking about stories that do have structural oppression as part of the conflict, which ties into what Conseula posted about the class and gender structure as main source of conflict in most historicals. Another genre that deals with widespread structural oppression is post-apocalyptic and fantasy/sci-fi. One solution in a future in which one group oppresses/enslaves others is that the hero/heroine escape (like in Hughgley's historical). An advantage futuristic has as a subgenre, though, is that authors are given more leeway in world-building (obviously) so that the hero (and/or heroine) *can* overthrow the entire political structure because, conveniently for the story, it is located in one place (Death Star) or in one person (President Snow). The masses, then, seem easily convinced to follow our rebels because the ideology is not systemic enough--it's not part of every social, political, and economic system. I don't know whether my ramblings are making a ton of sense. It just seems there's a lot less flexibility in historical for asking readers to believe a fantasy world. Perhaps escape is the only option if the conflict is so deeply embedded in the social structure of the story world.

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    1. Lots of cool ideas here, Jen! Your ramblings make total sense to me. I've often thought that the novel in general, and romance novels in particular, focus on individual or small-scale protest, rather than structural oppression, because of their focus on individual characters. Would be interesting to see a romance novel or series that focused on individual romances AND structural oppression. Thinking here, too, about Emma Barry's posts about romance characters who are involved in social justice work...

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  8. Re: teaching kids about AA history to avoid the singular narrative--I think teaching Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar poems that at are about joy rather than despair would be helpful. Or teaching blues and jazz as moments of American musical innovation rather than simply African American responses to oppression, for example. We need to reframe how we teach AA history so the humanity of black people comes through, not just their oppression. If they were only oppressed they wouldn't have survived.

    Re: structural oppression--I think Jen is right. Mainstream historicals have no generic interest in addressing systemic oppressions because they can't pretend that sexism or racism stops just because the plucky heroine wins over the alpha duke. That said, I think a writer like Courtney Milan manages to write historicals that don't ignore systemic problems but still follow the "rules" of the genre. And I think AA writers use those same "rules" to reframe our understanding of AA history. Black people did more than suffer. Sometimes they also fell in love. We are so used to reading about black suffering, though, that when a story about black people asks us to focus on something other aspect of black experience, we experience dissonance.

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  9. Yes, Conseula, I agree! It's not fair to ask black characters (or those of other minority status) to always have to have oppressive experiences be part of the story. Readers' expectations aren't so narrow when they pick up a book about white characters--a privilege those authors have in terms of crafting a story that meets readers' expectations. It reminds me of talking to an LGBTQ author who said she refuses to write "coming out" stories about her characters. It's not always "the" conflict in any story about LGBTQ people. Other things can happen. Like you said, sometimes they just fall in love!

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  10. The comparison that occurs to me is Anita Blake/Buffy. Both of these have heavy romance/adventure themes (Anita Blake especially in the later books) and both of them identify the heroine as the protector. Even though the heroes in both those universes are strong, it's pretty clear that the heroine is the strongest one; and the one who takes on the heaviest burden of protecting everyone. The heroes may help, but ultimately it comes down to the heroine to save her friends/the hero/the world.

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  11. I tend to avoid these themes because I do read for relaxation and books like the color purple and others that address the black struggle or topics like the holocaust have too much truth and too many dark things happening which makes for depressing reading. And you see enough of this type of rape, murder, false imprisonment and racism on the news and online as it is.

    I completely agree with your points on male protection as an issue in romance. Even men today are inculcated with that, my partner once told me, after we were in a situation where he legally had to stand-by and do nothing that "all he wanted was to keep me safe". Funny how they have this idea of standing between you and the world, when they clearly can't protect you from everything, nor should they. Half the repression and terrible things done to women are in the name of "protecting" them.

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