tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6303462943975056342024-03-17T02:53:51.080-04:00Romance Novels for FeministsFor readers who like a little equality with their loveJackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.comBlogger456125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-5890517233003597802019-12-17T09:00:00.000-05:002019-12-17T11:23:34.287-05:00Tropetastic and Thoughtful High-Concept Romance: Mhairi McFarlane's IF I NEVER MET YOU<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The high-concept/tropetastic hook: After her boyfriend-since-college unceremoniously dumps her, thirty-six year old biracial (or "dual heritage") Nice Girl Laurie Watkinson tries to make him jealous by dating the playboy at the Manchester (England) law firm where all three work.<br />
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The far more nuanced details:<br />
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I'm not usually all that drawn by high-concept romances, but I found <i>If I Never Met You</i> a real pleasure. McFarlane doesn't just play the trope for easy laughs; she digs deep into the feelings of Laurie and her boyfriend/ex Dan, and shows how a good relationship can gradually slip away without you even recognizing it (and how the relationship you thought was so great really had its downsides, downsides that because you were in the midst of it, you had trouble even seeing). She also shows, rather than just tells, why white playboy Jamie feels the way he does about romantic attachments (Chapter 13, where Jamie talks about why "I'm kind of a communist when it comes to relationships" is especially amusing), and why he urges Laurie to buy into his plan for them to fake date (the law firm wants him to "show my conventional settledness" before they give him a promotion).<br />
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What was most striking to me, though, was Laurie's gradual understanding of the gendered dynamics at work at her law firm, dynamics that shape both how she and Jamie are perceived by their co-workers. Jamie, a self-confident overachiever, refuses to conform to what his male colleagues want of him, and so he is turned into the office villain and ostracized ("Laurie saw how the trick was worked: the alleged villainy was entirely subjective, a matter of taste not substance: <i>waltzing</i> and <i>swaggering</i>. She increasingly suspected Jamie's offense was his refusal to play the popularity game"). But Laurie is valued by her male colleagues more for who she is dating than for the quality of her own work, even by the men who insist they are her friends, are looking out for her interests in warning her away from Jamie. As Laurie recognizes, "she had always been aware Salter & Rowson was a toxically sexist environment." But "she had been protected" as long as she was dating Dan. Now, though, "as a single woman, she was fair game for the rough-and-tumble of such politics. She was—apparently—daring to have carnal relations with a male the testosterone club didn't like, and that had to be punished."<br />
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Laurie also gradually realizes that Jamie's reputation as a heartless playboy is who he is ("You're an actual womanizer, snaring the unwary by doing a comic parody of a womanizer"), but it is only one side of a far more complicated, and more interesting, person than she, or anyone else at the law firm, ever thought.<br />
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McFarlane is a strong writer on all fronts: character, plot, theme, and voice. I especially enjoyed the cast of interesting secondary characters (especially both characters' parents, and Laurie's friend Nadia, an odd duck but a damned articulate feminist), and McFarlane's way with words.<br />
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A few favorite lines:<br />
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"Her mother and father were opposite poles, Laurie realized; her dad said the right things and didn't mean them, and her mum might feel them, but she never said so."<br />
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"No one is going to think Hermione Granger here is having it off, big style, with Draco Malfoy"<br />
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"in the very unlikely event she found herself in love with anyone again, she'd assert herself. She'd say what she wanted, not endlessly accommodate his needs. If that made her a bitch at any point, so be it. There were no rewards for being a walkover."<br />
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"I'm sick of this perception of me as the greatest man slag of the northwest," he said.<br />
"Then be less man slag. Bee the unslaggy man you want to see in the world."<br />
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McFarlane is a new-to-me author (perhaps I haven't heard of her because she's a Brit, and I'm in the States?), but I'll definitely be checking out her other books.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Mhairi McFarlane</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://amzn.to/36HG7EA" target="_blank">If I Never Met You</a></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Willam Morrow/HarperCollins, 2020</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com152tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-25048472406314129202019-07-10T11:09:00.001-04:002019-07-10T11:16:12.279-04:00Pride and Prejudice 3 Ways: Soniah Kamal's UNMARRIAGEABLE, Uzma Jalaluddin's AYESHA AT LAST, and Sonali Dev's PRIDE, PREJUDICE, AND OTHER FLAVORS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In <i>A Natural History of the Romance Novel</i>, literary critic Pamela Regis describes Jane Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> as "probably the best-known canonical romance novel" (27-28). It is certainly a touchstone work in the <i>English</i>-language romance genre. Which makes it fascinating to read retellings of Elizabeth and Darcy's rocky road to romance written by authors from cultures which were once colonized by the English. How do South Asian writers reimagine this quintessentially English story?<br />
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Soniah Kamal chooses broad comedy and culturally specific feminist critique in <i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20target=%22_blank%22%20href=%22https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CKG686Z/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07CKG686Z&linkCode=as2&tag=blisbenn-20&linkId=5a9f9d1b65824c27344522ecd9ae57e6%22%3EUnmarriageable:%20A%20Novel%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=blisbenn-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B07CKG686Z%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;%22%20/%3E">Unmarriageable</a>, </i>a modern-day P&P retelling set in current-day Pakistan. Plotwise, Kamal's is the closest of the three books discussed here to Austen's original story, with both characters and events closely mirroring those of <i>P&P. </i>Thirty-year-old Alysba Binat, the second of five daughters of a formerly wealthy landowner, teaches English at a girl's secondary school in the fictional Dilipabad to support her family, as does her elder sister Jena. Alys struggles not only to instill in her students a love of English literature, but also to show them an alternative to the "Tao of good girls in Pakistan," which is to marry early, start a family without delay, and have grandchildren before you know it" (6). But many of her students are far more interested in when Alys will be married herself than in following her example of pursuing a college education and holding out for a spouse who "believed in sharing the housework, kids, and meal preparations without thinking he was doing a great and benevolent favor" (27).<br />
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Valentine Darsee, the nephew of the owner of the school where Alys teaches, hardly seems to embody such a man. At the most coveted event of the Dilipabad season, the Nadir-Fiede wedding, Darsee, who has recently returned from completing his MBA in America, belittles both Alys's looks and her intelligence to his friend "Bungles" Bingla ("Please, stop foisting stupid, average-looking women on me" [68]). Yet Bungles' pursuit of Jena keeps throwing them into each other's paths, and the two argue with intelligence and heat over literature, film, and how to create a Pakistani identity inclusive of an English-speaking tongue. Before he knows it, Valentine is proposing—quite badly, of course—to a less-than-receptive Alys. Valentine's interference in Jena and Bungles' romance, not to mention his role in disinheriting his cousin, Jeorgeullah Wickhaam, from inheriting a share in the British School Group owned by his family.<br />
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Yet there's far more to Valentine Darsee than Alys's first impression suggests. And as he reveals his own family's vulnerability, helps Alys' through the scandal of her youngest sister's elopement, and straightens out weak-willed Bungles' love life, Alys has to reconsider.<br />
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As a cultural outsider, I sometimes found it difficult to navigate the book's humor. Am I really meant to admire, rather than ridicule, a character named "Bungles"? Are the sisters with rhyming names (Sammy and Hammy Bingla; Beena and Deena Khala) meant to be funny, or are such sibling names common in Pakistani culture? But Alys's frequent critiques of Pakistani patriarchy, as well as her arguments with Darsee about how to square a love of a colonizer's culture with the damages that colonizers' actions have done to one's own, are as accessible as are Austen's own critiques of English patriarchy and her far less radical ones of English social class.<br />
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The Binat family in Kamal's novel is Muslim, as are the characters in Uzma Jalaluddin's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L2HG6F2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07L2HG6F2&linkCode=as2&tag=blisbenn-20&linkId=140d896dffe9afac3001dc861824f452" style="font-style: italic;">Ayesha at Last</a>. But while religion served as more of a cultural marker in <i>Unmarriageable</i>, it is central in <i>Ayesha</i>. And its more intriguing character is the male, rather than the female, half of P&P's romantic duo. Khalid Mirza may have been born in Canada, not in India as were his parents, but Khalid is as observant a Muslim as anyone back in Hyderabad. But not everyone in the new neighborhood to which Khalid and his mother have recently moved, a neighborhood in which "the brown and black faces reflected his own," are as committed to Muslim pieties as is Khalid. Which causes some friction when Khalid's mother begins the process of finding her only son a suitable wife. For his part, Khalid is happy to have his marriage arranged: "A partner carefully chosen for him, just as his parents had been chosen for each other and their parents before them, seemed like a tidy practice. He liked the idea of being part of an unbroken chain that honored tradition and ensured family peace and stability" (3). He's actually looking forward to having a wife, hoping that it will help alleviate the loneliness he's felt since his older sister Zareena was sent back to India to attempt to curb her rebellious streak. At least, until he begins planning a youth conference at the local mosque with Hafsa, the daughter of a wealthy local family, and finds himself increasingly attracted to her.<br />
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What Khalid doesn't know is that "Hafsa" is really Ayesha, his across-the-street neighbor, who has been pulled into the masquerade to help cover for her irresponsible younger cousin. A recent college graduate, Ayesha is spending the year as a substitute teacher at a local high school, hoping that her temp gig will turn into a permanent one. Her first meeting with Khalid is hardly auspicious—hearing him declare that he "stays away from the type of Muslim who frequents bars" when her friend tries to set her up with him leads Ayesha to grab the mic at the Open Mic Poetry Slam where they were supposed to meet:<br />
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You fail to see<br />
The dignified persona<br />
Of a woman wrapped in maturity.<br />
The scarf on my head<br />
Does not cover my brain.<br />
I think, I speak, but still you refrain<br />
From accepting my ideas, my type of dress,<br />
You refuse to believe<br />
That I am not oppressed.<br />
So the question remains:<br />
What do I see when I think of you?<br />
I see another human being<br />
Who doesn't have a clue.<br />
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Ayesha had written her poem with "veil-chasers" (men who think women in hijab are an exotic challenge) in mind, but is convinced that it applies equally well to the "judgmental, sexist jerk" that she sees in Khalid. But since Jalaluddin gives us a dual point of view narrative, readers know that Ayesha has far more in common with Khalid than she, or he, initially believes.<br />
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Jalaluddin's humor is not as broad as Kamal's, although her story contains many laugh-out-loud lines:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"When an unmarried man and woman are alone together, a third person is present: Satan."... Khalid found this reminder helpful, especially when paired with cold showers. There wasn't much more that a twenty-six-year-old virgin-by-choice could do really" (12).</span><br />
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And it contains equally thoughtful discussions of cultural identity, although identity here is not that of a post-colonial, but of an immigrant. To avoid racism and prejudice, should Khalid follow his colleague Amir's example? "This political shit is everywhere. The least you can do is stay under the radar. Adopt some camouflage. That's when I did when I moved here. I learned to blend in" (55). Or should he act the one way his mother has taught him to be a good Muslim? Or can Ayesha show him a third way?<br />
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I wasn't that fond of the way that the two most powerful women in the story (Khalid's mother, and his female boss) are painted with broad bad-woman strokes, nor with the way that each is humiliated at story's end, while the story's Wickham character is looked upon with sympathy, if not empathy. And the backstory of Khalid's sister's banishment, and her ultimate happiness with it, undermines the novel's questioning of Khalid's mother's single-minded adherence to her own brand of Muslim piety. Yet reading a Muslim romantic comedy is a rare enough treat that I temporarily put aside these misgivings to enjoy the myriad pleasures Jalaluddin's unusual romance offers.<br />
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<i><br /></i>My favorite of the three P&P retellings is Sonali Dev's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078R4J67W/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B078R4J67W&linkCode=as2&tag=blisbenn-20&linkId=ad60861199005c52ed15e0c498c6f968">Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors</a></i>. Not because it is set in the United States, rather than in another country, or because it features the characters most assimilated to Western culture, but because Dev is the deftest at sketching character and crafting memorable prose. And because her retelling shifts the story in a surprising direction, placing an emotionally clueless female surgeon in the role of stiff, arrogant Mr. Darcy, and a sensual male chef in that of witty but judgmental Elizabeth Bennet.<br />
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Unlike Khalid and Ayesha, whose families maintain much of their Indian heritage after immigrating to another country, thirty-two year old Trisha Raje and her siblings have focused the majority of their energy on assimilation. Despite the fact that back in India, her father is His Royal Highness the twenty-third maharaja of the princely state of Sripore, HRH, as his children only half-jokingly call him, insists that fitting in in his new country is essential. And fit in his children have done, helped along by their family's immense economic privilege. Eldest brother Yash is a rising political star in California, elder sister Nisha a successful wife, and Trisha one of the country's top brain surgeons.<br />
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Her medical mentor has tried over the years to impart to Trisha the importance of a charming bedside manner, but "Trisha had never understood the big brouhaha over doctors' manners.... A soft touch hadn't gotten her where she was" (Kindle Loc 190, 224). Instead, Trisha appreciates another lesson: to keep your emotions out of your job, something that comes far easier to her than to most other doctors. Trisha's brusque, direct manner and general obliviousness to others' feelings disrupts traditional gender norms more than do her surgical skills. That Trisha inadvertently insults the caterer hired to cook for one of her brother's political events is hardly surprising for a woman whom "everyone [knows has] absolutely no emotional intelligence" (2023).<br />
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What is surprising is that said caterer, British born Anglo-African-Indian Darcy James Caine, turns out to be the brother of Emma, one of Trisha's new patients. Every other surgeon has given up Emma's case as hopeless, but Trisha, using a newly developed surgical technique, knows that she can excise the brain tumor pressing on Emma's optic nerve. The only downside: Emma will lose her sight. And as Emma is a visual artist (her "Penile Dysfunction" series one of the more popular of the works she's created), she's refusing to let Trisha operate. And judgmental Trisha is blaming DJ for not convincing his sister otherwise, even as she finds herself growing more and more attracted to his cooking—and to him. (Favorite line: "What was wrong with her? It was like having another person inside her. A person she had no control over. This having-feelings-for-someone business was like being infected by a tapeworm" [3813])<br />
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Both DJ and Trisha have rich backstories that help explain their current prejudices and points of pride (Dev's reimagining of Wickham, and the effects of Wickham's betrayal on Trisha, are particularly thought-provoking). And Dev constructs differences in class, privilege, and racial appearance that make her protagonists' constant clashes understandable and sympathetic to the reader, if not, at first, to one another. What makes those clashes so compelling is that neither Trisha nor DJ is completely wrong—or completely right. Having pride in her work isn't Trisha's problem; thinking others' work is not as important as hers is. And while indulging in prejudice in a world where people are judged and misjudged based on the color of their skin is clearly wrong, learning to discern between people who will do whatever it takes to help others and those who manipulate you into thinking they care when they're only out for themselves is a vital skill.<br />
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In her concluding "About the Book," Dev notes "The fact that I can relate so viscerally to Austen's heroines is bizarre, even ironic, given that her heroines lived in a time when her country had enslaved mine while proliferating the theme of 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.' But then that's the genius of Austen, isn't it?" (5975). As it is the genius of three writers, who all take Austen's characters and themes and use them to comment upon postcolonial, immigrant, and racial identities to such pointed, insightful, and above all, entertaining, effect.</div>
Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-17775950669047617592019-06-18T09:00:00.000-04:002019-06-18T09:00:01.166-04:00Learning to Grieve: Linda Holmes' EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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How many times have you looked at a happily married couple and thought, "wow, how perfect are those two for one another?"<br />
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And how many times has that image of perfection been at all close to the truth?<br />
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To everyone in her small (very white) Maine hometown, Evvie Drake seems to be living a perfect fairy tale. She and her high school sweetheart, Tim, attended college together, maintained a long-distance relationship during his medical residency, then married and moved back to Calcasset, even though they could have run off to the big city as so many other young Down Easters had done. Tim was "effortlessly charming" to everyone he met, and served his small community with pride and care, and the house he bought for his wife was far more luxurious than the small cottage in which she grew up. Even Evvie's hardworking lobsterman father thinks "my Eveleth is so lucky, that Tim wants to be her husband" (Kindle Loc 1152). For ordinary Evvie to have caught good doctor Tim seems luckier than hauling in the season's largest catch of lobsters.<br />
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Which is why when Tim dies in a car crash, everyone in town understands Evvie's debilitating grief.<br />
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Everyone, that is, except Evie.<br />
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Because nobody besides Evvie knows that when she got the call from the hospital a year earlier, telling her that her husband had been in an accident, she'd been just about to leave: leave Calcasset, leave her marriage, and above all, leave her too perfect to be real husband. The third person narrator doesn't tell the reader why Evvie was poised for flight; everyone else in town, including Evvie's own family, thinks Tim was the perfect doctor, the perfect husband, the perfect small town guy. This disconnect between her own far less rosy memories of her marriage and those of everyone else around her, and her need to keep her aborted flight from town a secret so she won't be accused of heartlessness toward the dead and departed Tim, has Evvie just as stuck—in Calcasset, in the house that she hates—as if she had really been grieving for a beloved spouse. As the narrator explains at the start of the story,<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">It had been almost a year since Tim died, and she still couldn't do anything at all sometimes, because she was so consumed by not missing him. She could fill up whole rooms with how it felt to be the only person who knew that she barely loved him when she'd listened to him snoring lightly on the last night he was alive. Monster, monster, she thought. Monster, monster. (Kindle Loc 137)</span><br />
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Her best friend, Andy, worried that Evvie is spending too much time by herself ("You know...it's not good to be alone too much. It'll make you weird" [232]) persuades her to rent out the small apartment attached to her house to his old college buddy, Dean, who wants to get away for a few months from his life of notoriety in New York City. A former World Series-winning pitcher for the Yankees, Dean's case of the "yips" (an inexplicable loss of fine motor skills in a mature athlete; in baseball, the ability to accurately throw the ball) has become so disastrously embarrassing that he's been voted "First Athlete We'd Throw into an Active Volcano" by the fans on a popular sports website. Tired of the taunts and interviews and endless analysis, Dean decides to officially retire, and needs a quiet place where he can take it easy for a while while he figures out what to do with the rest of his life. Since Andy presumes that Evvie is doing the same, he guesses that they'll have a lot in common.<br />
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At first, Evvie is reluctant, but she changes her mind when it turns out that Dean is as wary of talking about baseball as Evvie is about talking of her widowhood:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "I do think we should have a deal." She looked at him expectantly. "You don't ask me aboput baseball," he said, "and I don't ask you about your husband."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> She blinked. "I didn't ask you about baseball."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "I know. I didn't ask you about your husband."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "But you want to have an official arrangement."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> He rubbed his eyes. "I don't know how much you know about it, Evvie, but I have had a shitty year. A shitty couple of years. And I have talked about it a lot. And I think maybe you're in the same position. If you're okay with this, you'd be doing me a favor, and you'd be doing me an even bigger favor if it can just be normal. I'll say hi, and you can say hi, and we won't do, you know, the whole thing with the mysterious sad lady and the exiled... fuckup." (454)</span><br />
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After Dean moves in, he and Evvie keep things pleasant, chatting amiably about books and television and small towns versus big cities, light, funny conversations that steer well clear of baseball and grief. But Evvie watches as Dean as he throws pine cones in the pitch-dark of the Maine evenings, and wonders if he has truly given up his dream of throwing again in the majors. And Dean listens when Evie "punch[es] a little hole in the rowboat in which they'd decided to float" by telling him about the memorial service she's attended for her husband, and perceptively asks why she doesn't include herself in the list of people for whom the "memorial thing" was great (745). And hears the confession that tumbles out of Evvie's mouth:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"I felt bad," she said, "because they all loved him so much, and I didn't. I mean, I loved him originally, a lot, but I didn't when he died. He wasn't nice to me. He didn't hit me or anything, but he was sometimes pretty nasty. And then he died, and now when I'm around people who miss him, I don't know what to do. Sometimes I can't sleep because I don't miss him so much, which sounds crazy. But...that. (755)</span><br />
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After a few more rounds of punching holes in the rowboat of their non-discussion agreement, Dean proposes that they call the agreement off, and choose to be friends instead. And after that, attraction begins to leak through the gaping rowboat hole. But when Evvie's penchant for making everybody happy all the time runs smack into Dean's tiny but still not entirely extinguished desire to pitch again, will nurturing hopes once set aside lead to a new start? Or only to a dead end?<br />
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Evvie's struggles are all behind the scenes, hidden from her family and fellow townspeople, and often even from herself. Dean's, in contrast, are everything public, appallingly visible to millions who shiver with the horrified glee of schadenfreude at the once elite athlete who now throws even worse than they do. But both are struggling with how to grieve: for a dead husband Evvie no longer loves; for a career Dean still does; and most importantly, for the selves each worked so hard to construct in each of those roles: cheerful, uncomplaining wife; dominating never-fail star pitcher. Even if those constructions did and continue to do each of them more harm than good.<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />With its slowly-developing romance, and its focus on the many ways that both Evvie and Dean need to learn to "start over," Holmes' story is closer to women's fiction than it is to full-blown romance. And its storylines do not all end in the easy triumph common to genre romance. But with its sensitively-constructed characters, amusing and clever dialogue, and all too believable depiction of one woman's gradual understanding and acceptance of how she was once gaslighted and emotionally abused, <i>Evvie Drake Starts Over </i>might just be the most quietly charming work of feminist romantic fiction I've read this year.<br />
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<u>Photo credits:</u><br />
Breaking the Yips cycle: <a href="https://www.peaksports.com/overcome-throwing-yips/">Peak Performance Sports</a><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Linda Holmes</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><a href="https://amzn.to/2IMikJo">Evvie Drake Starts Over</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ballantine Books, 2019</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-44335265440612048142019-06-06T09:39:00.000-04:002019-06-06T09:39:25.162-04:00Romancing Outrage: Aya de Léon's SIDE CHICK NATION<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Side chick</b>, n:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The other woman; also known as the mistress; a female that is neither a male's wife or girlfriend who has relations with the male while he is in another relationship (<i>Urban Dictionary</i>)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>African American Vernacular, slang</i>) A mistress; a woman one dates in addition to one's girlfriend or wife, usually in secret (<i>Wiktionary</i>)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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Dulce García knows exactly what it means to be a side chick. Wooed by a far older man when she was only fourteen, Dulce thought she'd won the role of princess in a Disney movie, a girl destined to live happily after with a man who promised to take care of her. Instead, her prince turned out to be a pimp, asking her to sleep with others as a favor, and then as an expectation, and finally, not asking at all. Dulce's eighteen before a group of activist former and current sex workers helps her flee from the violent man (see previous books in the <i>Justice Hustlers</i> series).<br />
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But the patterns Dulce learned during her years with her pimp are hard to escape. Her next long-term boyfriend hooks her with the line "Would you do me the honor of letting me pay your bills?" This boyfriend doesn't ask her to sleep with anyone else, but before long he stops taking her out and lavishing money on her, even interrupting their time together to read and answer texts from some other woman. Dulce knows she's about to be demoted from side chick to nonentity, and steals her boyfriend's drug dealing stash so she can flee to the Dominican Republic where she has family.<br />
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But small-town life in the DR is too slow for Dulce, and she's soon picking up wealthy men in hotels on different Caribbean islands, staying with her sugar-daddies for days or weeks at a time, entertaining them while their wives and girlfriends wait for them back in the States. Even while on date with Xavier, a Puerto Rican reporter now living in the U. S., a man who actually seems to like her for herself, Dulce instinctively answers the call from a past sugar daddy looking to hook up again. And lies to Xavier about the man who's picking her up in the middle of their dinner.<br />
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But then Hurricane Irma slows the flow of sugar daddies visiting the Caribbean to a trickle. And Dulce finds herself sleeping in a storage room in San Juan, waiting for the next hurricane to hit.<br />
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Hurricane María...<br />
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If you are looking for a narrative of personal redemption, a story in which an unworthy heroine is punished and made humble by the elements and by the suffering of herself and others, and is thus made worthy of love and respect, <i>Side Chick Nation </i>is not the book for you. All the anger in de León's narrative is for those take advantage of vulnerable people like Dulce: abusive husbands, boyfriends, and pimps; privileged reporters complaining about the tough conditions they have to live with in order to report on the conditions in Puerto Rico post-hurricane; relief workers and rescuers more eager to dish out verbal abuse than material aid; and above all, the United States, the colonizer that continues to bleed its territory dry. Though she writes with tension and suspense of Dulce's physical trials during and after María hits the island, de León is far more interested in the ways that the natural disaster, and the United States' lackluster response to it, demonstrates a longer term pattern, a pattern illuminated by her book's title. Puerto Rico, like Dulce herself, is no more than a side chick to the powerful, alluring, but ultimately exploitative country that "won" her more than a hundred years ago.<br />
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But is every man, and every American, on the market for a side chick? In the aftermath of the hurricane, Xavier is back in Puerto Rico, worried about Dulce and hard in pursuit of the real stories behind the devastating natural disaster. Savvy Dulce, knowing that Xavier might just be her ticket out of the devastated country, finds her way to the hotel where he and the other American reporters are being housed. But as Xavier invites her to work with him covering the story, Dulce's joy in writing, a joy she had almost forgotten after being lured into a life of prostitution, reemerges. But will her past as a sex worker stand in the way of her new dreams? And can she trust any man, even one as seemingly kind as Xavier, is not ultimately out to exploit her?<br />
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In her Author's Note, de León explains that she was developing a different storyline for this fourth book in her <i>Justice Hustlers</i> series when María hit Puerto Rico. Writing within the confines of the genre conventions of the series makes for an uneven narrative; heists in which the previous members of the Hustlers ladies, but not Dulce, participate, are important to "the larger story [de Léon is] hoping to tell about colonization, climate change, and the need for women of color to be leaders in transforming both," but don't feel integral to Dulce's personal or romantic arcs (Kindle Loc 4976). Nor do the side stories of New Yorker Marisol, the protagonist of <i>The Boss</i>, and her cousins back on the island. But as De León argues in the conclusion to her Author's Note, "heist fiction has proven a fitting genre for this story: as these characters have had to battle law and custom to find small pockets of justice and reparation, similarly, the extended family of Puerto Rico will have to keep battling laws, customs, history, and entrenched power structures to get the justice and the reparations that the island deserves" (4976). No woman—and no territory—deserves to be anyone's side chick.<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Somewhere there's a guy..." <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sugar%20Daddy">Urban Dictionary</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Ten thousand miles...": <a href="https://www.muralmaster.org/writings/AmerProp/index.html">"American Propaganda: Controlling Public Opinion in Puerto Rico."</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Aya de León</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2Im5SQw">Side Chick Nation</a></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A Justice Hustlers</i> novel</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Kensington/Dafina, 2019</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-11291634443297268382019-05-21T09:00:00.000-04:002019-05-21T09:00:04.462-04:00Two approaches to romancing the curvy girl: Kilby Blades' THE SECRET INGREDIENT and Sierra Simone's MISADVENTURES OF A CURVY GIRL<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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While attending the conference of the New England Chapter of RWA last month, I overheard a writer complaining about the rise of "curvy girl" romances. Oh, this writer had no problem with romances that feature girls whose bodies do not fit the rail thin catwalk model profile; rather, she was sick of such romances that spent pages and pages focusing on the female protagonist's issues, problems, and phobias about her body size. "There are lots of women out there who are curvy and proud of it; why can't we see more of <i>them</i> in romance?"<br />
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I was thinking about this comment while I read two recent novels self-labeled "curvy girl" romances: Sierra Simone's <i>Misadventures of a Curvy Girl</i> and Kilby Blades' <i>The Secret Ingredient</i> (with the marketing-savvy subtitle <i>A Curvy Girl Small Town Culinary Romance</i>). Both novels feature heterosexual women who do not fit into the size 4-6 clothing made for a typical runway model. One book acknowledges that and then moves on without further comment; the other puts its protagonist's struggles to embrace body positivity in the face of a past history of fat policing and shaming front and center.<br />
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These two romances may take the exact opposite approach to depicting the curvy girl, but each does so for distinctly feminist reasons.<br />
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In Kilby Blades' <i>The Secret Ingredient</i>, celebrity chef Marcella Dawes has fled the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles for the east coast, renting a cottage on the North Carolina shore to work on her latest cookbook between seasons of taping her television show, "Cooking with Marcella." Her neighbor Max Picarelli is even more peripatetic; as a plastic surgeon, he travels the world on the dime of a nonprofit, doing reconstructive surgery for children with cosmetic birth defects. But in his downtime, Max, who has Italian roots just like his new neighbor, loves to cook, and is a secret fan of everything Marcella, whom he thinks of as "chef extraordinaire and goddess of the kitchen" (Kindle Loc 80). As Max describes her, "Marcella was everything a woman should be: all confidence and curves, and a true classic beauty to boot. He had often admired her generous proportions and everything that perfected them—those vibrant eyes, that gentle voice, and her mane of thick, dark hair" (73).<br />
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Marcella is a "curvy girl" only if one defines "curvy" as the norm, a point Blades is clear to make early in the story. As Cella thinks when comparing Max to the typical LA man, "Half the men Cella had dated had skin that was softer than hers. They were usually prettier and skinnier, too. At a size twelve, Cella was an average American women. LA was running as short on those was it was on strapping American men" (206). Advertising and media might make women believe that their curves are abnormal, too much, but Cella knows perfectly well that her size is nothing out of the ordinary. (In fact, Cella may be <i>below </i>the current U.S. norm: <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17543266.2016.1214291?journalCode=tfdt20&">see this 2016 study</a>).<br />
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Cella has no issues with her weight, with her body image, or with feeling desire for, or feeling desirable to, another person. The conflicts her stem from job satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, for both Cella and Max, not from any issues Cella has with her size or weight. Despite the novel's subtitle, the slow-build romance that builds between Max and Cella has nothing to do with Cella's "curviness." The subtitle is a bait-and-switch in the most positive sense, serving up a story of a woman with absolutely no problem with her size to readers using the search term "curvy girl" to find a romance.<br />
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Unlike Blades' Cella, Sierra Simone's Ireland Mills, who is white, has struggled with how to think, and feel, about her body for most of her life. Ireland isn't as skinny as a model; nor is she an "average" size twelve. Ireland's 5' 2", and wears a size 18 (Kindle Loc 102). But at the start of <i>Misadventures of a Curvy Girl</i>, Ireland has determined to break free from the negative thoughts about weight that her sister and her ex-boyfriend have spent years instilling in her (<i>A girl of your size really should have shorter hair. Don't you think that's more of a "goal" outfit? But those dance classes aren't designed for people to lose weight</i>...<i> </i>[65]). Fat-shaming framed as benevolence, Ireland has finally realized, is still fat shaming. And Ireland is <i>so</i> over it: "I was over the diets that didn't work. I was over the grueling gym schedule that left no time for fun. I was over hiding behind my friends whenever we took pictures. I was over shopping for print tunics at Blouse Barn" (Loc 81). Ireland's going to dress the way she wants, have fun the way she wants, and eat the way she wants, other people's judgments be damned. And if that means not having a boyfriend, then so be it: "I'd rather be alone than be with someone who will only love me if I'm skinny" (94).<br />
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Simone rewards her protagonist for taking this major step towards body positivity with not just one, but two handsome men who find her curves just to their liking. At a photography shoot on a Kansas farm (Ireland prefers to be behind, rather than in front of, the camera), Ireland meets hunky farmer Caleb, who is immediately smitten: "She better get used to being pampered and taken care of, because I want to make it my life's work. And that's after only an hour together. Christ, I have it bad" (361). But Caleb is a package deal with best friend, bar owner Ben; the two, who have been besties since kindergarten, have discovered they're happiest when they love (and make love with) the same woman, together. Ireland hasn't ever really considered polyamory, but with two such kind, gorgeous, and sexy men, and her own awakened curiosity, she's quickly on board with the kink.<br />
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Erotic bliss, however, doesn't preclude emotional difficulties. Especially when Ireland discovers that her commitment to body positivity can't always withstand self-doubts and the voices of shame from her past. It takes some arguing, a break-up or two, and some honest talk by an acquaintance who doesn't buy into the "accept your body and everything will be OK" hype for Ireland to understand that body positivity isn't just about how you feel, but about what you do:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Body positivity doesn't mean you flip a switch and walk around feeling great for the rest of your life. It's not even really about feelings at all. Body positivity is about what you do. It's about daring to live your life as you are—not fifty pounds from now, not six dress sizes from now. And there are going to be days when ever bad feeling comes back for you again. When you feel all the messy, hopeless things you thought you were past feeling. Those are the days you do it anyway" (2456)</span><br />
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Acknowledge a character's "curviness" and move on; highlight a character's curviness and focus on her challenges and triumphs as she works to accept and enjoy her body—both methods work to convey the feminist message that while fat oppression is real, people who understand its methods can challenge the negative biases it demands far too many of us embrace.<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo sources:</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Average size comparisons: <a href="https://www.itwscreenprinting.com/2015/10/18/why-fat-shaming-and-negative-body-images-hinders-fat-loss/">Into the Wild</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stop negative talk: <a href="https://safecity.in/discussing-body-positivity-again/">Safecity</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.kilbyblades.com/"><br /></a>
<a href="https://www.kilbyblades.com/"><br /></a>
<a href="https://www.kilbyblades.com/"><br /></a>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.kilbyblades.com/">Kilby Blades</a></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Secret Ingredient</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Luxe Publishing, 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.thesierrasimone.com/">Sierra Simone</a></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">Misadventures of a Curvy Girl</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Waterhouse Press, 2019</span></div>
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A thought-provoking excerpt from <i>Misadventures of a Curvy Girl:</i><br />
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A couple of years ago, I was watching a movie with a handful of girlfriends as we traded gossip and passed around popcorn and bottles of wine. And we got to the part of the movie where the hero makes his grand gesture, chasing after the heroine and declaring his love for her. Declaring that sh was his.<br />
The room gave a collective groan at this, popcorn flying at the screen, and someone pronounced how utterly backward and chauvinistic is was and how she'd never be caught dead with a man who looked at her and said mine. A man who looked at her like she was a prize in the machine simply waiting to be claimed. I stayed silent. Because I wasn't going to argue that on a structural level men should act proprietary with women, and I never would. But on a personal level, well...<br />
It was hard to look at my friend, who was slender and sleek and would no doubt have men wanting her everywhere she went and not think <i>easy for you to say</i>. Her body was the kind of body that people wanted to claim, wanted to stake some kind of sexual ownership of, and mine was not—never had been, and as years of pointless diet torture had taught me, never would be.<br />
So it was hard not to <i>wish</i> I had the luxury of scoffing at male desire. It was hard to watch those movies and know that, according to them, people like me didn't have heroes chasing after them. People like me are the best friends, the comic relief, maybe even the villain.<br />
And in real life? In real life, the kind of male attention I received was dangerous and demeaning. Aggressive frat boys who told me I should feel "lucky" to have them fuck me and then got belligerent and nasty when I refused them. Mean men at bars who grabbed and groped and assumed I'd be grateful for the assault since clearly nobody else would ever want to touch my body.<br />
Girls like me, we didn't get chased, we didn't get claimed, we didn't get the happily ever after. Not in movies. Not in real life.<br />
And was it such a crime to want those things? (1624)<br />
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-86273367071978386752019-05-03T09:00:00.000-04:002019-05-03T09:00:01.438-04:00Imagining the Joys of a Progressive Political Future: Casey McQuiston's RED, WHITE, & ROYAL BLUE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Several of the workshops featured at this past weekend's "Let Your Imagination Take Flight" conference, hosted by my home chapter of Romance Writers of America, focused on "getting unstuck" and fighting writers' block. And I shared many conversations with fellow writers talking about the feeling that something is missing when we sit down to write these days, suggesting that this is an issue for many American romance authors at this particular point in history. Several colleagues pointed not to the prevalence of unpleasant weather currently plaguing America's northeast, but instead to the country's current political situation as the most likely reason why they are experiencing stress, lack of inspiration, and just plain burnout at the thought of writing about happily ever afters. It can be hard to imagine a more progressive future when you feel mired in an ever-expanding swamp of lies, constantly having to justify and defend the values, and the people, you hold dear.<br />
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Which was why it was such a joy to sit down post-conference and read Casey McQuiston's joyful but politically pointed romance comedy debut, <i>Red, White, & Royal Blue</i>. McQuiston originally came up with the hook-y premise for this book—the son of the American president falls for the youngest of England's royal princes—in early 2016, before the surprise of that fall's Presidential election. After said election, McQuiston herself felt blocked: "Suddenly what was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek parallel universe needed to be escapist, trauma-soothing, alternate-but-realistic reality. Not a perfect world—one still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic. I wasn't sure I was up to the task" (Acknowledgements).<br />
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I for one am amazingly grateful that McQuiston managed not to give up on this story. For rather than reading as a "tongue-in-cheek parallel universe," the love story of presidential son Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry of Wales served for me as a glorious vision of a more hopeful, progressive, and utterly achievable political future.<br />
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What does said future look like? It looks like a country willing to elect not only a female President, but a female amicably divorced from her first husband and happily married to her second. It looks like a country with two biracial first children (Mexican-American senator father, white President mother), who, with the "vaguely bisexual" granddaughter of the Vice President, serve as the country's most talked-about, and admired, twenty-somethings. It looks like a world in which the younger generation, comfortable both working and socializing in a multiracial, international, global world, serves as a model for their more cautious elders.<br />
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It also happens to look a lot like a classic enemies-to-lovers romance.<br />
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Staffers new to the White House are informed early on of three important things about FSOTUS Alex Claremont-Diaz: he lives at the White House, even though he's still in college (Georgetown is so close!); he often calls for coffee in the middle of the night while working on his college essays or his mother's reelection strategy; and he has a long-standing grudge against the youngest of Britain's royal princes.<br />
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A few years older than Alex, Prince Henry has always struck Alex as a dull stick-in-the-mud, undeserving of all the adulation and attention focused on him:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The tabloids—the world—decided to cast Alex as the American equivalent of Prince Henry from day one, since the White House Trio is the closest thing America has to royalty. It has never seemed fair. Alex's image is all charisma and genius and smirking wit, thoughtful interviews and the cover of <i>GQ</i> at eighteen; Henry's is placid smiles and gentle chivalry and generic charity appearances, a perfectly blank Prince Charming canvas. Henry's role, Alex thinks, is much easier to play.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Maybe it is technically a rivalry. Whatever. (Loc 149)</span><br />
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Which is why attending the wedding of Henry's older brother is filling Alex not with delight, but with snark. As he tells elder sister June, "You can't just call him my 'arch nemesis'... 'Arch nemesis' implies he's actually a rival to me on any level and not, you know, a stuck-up product of inbreeding who probably jerks off to photos of himself" (93). And so, to the surprise of no-one, Alex can't restrain himself from taunting his "arch nemesis" during the very proper wedding reception:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The most annoying thing of all is Alex knows Henry hates him too—he must, they're naturally mutual antagonists—but he refuses outright to act like it. Alex is intimately aware politics involves a lot of making nice with people you loathe, but he wishes that once, just once, Henry would act like an actual human and not some polished little wind-up toy sold in a palace gift shop. He's too perfect. Alex wants to poke it. (229)</span><br />
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Poking polite Henry, however, quickly escalates into "Cakegate" (you have to read it to appreciate it), an international breach of etiquette so dire that requires major diplomatic efforts (and major acting) to patch up. As his mother's aide sternly informs Alex,<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Both sides need to come out of this looking good, and the only way to do that is to make it look like your little slap-fight at the wedding was some homoerotic frat bro mishap, okay? So, you can hate the heir to the throne all you want, write mean poems about him in your diary, but the minute you see a camera, you act like the sun shines out of his dick, and you make it convincing" (311).</span><br />
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All Alex is convinced of is that a person who lists his hobbies as "polo" and "competitive yachting" has about as much personality as a cabbage. But with his mother facing a challenger criticizing her for her chilly relationship with her British counterpart, Alex gives in and heads to London for a whirlwind weekend visit with his "close personal friend" Prince Henry.<br />
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Alex prides himself on his ability to read others, and is convinced that he knows all he needs to about the stuffy, dull prince before he even gets off the plane. But during their tour through charity events, television interviews, and a false-alarm assassination attempt, "he keeps getting these little glimpses into things he never thought Henry was. A bit of a fighter, for one. Intelligent, interested in other people. It's honestly disconcerting" (623).<br />
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Even more disconcerting is the friendship the two develop via text message, and occasional in-person meetings, in the ensuing months. Because while Alex prides himself on his ability to read others, his ability to understand <i>himself</i> could use a bit more work. Especially when it comes to his own latent attraction to a not-quite-so-proper prince.<br />
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But can the son of the American president date a British prince in the middle of a re-election campaign? Especially if mom needs to win their home state of Texas in order to guarantee a repeat?<br />
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I've quoted so often from <i>Red, White, & Royal Blue </i>in the above review because so much of the pleasure in this rom com comes from McQuiston's distinctive, laugh-out-loud voice, told entirely from the point of view of its hyper intelligent but emotionally clueless main character. Though the story is told in the third person, it's also told in the present tense, which gives the narration both immediacy and a certain wry distance, both of which are perfectly suited to conveying Alex's character and charm. For example, after Alex sees a picture of Henry with a "mysterious blonde," the narrator tells us "Faintly, under it all, it occurs to him: This is all a very not-straight way to react to seeing your male frenemy kissing someone else in a magazine" (1655). Or the scene where Alex is trying to figure out whether he might not be as straight as he's always assumed by calling his former (male) best friend and asking, "This might sound weird. But, um. Back in high school, did we have, like, a thing? Did I miss that?" (5485).<br />
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No romance reader will want to miss McQuiston's glorious celebration of snark, sentiment, and the progressive political possibilities of a not quite straight royal romance.<br />
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And no writer could find a better cure for political-despair-induced writers' block than McQuiston's sparkling, effervescent romance.<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">British/US flag pin: <a href="https://www.athleticawards.com/Crossed-British-American-Flags-Pin">Athletic awards</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Royal wedding cake: <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/royal-wedding-kate-william-wedding-cake?family=editorial&phrase=royal%20wedding%20kate%20william%20wedding%20cake&recency=anydate&sort=mostpopular&page=1&suppressfamilycorrection=true">Getty Images</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hate to Love trope sticker: <a href="https://www.redbubble.com/people/crockerypress/works/34303544-hate-to-love-trope-ver-2?p=sticker#&gid=1&pid=2">RedBubble</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Casey McQuiston</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://amzn.to/2VcMoXw">Red, White & Royal Blue</a></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">St. Martins, 2019</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-86152849767400826332019-04-23T09:00:00.000-04:002019-04-23T10:10:07.211-04:00Short Takes: Spring 2019 Historicals by RNFF favorites<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After being in somewhat of a historical romance reading funk for the first few months of 2019, I was thrilled to see that several of my favorite historical romance writers had new books coming out in the spring. Here are my short recs for books by three RNFF favorites:<br />
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<a href="http://www.courtneymilan.com/">Courtney Milan</a>'s full-length historicals feature traditional male/female romance pairings. But her shorter works tends to star more unconventional couples. The duo in her latest, <i>Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure,</i> might just win the award for most underrepresented characters in Victorian romance. Although they are both white, both of her lovers are female, as well as "seasoned"—one in her sixties, the other in her seventies. Though the eponymous Mrs. Martin suffers from a lack of spirits after the death of her best friend, she hasn't lost any of her outspoken manner ("My husband, God rot his soul, used to bring prostitutes home all the time. After he'd finished with them, I'd serve them tea and double whatever he was paying them.... It was hard work fucking my husband. Trust me, I should know. <i>I</i> certainly didn't want to do it" [Kindle Loc 225]). She's certainly not the meek, retiring gentlewoman recently sacked boarding house manager Miss Violetta Beauchamps was hoping for, a woman whom Violetta could somehow swindle into paying the far-overdue rent for her smarmy nephew. Violetta desperately needs that money in lieu of the pension her employer had promised her, but then chose not to pay her upon unfairly firing her after she'd worked for him for forty-seven years. In fact, Violetta is far closer to the meek mouse she had hoped Mrs. Martin would be than is the formidable Mrs. Martin herself.<br />
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But after Violetta shares the truth of her nephew's boorish behavior with his aunt, Bertrice Martin decides to set off on the adventure her doctor prescribed: not for a rest in Bath, but to London with Violetta, to help the unfortunate woman drive out the sponging "Terrible Nephew" from what she mistakenly assumes is <i>Violetta's</i> boarding house. Milan's trademark humor is in fine form here, as is her penchant for pushing her characters into a seemingly inescapable corners then inviting us to watch with unabashed glee as they use unconventional methods to escape the confines society wishes them to inhabit. Violetta's transformation, from traditionally "nice" woman who is happy to fade into the background to one who speaks out on her own behalf as well as Mrs. Martin's, is particularly delicious.<br />
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<i>An Unconditional Freedom</i>, the third entry in <a href="https://alyssacole.com/">Alyssa Cole</a>'s American Civil War-set series<i> </i>The Loyal League, features a man as disillusioned as is Milan's Violetta, but far less happy to accept his fate with any meekness or humility. Before the war, Daniel Cumberland's greatest trauma was that the woman he loved (the heroine of book 1, <i>An Extraordinary Union</i>) did not love him back. But after the idealistic aspiring lawyer is kidnapped from his Massachusetts town and sold south into slavery, his happy, carefree nature is quickly beaten out of him. We meet Daniel after he is rescued from enslavement, unable to fit back into his old life, to "be strong and forget what happened," as his father recommends. Instead, he's working as a spy for the Loyal League, a spy who prefers to work alone. But when Janeta Sanchez, a new recruit, enters the league, the angry, disdainful Daniel is assigned to be her partner.<br />
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Janeta, the daughter of a Cuban planation owner and the black slave woman he later married, has grown up taking slavery for granted, even while recognizing that her golden brown skin makes others treat her not quite the same as they do her obviously Spanish half-sisters. Moving from Cuba to Florida changed little for her—until war broke out, and her father was arrested on suspicion of being a northern sympathizer. Her lover in the Rebel army promises that if she will spy on the Yanquis, he'll make certain her father is freed. And thus Janeta, the daughter of a slave owner, finds her way to the Loyal League, using her skill at hiding behind layers of pleasing behavior to ingratiate herself with all of its members. All, that is, but the wary Daniel.<br />
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Cole choice to decenter the whiteness that typically looms so large in northerner vs. southerner Civil War stories is not only a boon for readers of color looking for greater representation of their experiences in historical romance; it also allows white readers to step away their fears of being associated with the villain in the more typical white/black binary portrayal of slavery. Which may allow them to read without debilitating defensiveness about the blind spots that many whose heritage does not include a history of enslavement and racism often have towards those whose does, as well as the ways that good people are indoctrinated into accepting what we today often self-righteously believe we would never accept ourselves. Take this exchange between after Daniel and Janeta, after Daniel reveals the scars on his back:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Janeta thought of the time her family had gone into the city center in Santiago. Her mother had clapped her hand over Janeta's eyes when they'd walked by a man tied to a post with his bloody back exposed.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> <i>You don't need to see such things. You are a Sanchez. You don't have to endure such ugliness</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> She couldn't look away now, though. Daniel has bared to her this proof of his ill treatment and all she could ask herself was, "Why?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> <i>"That man tried to start an insurrection. They had to make an example of him."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> That's what her father had told her later when she'd questioned him about what she had seen. He'd handed her a gift when she'd asked why insurrection was bad, a beautiful porcelain doll with creamy skin, rouged cheeks, and blue eyes, and she'd let the matter drop.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "What did you do?" she asked Daniel, and saw the muscles beneath the scars tense.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "You think I did something to bring this upon myself?" he asked, his voice taut, and Janeta's fear came to the surface then. Not that he would hurt her, but that she'd made yet another misstep.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "No! I—I meant, why did they do this to you?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> He shook his head and pulled his shirt back up over his shoulder, not turning to face her as he did up his buttons.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "I was born a Negro in a country where that is a crime, and I was ignorant enough not to know that I had already been convicted."(Kindle Loc 556)</span><br />
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Both Daniel and Janeta discover their own blind spots as they work together to track Jefferson Davis—and struggle to reconcile the plans of the Loyal League with their own secret goals.<br />
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After <a href="https://www.elizabethkingstonbooks.com/">Elizabeth Kingston'</a>s call for "Reclaiming Historical Romance" in the December 2018 issue of RWA's <i>Romance Writers' Report</i>, I was interested to see how she herself would address the problem of white supremacy in her own medieval historical romance writing (you can get a copy of her article free via her <a href="https://www.elizabethkingstonbooks.com/online-store">online store</a>). The third book in her Welsh Blades series, <i>Desire Lines</i>, features two white protagonists, one an aristocratic the other a servant. But neither protagonist is typical of their class, a major theme of the story. The book also includes a secondary character who is dark-skinned, and a brief subplot depicts a Jewish family persecuted by the English. Such characters, while they do not play major roles, go a long way towards disrupting the "white mythos" of the more traditional medieval historical romance.<br />
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Gryff and Nan first meet on the road to Lincoln, when the bandits who have been holding Gryff captive attack the group of travelers of which Nan is a part. It is the servant, Nan, though, not the nobleman Gryff who does the rescuing, letting fly with her deadly knives until all of the robbers are dead. Gryff, fearful for his life from more than just the bandits, doesn't tell his rescuer or any of her fellow travelers his true identity, and neither does the narrative, although brief flashbacks hint at his less than lowly upbringing. Nan, though a servant, has benefitted from the favor of several noblewomen, favor that has not only taught her how to wield a knife, but also to speak Welsh as well as a noblewoman would. During their long journey across England—Nan looking for a long-lost sister, Gryff for his best friend, after which both then travel to Wales—the two exist in a liminal space, outside of traditional societal norms and expectations. Which allows each to see beyond the surface of the other, and of course to fall in love with that person. But when their journey comes to an abrupt end, that liminal space ends, too, and each must decide whether their feelings for one another can survive in a world that expects something far different of a nobleman than it does of a servant. An old-fashioned historical in the best sense—not because it has an all-white cast, but because it glories in real angst, high stakes, and a bucketload of both physical and emotional longing, with personal feelings set against seemingly insurmountable demands of honor and duty.<br />
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Not to mention the falcons and hawks...</div>
Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-1510777420002174112019-04-16T09:00:00.000-04:002019-04-16T09:00:03.207-04:00The Thinks and the Feels: Kennedy Ryan's LONG SHOT<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-small;">(Content Warning: discussion of domestic violence and rape)</span><br />
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On the eve of the NCAA basketball National Championship, star college baller August West is sitting in a bar, reluctant to return to his hotel room. It's not only the eve of his biggest game ever; it's also the eve of the birth of his father, a former NBA player who died fifteen years earlier, and he's restless and jittery. But after his high school coach, whom he was supposed to be meeting, has an unexpected emergency, West reconciles himself to an early evening.<br />
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Until he hears the young woman cussing like a sailor at the basketball game on the television at the other end of the bar.<br />
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Said woman's knowledge of basketball is almost as impressive as her colorful language, and West feels an immediate connection. Not because she plays up to him—in fact, she's initially pretty dismissive—but because he discovers that she, like he, is biracial. When he asks her where's she's from, the woman explains about her New Orleans Creole stock on her mother's side, and her German and Irish on father's: "I'm a mix of everything the bayou could come up with... So my cousin says I had more ingredients than gumbo," (Kindle Loc 231). Though West's mother is the white parent, his father the black, West and "Gumbo" share the same experience of feeling like a racial outsider. "Did you ever feel like you didn't quite fit anywhere? I mean, like you were always kind of in between?" Gumbo asks him, which causes West to think "I may not look a lot like my African-American father, but I look nothing like anyone in the family I have left. Most kids were one thing or the other and clumped together based on that. It left me sometimes feeling adrift" (245).<br />
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West and Gumbo (her actual name is Iris) get so caught up in their conversation that they end up shutting down the bar. But when West goes in for a kiss at the end of the night, Iris call a halt. To West's everlasting regret, she's already got a boyfriend.<br />
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After this opening meet-bittersweet, a reader is expecting that the aforementioned boyfriend is not long for Iris's arms. And that the resultant romance will focus on two people connecting over their mutual biracial identities and experiences.<br />
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But said reader would be mistaken. For Ryan's story is less traditional romance and more women's fiction, a journey that the author hints at in the Author's Note that prefaces the novel:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I started writing this book two years ago out of righteous indignation on behalf of a young woman whose journey I didn't understand. I write when I have something to say, and I knew I couldn't say it from a place of judgment and hypotheticals. So I started talking with women who had walked that path.</span><br />
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Ryan writes in abstractions here, but one can't really write a review of her novel without being more specific. For the "path" that she refers to is the path into and out of an abusive romantic relationship. The "place of judgment" Ryan mentions is likely the judgment that many who have not experienced such a relationship first-hand tend to make about not the abuser, but the person being abused. Why didn't they leave? Why did they take it when the verbal abuse started pouring out of a love one's mouth? Why did they stay when the fists started flying? They just must be weak, or must want to be abused, right?<br />
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But the Iris we meet along with August is not weak in the least. As August observes, "A lot of girls just reflect. They figure out what you like so they can get in with a baller. This one has her own views, stands her own ground and doesn't five a damn if I like it. I like it" (224). And when we get inside Iris's head, we discover that her main goal in life is to <i>not</i> end up relying on a man, as her mother has for most of her life. She and her cousin have "always been afraid of ending up like our mothers—depending on a man for everything, taking his scraps" (908).<br />
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Iris DuPree's relationship with Caleb Bradley isn't about taking his scraps—at least at first. Despite being an economically privileged white college boy, Caleb spent time and effort to woo the reluctant Iris, and they've been dating for almost a year. But readers with any knowledge of how abusers operate is likely to pick up on the clues Ryan drops that Caleb is not as great a guy as he seems. He prefers Iris to wear her hair a certain way, gives her clothes that he wants her to wear, and is prone to angry outbursts on the basketball court when things don't go his way. And he's definitely not excited about Iris's post-college career plans, plans that will likely take her away from him.<br />
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Entitled Caleb proves to be a master manipulator, and Iris, despite her reservations, ends up living with her boyfriend soon after Caleb enters the NBA. And since West has also been drafted, Iris and West's paths end up crossing and recrossing, brief conversations with West serving as welcome respite for Iris from an increasingly tension-filled relationship with Caleb.<br />
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A relationship that, by the end of Caleb's first professional season, turns verbally and physically abusive. But a relationship that Iris can't find her way out of, at least at first. Ryan does not shy away from depicting the violence that Iris experiences at Caleb's hands; there are multiple scenes of both assault and rape on the page. Such depictions are likely to be deeply triggering for many readers. And for readers who are immersed in rape culture (as are we all), it can be difficult to read such scenes as solely violent when rape has so often been presented as an erotic experience in popular culture. Not at all what the author intended, I'd guess, but still, hard to escape.<br />
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Why then did Ryan choose to include such scenes? What purpose do they serve? Is is possible to tell the story of domestic abuse without showing on the page the violence that lies at its heart? Is it empowering or disempowering for those who have been abused to see similar abuse depicted directly, rawly, without a veil? What about for those who have not experienced such abuse themselves? Does seeing such violence depicted on the page make those who haven't been victims more sympathetic toward those who have? I don't think there are any easy "yes" or "no" answers to such questions; each reader will have to decide for themselves whether to pick up Ryan's book knowing that such scenes are included.<br />
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What I can say is that I wholeheartedly applaud Ryan's inversion of the racist image of the white woman endangered by overly sexualized black man, an image that has played out over and over in American popular culture since the end of the Civil War (see D. W. Griffiths' 1917 film <i>Birth of a Nation </i>for just one example; see Martha Hodes' <i>White Women, Black Men</i> for a historical corrective). While the <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=317">majority of sexual assaults in the United States today are intra-racial</a> (victim and perpetrator are of the same race), we cannot say the same about the past; Americans tend to repress and erase the long history of white male rape of enslaved black women during our country's long embrace of slavery. Ryan's choice to make her domestic abuser a white man serves as a pointed reminder of this often forgotten history.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
ARREST RATES ACROSS PRO SPORTS TEAMS</h3>
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Through Iris, Ryan also makes pointed comments about the way our current society continues to look away from the violence perpetrated by men against women, especially when those men are in positions of power (professional athletes, rather than plantation owners) and the women they abuse are women of color. Once Iris figures out a way to free herself and her daughter from Caleb, she doesn't choose to press charges against him:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Other athletes outed as abusers are fined and miss a few games, only to be back on the court, back on the field in a few weeks. I'm not trusting my life, my daughter's life, to a system that favors men just like Caleb. I've seen the so-called consequences we have for domestic abuse, and I need more than that."</span><br />
<br />
What she needs is a guy like West, who throughout the story serves as a vision of hope for what a future with a kind, caring man might be like. But Iris never asks West to rescue her; in fact, she turns to her cousin, and to her great grandmother, not to her potential good guy lover, to help her recover emotionally in the wake of her trauma. West may be the idealized prize at the end of the struggle, but the hard work of recovery is one best undertaken with sympathetic female supporters, Ryan suggests.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ryan is adept at giving readers the "big feels," a vital skill for any romance writer (see West's swoon-worthy declaration to Iris: "If you were mine, Iris, there would be no doubt what position you'd hold in my life. You'd be center. I'd play you at the five."). But she's also just as good at getting readers to think hard about the big issues, issues that American culture would often prefer we ignore: domestic violence; racial identity; the gendered aspects of privileged and power. It's this combination—big emotions <i>and</i> big ideas—that make Ryan one of the most provocative authors writing romance today.<br />
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<br />
<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Basketball bar: <a href="https://www.dhgate.com/product/creative-basketball-lamp-personality-restaurant/397142668.html">DHGate</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Pro sports arrest rates: <a href="https://www.vocativ.com/culture/sport/nfl-arrest-rates/">Vocativ</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXXnYvUtrIR1JL5UxDyKdzsSm_upje9y0-mEExgYD-hD_mU1uc0kKwOm6vxe5CbLHR3cIaZt0hG5SqPh06eufiR66_C19Cv8uXGjNqA9QyRTdWxk50ZZKMKg6lhuR1c0yia9qFcNtnxs0/s1600/30555412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="296" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXXnYvUtrIR1JL5UxDyKdzsSm_upje9y0-mEExgYD-hD_mU1uc0kKwOm6vxe5CbLHR3cIaZt0hG5SqPh06eufiR66_C19Cv8uXGjNqA9QyRTdWxk50ZZKMKg6lhuR1c0yia9qFcNtnxs0/s400/30555412.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://kennedyryanwrites.com/">Kennedy Ryan</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">Long Shot</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">A Hoops Novel (#1)</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">indie-published, 2018</span></div>
</div>
Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-89019067633608433612019-04-02T09:00:00.000-04:002019-04-02T09:00:00.623-04:00Romancing the Balikbayan: Mina V. Esguerra's KISS AND CRY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Due to my travel schedule, I completely missed watching this year's World Figure Skating championships, one of the few sporting events I usually carve out time to take in. I made up for it by moving Mina V. Esguerra's Philippines-set skating romance <i>Kiss and Cry</i> to the top of my reading pile. It's an unusual skating story, and not only because it's a winter sports story set in a country without a winter. Instead of focusing on the tension of competition, Esguerra's story is about adjusting to life after the days of competition are over.<br />
<br />
Thirty year old Calinda Valerio, the most lauded figure skater in the Philippines, has won her share of gold-medals: in the All-Asia Games, at the Winter Southeast Asian Games, and in her home country's national competition, Skate PH. Some people wonder if it was worth it, all the hard work and self-denial, given that she never made it to the Olympics. But for Cal, that doesn't matter:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEKPy9wPQPHmt6yPeRX-Llj2A2-v-iFSUL698l1JkICW4OhktwPG18tmtnmk1wOeyBk6NkcHYhJFe_FrIq6EHx8Q-Aq4d0laFMzHfoITTMmIeQCc79pRcAX3Gtp647P3Jgem61rnGLFmU/s1600/Cabilles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEKPy9wPQPHmt6yPeRX-Llj2A2-v-iFSUL698l1JkICW4OhktwPG18tmtnmk1wOeyBk6NkcHYhJFe_FrIq6EHx8Q-Aq4d0laFMzHfoITTMmIeQCc79pRcAX3Gtp647P3Jgem61rnGLFmU/s320/Cabilles.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Samantha Cabilles, Filipino figure skater</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Sometimes a thing wasn't meant for you but damn you wanted it anyway, didn't mean you'd stop trying. Never mind if you had to knock on more doors and need to work so much harder. Sometimes even years at it wouldn't be enough and the next thing to do was to help make it easier for those coming in after you. (Chapter 2)</span><br />
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Now that her own amateur career is over, Cal is "making it easier for those coming in after her" by working as a choreographer, both for individual skaters and as creative director for Manila's Six 32 Central ice rink. For her past and current work, Cal is being honored by being included in a Manila society magazine's video feature, "30 Most Accomplished in their Thirties."<br />
<br />
As is 32-year-old Ramirez Diaz-Tan, a leading member of the Filipino national hockey team. Despite sharing the same main rink in Manila for training and games, Cal and Ram haven't spent much time together in the past ten years. Not since her parents and coach insisted that the budding friendship between their twenty-something selves would take Cal's focus away from her skating, and forbid her to date him—or anyone else. As Ram describes it, "It was over before it started; Cal rightly chose skating over him, and managed to live an accomplished life, congratulations." He got the privilege of being her first: the "First Guy Calinda Valerio Was Not Allowed to Date" (Chapter 1).<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dRR9MF7Fhk4FlAvDxozMUjrVzy8Txv7-nXT9EX4GMe-j_Xh-9S1e3T9oqjgRSywqWKstw6tYESrHZwlDxzxaO84ZE6cjuVyBn5gedtaAzl92jWx7tMFDXjOgO78q-bitDY7twuZUJks/s1600/1503644373_icehockeygold.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="738" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8dRR9MF7Fhk4FlAvDxozMUjrVzy8Txv7-nXT9EX4GMe-j_Xh-9S1e3T9oqjgRSywqWKstw6tYESrHZwlDxzxaO84ZE6cjuVyBn5gedtaAzl92jWx7tMFDXjOgO78q-bitDY7twuZUJks/s320/1503644373_icehockeygold.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The 2017 Philippines national hockey team after<br />winning the SEA Games gold medal</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Ram emigrated to the US with his family when he was ten, and now holds dual citizenship. He didn't make the adjustment to living in the States easily, though; at 13, his family sent him back to spend the summer in Manila with his uncle for being, as he describes it, a "bad Filipino son" (Chapter 8). But while back in the Philippines, Ram took up hockey, and has kept coming back every summer since to play. He's grown so skilled that he's spent twelve years playing for the Philippines' new national team.<br />
<br />
But traveling back to his country of origin each summer to play hockey is becoming increasingly hard to do, given the need to hold a steady job back in the States. Taking eight weeks off every year to skate competitively in another country—it's not something most employers are ready to accept. And so Ram has made the tough decision to hang up his hockey skates; this will be his final competitive season.<br />
<br />
After meeting Ram again at the "30 Most Accomplished in their Thirties" photo shoot, Cal is eager to try out the things she was never allowed to do when she was younger and focused on her sport—and to do them with Ram. Shocking her parents and former coach by introducing him as her boyfriend is just one of the things on the to-do list she proposes to her surprised but willing former almost-boyfriend. Even the news that he's headed back to the States in only three weeks, with no plan of returning anytime soon, doesn't discompose Cal. Catharsis and closure are what she wants, not a happily-ever-after. Her parents and coach were wrong to take her choice away from her, as they didn't from her brother; she knows she wouldn't have moved to the States and abandoned her skating just to be with Ram, even if they don't. And she can prove it—by not doing it now.<br />
<br />
Ram and Cal's second-chance romance is light and playful, not overwhelmed by the bittersweet. One of my favorite moments, during a discussion of whether Cal would have derailed her skating career if she and Ram had ignored her parents and tried to make a go of it all those years earlier:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Because they made it seem like the worst thing for me to do, at the time. That if we got together and this happened, I'd suddenly want to quit. When I decided to retire, I tried it out—I dated, I had sex, and sort of... checked if dicks demotivated me."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> He hadn't laughed so much while in bed with someone and he wasn't stopping yet. "And what was the verdict on dicks?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> She shrugged. "Um, they're just dicks?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "I'm sure they'll be sad about that."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Oh, come on. They performed well, okay."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> This woman. Only she could say that and make it sound like a disappointment. (Chapter 10)</span><br />
<br />
<br />
But even in three short weeks, a sort-of-pretend-boyfriend situation can turn into something surprisingly important. And Ram and Cal find themselves facing some tough choices, choices that, unlike the one that was forced upon them as teenagers, they'll have to make for themselves.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Esguerra writes with a Filipino audience, or at least, with those familiar with Filipino culture, in mind; the book contains quite a few cultural references that as an outsider I had to look up to catch the full meaning (EDSA; <i>Ibong Adarna</i>; longganisas and kesong puti and other Pinoy food). But the book's storyline and romance arc are as accessible to other English-speaking readers as any penned by an American writer. And Esguerra's story has the added benefit of reminding American readers, especially those whose fears of outsiders have been exacerbated by current anti-immigrant rhetoric, that the United States isn't everyone's holy grail. As Ram himself reminds Cal:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "You said that whether we had something or not shouldn't change what my plans are."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Yes, it shouldn't."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "But it can. Maybe it should. Why aren't you asking me to stay?"</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> .....</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "No one asks someone to stay here. Especially when they've got a way out already. You know that don't you? It's just not done."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "You don't think we can question that too?" (Chapter 21)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><u><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Samantha Cabilles: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/patsantos9ri/11115594426/in/photostream/">Flickr</a></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Philippines Hockey: <a href="https://sports.abs-cbn.com/seagames/news/2017/08/25/philippines-stuns-thailand-claim-ice-hockey-gold-30181">ABC-CBN Sports</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://minavesguerra.com/">Mina V. Esguerra</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">Kiss and Cry</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Six 32 Central #2</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Bright Girl Books, 2019</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-77377639602345809202019-03-22T09:00:00.000-04:002019-03-23T15:41:55.519-04:00The Sorry State of Diversity in the RWA's RITA Awards: 2019 edition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yesterday, Romance Writers of America® announced the list of finalists for its RITA Awards, which the organization bestows in recognition of excellence in publishing romance writing. So it's also time for the annual RNFF blog post with data on the state of racial diversity amongst the RITA finalists, with added info on the race/ethnicity and sexuality of the characters of the finalist books.<br />
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For the second year in a row, all RITA contest entrants were required to submit a pdf copy, rather than print copies, of their books. Entrants could also submit either an epub or a kindle mobi file as well, for the convenience of judges. As this was not a change that changed the basic demographics of the entrants pool, as the switch from all print to pdf was in 2017, it's not surprising that a similar number of self-published books were chosen as finalists this year as last (22, by my count).<br />
<br />
Representation of queer characters is a bit down from last year, although there is one lesbian romance, as compared to no lesbian romances last year.<br />
<br />
What about representation of race/ethnicity? What do those numbers look like?<br />
<br />
Not good. Not good at all.<br />
<br />
<br />
Many books, and many author bios, don't explicitly state protagonists' or authors' race. So the calculations below are based on the following:<br />
<br />
• In cases where I'd read the book, I knew the race of the protagonists, either by being directly told in the narrative, or from context clues in the book<br />
<br />
• In cases where I had not read the book, I examined book covers, book descriptions, Goodreads book reviews, and character names for hints about protagonists' racial and ethnic backgrounds, and made my best guess. Major room for error here, so if you see any mistakes below, please let me know!<br />
<br />
• Similarly, for authors with whom I was familiar, and/or who had discussed their own racial backgrounds in public, I went with self-represented racial identities. I had to rely on author photographs and my best guesses for the rest. Two finalists do not include author photos on their web sites, so I classified them as white. Again, room for error (and correction) here.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Overall Statistics:</h3>
# of finalists:<br />
2018: <b>74</b><br />
2017: <b>78</b><br />
2016: <b>85</b><br />
<br />
# of authors of color:<br />
2018: <b>3***</b><br />
2017: <b>5-6</b><br />
2016: <b>4-6</b><br />
<br />
% of authors of color:<br />
2018: <b>4%***</b><br />
2017:<b> 6-7.7%</b><br />
2016: <b>4-7%</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
Overall # of protagonists: <b>149</b> (73 * 2, 1 * 3 [one erotic romance features a ménage-a-trois])<br />
<br />
# of protagonists of color<br />
2018: <b>8</b><br />
2017: <b>13</b><br />
2016: <b>5</b><br />
<br />
% of protagonists of color<br />
2018: <b>5.3%</b><br />
2017: <b>8.3%</b><br />
2018: <b>2.9%</b><br />
<br />
<br />
of queer protagonists:<br />
2018: <b>10</b> (8 in m/m romances, 2 in a lesbian romance)<br />
2017: <b>12</b><br />
2016: <b>8</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
% of queer protagonists:<br />
2018: <b>6.7%</b><br />
2017: <b>7.6%</b><br />
2016: <b>4%</b><br />
<br />
<br />
Individual Sub-Genre Numbers:<br />
<br />
Contemporary Romance Long<br />
# of finalists: 7<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of protagonists of color: 2<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Contemporary Romance: Mid-Length<br />
# of finalists: 11<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of protagonists of color: 0<br />
# of queer protagonists: 4<br />
<br />
Contemporary Romance: Short<br />
# of finalists: 8<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of protagonists of color: 0*<br />
# of queer protagonists: 2<br />
<br />
Erotic Romance:<br />
# of finalists: 4<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of protagonists of color: 0<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Historical Romance: Long<br />
# of finalists: 4<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of characters of color: 0<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Historical Romance: Short<br />
# of finalists: 6<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of characters of color: 0<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance<br />
# of finalists: 5<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of characters of color: 1<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Paranormal Romance<br />
# of finalists: 7<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of characters of color: 0<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Romance Novella<br />
# of finalists: 7<br />
# of authors of color: 1<br />
# of characters of color: 1<br />
# of queer protagonists: 2<br />
<br />
Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements<br />
# of finalists: 4<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of characters of color: 0<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Romantic Suspense<br />
# of finalists: 7<br />
# of authors of color: 0<br />
# of characters of color: 1<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
Young Adult Romance<br />
# of finalists: 4<br />
# of authors of color: 1<br />
# of characters of color: 4**<br />
# of queer protagonists: 0<br />
<br />
<br />
It's more than depressing that the representation of authors of color in the RITA finalist pool has <i>decreased, </i>despite recent efforts by the organization to better support its members of color. What else can RWA do to begin to address what is a glaringly obvious problem of bias in its judging system?<br />
<br />
More than a year ago, RWA stated that it was in the process of polling its membership about demographic issues, but to date I don't believe that information has been made public. Does RWA have any sense of how the demographics of RWA membership compares to the demographics of the U. S. as a whole? And how its overall demographics compare to the demographics of the finalists and the judges? Compiling and sharing such information with its membership would be a good place to start.<br />
<br />
Another intervention would be to begin asking entrants for demographic information about themselves and about the characters in the books they are submitting. Percentages could then be compared to the percentages in the finalist pool.<br />
<br />
Or RWA could consider revamping the way the entire contest is judged, and create a process in which systemic racism could be, if not entirely eliminated, at least majorly curtailed. I'd strongly urge the Board to create a committee or working group to study the issue in the coming year.<br />
<br />
I know more than a few authors who would be interested in serving...<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
US Census data on race/ethnicity (2016)<br />
White: <b>61.3%</b><br />
POC: <b>40.9%</b><br />
<br />
2018 RITA Finalists by race/ethnicity<br />
White: <b>97.3%</b><br />
POC: <b>4%</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">* Caitlin Crews' <i>A Baby to Bind His Bride</i> includes this description of its hero: "amalgam of everything that was beautiful in him. His Greek mother. His Spanish father. His Brazilian grandparents on one side, his French and Persian grandparents on the other." I'm not counting this hero as a POC.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">** one of these books, written by a white author, features Latinx characters, one of whom is a gang member. I have counted these characters as POC, despite some concern that this representation may be problematic. I have not yet read the book in question.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*** My original post listed 2 authors of color, not 3. I've updated the numbers accordingly, given the comments below.</span></div>
Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-23976105613493719532019-03-19T09:00:00.000-04:002019-03-19T09:00:08.829-04:00Race and Romance: The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing Report 2018<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBX_a4AuD5EHHHx5gdzM9kYRGH5CW2-823uZSONzIC2M3qMUuTvwk3FEvi4tJMvXWHC-C__sFHqSQaROYtf8olAzExkf2auosPkF2BRZ9c2WnySH23UVteRXcp4OKywsLmD0Tr7Jj3vU/s1600/FeministinsideHeart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBX_a4AuD5EHHHx5gdzM9kYRGH5CW2-823uZSONzIC2M3qMUuTvwk3FEvi4tJMvXWHC-C__sFHqSQaROYtf8olAzExkf2auosPkF2BRZ9c2WnySH23UVteRXcp4OKywsLmD0Tr7Jj3vU/s1600/FeministinsideHeart.jpg" /></a></div>
Early this month, the Ripped Bodice bookstore released their third annual "<a href="https://www.therippedbodicela.com/state-racial-diversity-romance-publishing-report">The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing Report."</a> The news about that diversity is not encouraging. The report lists the percentages of romances written by people of color and indigenous authors that have been published each year by twenty of the leading commercial publishers of romance books. As the report notes, in bold blue type, "there has been zero progress in the last 3 years." While a few publishers have increased the percentage of writers of color on their lists since 2016, the majority haven't. Even the publisher with the highest percentage of POC-authored books (Kensington, at 22.8%) does not come close to matching the percentage of the <a href="https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_16_1YR_CP05&prodType=table">American populace who identify as something other than white (38.7%)</a>. Fewer than half of the publishers surveyed can even boast about having a lowly 10% of authors of color on their lists.<br />
<br />
Bea and Leah Koch, the owners of The Ripped Bodice, note in their report that "When beginning this project three years ago, we believed that as soon as the numbers were collected and publicly released, publishers would immediately make strides toward correcting this imbalance. We hoped that providing clear data would contribute to the work that authors of color have been doing for decades to prove that there is widespread systemic racism within romance publishing." The first statement seems a bit naive, given the second. If "widespread systemic racism" exists within the romance publishing industry, merely pointing to data from three years of a report isn't likely to root that racism out.<br />
<br />
An anecdote by way of suggesting why:<br />
<br />
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I worked for a major trade children's book publisher, the head of our marketing department prepared an informal report on "multicultural" books. The report concluded that books that could be labeled "multicultural" sold, on average, at a higher rate that those that could not.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB3_jWkdxFb8VF_Vm7R9ELnwq2hMZ7C5uB2dGEd-Oziec4bZ9FpePq1lb3vD1l_IZG4QsXcQXCrddh2nhwhLCDsKd1-fTQFOrCWKZjpw9-_J5JnkxcRswey_cgJ45SM9vAbht90Oxc4zo/s1600/1638245.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB3_jWkdxFb8VF_Vm7R9ELnwq2hMZ7C5uB2dGEd-Oziec4bZ9FpePq1lb3vD1l_IZG4QsXcQXCrddh2nhwhLCDsKd1-fTQFOrCWKZjpw9-_J5JnkxcRswey_cgJ45SM9vAbht90Oxc4zo/s1600/1638245.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the "multicultural" books. Written by <br />
author Mwenye Hadithi, aka Bruce Hobson</td></tr>
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I don't know if other children's book publishers compiled any similar reports, or if they did, whether it would have helped decrease publishing's institutional racism. Because that report did not differentiate between multicultural <i>books</i> (which included a wide range of content, from folktales from other cultures to stories with primary, or more often secondary, characters of color) and books written or illustrated by people of color. I don't remember us discussing that fact in any great detail. Perhaps because everyone in the Editorial, Marketing, and Publicity departments, including myself, was white? Or because publishers, even publishers for children, were increasingly being asked to focus on the bottom line, rather than was what good for children or society?<br />
<br />
Many of our "multicultural" books at the time were written by white authors; a few authors even took on pen names that suggested they were from non-white cultures. Something that really bothered me and several of my similar-aged colleagues at the time. But it didn't seem to bother our superiors. If "multicultural" would sell, then we would sell multicultural books, no matter who their creators.<br />
<br />
<br />
It would take more than twenty years, and the advent of social media (in particular, Twitter), for writers and illustrators of color to mount a collective campaign to protest children's book publishing's whitewashed version of multiculturalism. Pressure from the children's lit twitterverse, the work of the the nonprofit organization We Need Diverse Books (which was formed in 2014), and the publication of <a href="http://ccblogc.blogspot.com/2018/02/ccbc-2017-multicultural-statistics.html">statistics on children's books publishing diversity by the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)</a> have all combined to exert pressure on publishers, which has led to a marked increase in the diversity content of children's books being published (from 10% in 2013 to 31% in 2017).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPoQQfFINsXMTGGNgMsjPrNaseD4Swkn7l-nZq2ydRbKi82u7Q7v4C_kOfGGWUXw0Et3UKGhtMW7k65xbIXGunjtxNFrTAjqqArAqxMAfebPIw9BWu_gsBTRB5CS-l40AFh7R3pjxLD_c/s1600/download.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="194" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPoQQfFINsXMTGGNgMsjPrNaseD4Swkn7l-nZq2ydRbKi82u7Q7v4C_kOfGGWUXw0Et3UKGhtMW7k65xbIXGunjtxNFrTAjqqArAqxMAfebPIw9BWu_gsBTRB5CS-l40AFh7R3pjxLD_c/s320/download.png" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Infographic courtesy of <a href="https://blog.leeandlow.com/2018/05/10/the-diversity-gap-in-childrens-book-publishing-2018/">Lee & Low Books</a></td></tr>
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Yet the percentage of books created by writers and illustrators of color still lag far behind those created by whites, even when the content of said books can be labeled "multicultural." Doing some back of the envelope calculations based on the figures cited by the CCBC, I come up with the following:<br />
<br />
• Total percentage of books by authors/illustrators of color: 14%<br />
<br />
• Percentage of books by black, Latinx, and Native authors: 7%<br />
<br />
• Percentage of books by people of color that focus on multicultural content: 9%<br />
<br />
• Percentage of books by whites that focus on multicultural content: 16%<br />
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<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
14% is still a far cry from reflecting the actual racial diversity in America today (38%). And romance is doing far worse that children's books are...</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
In their 2018 edition of "The State of Diversity in Romance Publishing Report," the Kochs' place the onus for fixing the problem of systemic racism in romance publishing on publishers: "ultimately, unless acquiring editors purchase more manuscripts for publication by authors of color, these numbers will remain the same." Given my own past experiences, I'm not convinced that relying on the good will (or the embarrassment) of editors will be enough.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Some additional things that might help:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• More information about the publishing industry, like that compiled by the Koch's. And more detailed information, too, such as that compiled by the CBBC about children's book publishing. Is traditional publishing giving white authors preference over writers of color in writing multicultural romances? Are some groups of color underrepresented as writers to a greater degree than others?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• More information about romance's readership. Are publishers' claims that "they don't buy those books," i.e., white readers don't buy books about/by people of color, true? If so, is this true across all demographic categories we might study? (age, educational status, economic status, geographical location)? And what are the best ways to counter such attitudes, if they do in fact exist?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• More scholars to study the genre, to supply some of the answers to the above questions</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• RWA to continue to call attention to issues of race and institutional racism in the industry, and to support authors of color. Also, guidance to its membership on how to talk productively, rather than adversarially, about race and racism in the industry</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• The continued voices of Romancelandia Twitterverse speaking out in protest of the current situation</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• More white readers to buy books about and by writers of color</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• More conversations about the difference between institutional racism and prejudice, so that whites don't get so automatically defensive whenever the topic of race enters a conversation</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
• More blogs and reviews about romances by/about people of color</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Will you answer Bea and Leah Koch's call to "join us" in advocating for "significant improvement" when it comes to authors of color in the romance book industry?<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-74773875338157010782019-03-12T09:00:00.000-04:002019-03-12T09:00:04.551-04:00The Fix Is NOT In: Tamsen Parker's THE INSIDE TRACK<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn0TeuYy8mWGlPDT1FWyiaK21hQp0Qg4trGjfLdFoe0eJaSSj2tW0ig-6hF-Iex91sA9HeNKqvcil-57bbgOFaKAmVeEHyzn2DrvfR_2AiSrGEIU2NqyJUVSjPsjnqxYSLqIv7FNAQlBc/s1600/readers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="108" data-original-width="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn0TeuYy8mWGlPDT1FWyiaK21hQp0Qg4trGjfLdFoe0eJaSSj2tW0ig-6hF-Iex91sA9HeNKqvcil-57bbgOFaKAmVeEHyzn2DrvfR_2AiSrGEIU2NqyJUVSjPsjnqxYSLqIv7FNAQlBc/s1600/readers.jpg" /></a></div>
I am, by nature, a fixer. Whenever I hear someone talk about a problem, I immediately start to think about all the possible ways I could act to make that problem go away. It can be a really annoying habit, this urge to want to fix everything, especially when it comes to people. Not everyone needs, or even wants, to be fixed. Even if the larger society around them thinks they should do something to make their situation better, a lot of people are perfectly happy being the way they are. Because broken isn't always fixable, especially when it comes to people. And also because one person's "broken" may just be another person's "different."<br />
<br />
Reading Tamsen Parker's latest contemporary romance, <i>The Inside Track</i>, gave me a much-needed reminder of this. And did so while making me laugh harder than I can ever remember laughing while reading a romance.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1UFjxWKs3prT1gbWZ4ykUe0opSm_1X6DQXiCpH-007wQtgUuk5rmrKNcBI4855dCSXLACIYR_cBy5aCz0kPkHwb4A81GFOyer7YahZd7npoRcdk-Zp4zS-AINwLJlyEDxgY75y6XWmEg/s1600/0004167_lawrence-welk-favorites-arr-myron-floren-accordion_550.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="399" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1UFjxWKs3prT1gbWZ4ykUe0opSm_1X6DQXiCpH-007wQtgUuk5rmrKNcBI4855dCSXLACIYR_cBy5aCz0kPkHwb4A81GFOyer7YahZd7npoRcdk-Zp4zS-AINwLJlyEDxgY75y6XWmEg/s320/0004167_lawrence-welk-favorites-arr-myron-floren-accordion_550.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
<i>The Inside Track's</i> two white protagonists, financial advisor Dempsey Lawrence and boy band guitarist Nick Fischer, do not function in socially conventionally ways. Readers of Parker's earlier books featuring License to Game (<i>Love on the Tracks</i> and <i>Thrown Off Track</i>), the boy band on the cusp of aging out of their audience, will remember Nick as the goofball screwup of the group, an eight-year-old boy in a 28-year-old's body. Nick's more than just a bundle of impulsivity; he fidgets, he wrestles, he talks a mile a minute about the most fascinating, and often disgusting, things. He's never worried about making a fool of himself; he adores being the center of attention. Witness the book's opening scene, in which we find a drunken Nick with the accordion which once belonged to Lawrence Welk, an accordion which he's "borrowed" from the wall of the Los Angeles restaurant where he was dining. He's playing it outside, in the middle of a fountain—stark naked. If only he had his unicycle, too...<br />
<br />
Using close first person, Parker gives readers access to the whirling pinball inside Nick's head, following his thoughts as they carom from topic to topic, making leaps of association that are as amazingly imaginative as they are hilarious:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Maybe these police officers would like to be my friends. Because if any of my guys were here, they probably would've suggested that climbing into a fountain, naked, with an accordion was maybe not my best idea. Or at least they would've held my goddamn pants so some dickwad wouldn't take them. Fucking pants thieves. That's just low. (Kobo epub, Chapter 1, page 7)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
Or this, from the second chapter, where Nick is serving out his community service sentence for the aforementioned accordion incident by speaking with kids at a local performing arts school about managing your money when you're a creative. Nick on the coolness of spreadsheets:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"They're like wizards, guys. Seriously. Magic on your screen. They do math for you, but in a cooler way than a calculator. And then you can even make pie charts. Pie charts are really fu— falutin' rad. I don't know about you guys, but like, sometimes numbers make my head hurt? But I'm totally game for colors and shapes. And pie. Pie is delicious. My favorite is probably key lime. Why do you think they call them pie charts instead of pizza charts? Because pizza is great, and it would make them sound way cooler. But then I guess they call pizzas pies, don't they? Which is weird. Because it's not like a real pie. Except in Chicago. You guys like deep dish?" (Ch. 2, p. 13-14)</span><br />
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<br />
Even after encountering Nick not under the influence, a reader who knows anyone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is likely to be thinking "It's ADHD! Get diagnosed! Get some help!" But Parker is not interested in telling the story of a person whose life gets put back on track after receiving a welcome medical diagnosis. Sometimes, a diagnosis doesn't lead to an easy fix. As Nick reveals later on in the story, he <i><b>was</b></i> diagnosed as a child, but rebounding off the drugs proscribed to deal with the ADHD made him sullen and violent, and the meds themselves gave him a tic. So his family decided against medicating Nick's condition. Neurotypical is certainly not the word to describe Nick. But he and his family and bandmates have come to love him for who he is, not for who he should or could be if only the drugs had worked better for him.<br />
<br />
Parker pairs attention-hound Nick with perhaps the most unlikely of opposites: a woman who has not left her property for more than five years. Thirty-four year old Dempsey, a former teen tv star, experienced major trauma due to her career. She, unlike Nick, takes medication, because the trauma has left her with debilitating problems; her meds help curb her anxiety and panic attacks, and allow her to function as a financial planner to other young show business kids who don't mind working with someone over the phone. But neither her doctors nor "a shit ton of pharmaceuticals" have been able to rid Dempsey of her agoraphobia. A shiny new boyfriend certainly won't, either, as Dempsey makes clear to Nick when she first tells him about her condition:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"You're not going to be the hero here. There are no white horses or castle moats or needle-pricked fingers. You should assume that I'm never leaving this quarter-acre lot ever again and make your choices based on that. There's the door." (Ch 6, p 9)</span><br />
<br />
But unconventional Nick doesn't think Dempsey's agoraphobia is as anathema to romance as she does: "I like you. I like being with you. And if I have to come here to hang out with you, then I will. I don't really feel like that's a big thing. No one's perfect." (Ch 6, p 10). Nick loves everyone's attention, but there's something about Dempsey's that is just off the charts compelling to him. Almost as if she can channel the cheering of a stadium full of people, just by herself. And Dempsey is equally charmed by Nick's intelligence, humor, and utter lack of guile. After being lied to over and over again in the past, Dempsey truly appreciates a man who isn't hiding anything.<br />
<br />
As I read further on into their story, one part of my mind kept expecting some big plot event that would "fix" either Dempsey or Nick. Some danger to Nick would compel Dempsey to leave her house, and she'd find herself miraculously recovered. Or some new doctor would give Nick a different diagnosis, or would offer him a new drug that would calm down the impulsivity of his brain. And Parker throws out several plot complications that look like they might be headed in one of those directions—only to pull back and disrupt the common romance trope that falling in love will fix everything. Dempsey and Nick do help each other, not to fix themselves, but rather, to adapt to each other's needs, while keeping their own abilities and needs also in view. Those adaptations might be a bit on the unusual side for this particular couple, but its a process anyone, neurotypical or no, who is involved in a relationship must embrace if they are to make it past the first blush of romance.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><u>Photo credits</u>:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Lawrence Welk album: <a href="https://tredwellsmusic.com/lawrence-welk-favorites-arr-myron-floren-accordion-songbook-sheet-music-out-of-print-rare-deleted-vintage-discontinued-collectible">Treadwell's Music</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Pie pie chart: <a href="https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00018S">EdwardTufte.com</a></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://tamsenparker.com/">Tamsen Parker</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Inside Track</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">License to Love #2</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Indie published, 2019</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-20131174677169207402019-03-01T09:00:00.000-05:002019-03-01T09:00:01.874-05:00Why do women like m/m SEM? Thoughts on Lucy Neville's GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the comments section of RNFF's first review of a m/m romance (<a href="http://romancenovelsforfeminists.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-politics-of-mm-romance-and-alex.html">Alex Beecroft's <i>Blessed Isle</i></a>, back in 2013), several commenters posted their thoughts about why they found m/m romance novels appealing, often more appealing than heterosexual romances. RNFF readers aren't the only ones who have thoughts on the matter. Slash fiction writer and academic scholar Lucy Neville has just published an entire book on the subject, or at least, on a closely related topic. In <i>Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys</i>, Neville reports on her sociological study of more than 500 self-identified women who engage with sexually explicit material (SEM) that features (or purports to feature) gay men, to explore how and why they engage with it, and what they enjoy about that engagement.<br />
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Initially, Neville began with focus groups and one-on-one interviews with seventeen subjects, guided by a rough set of questions she'd put together, but open enough to follow the ideas and issues raised by her interviewees. In response to those initial conversations, Neville then developed a questionnaire to send to the broader group of 508, which she'd found through chat groups, fandom groups, and connections from her own work as a writer of gay male slash fiction. The responses to these questionnaires were then "data coded," with recurring themes pulled out, reviewed, and refined, until Neville had the broad themes and subthemes that organize the 8 chapters of her published book (Chapter 1 serves as an introduction, and an explanation of her methodology).<br />
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Though gay pornography and erotica, as well as slash fiction, are not the same as m/m romance, I was curious to read about Neville's survey, and its respondents' ideas, to see if any of those ideas might be applicable to romance.<br />
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Unfortunately, while Neville shares demographic information about her respondents, she doesn't share the survey itself in the book (unless I somehow missed it?), so we don't know precisely what questions she asked (and what questions she didn't). And the book itself spends far less time discussing what her respondents had to say than it does presenting the ideas of other researchers who have theorized about sexuality, porn, slash fiction, and other topics related to study. It's rare to read a single page here that doesn't include at least five, if not more, quotations from or summaries of other writers' scholarship. Perhaps this just a difference in writing style between literary scholarship and social science scholarship (Neville is a Lecturer in Criminology at Leicester University), but I found this constant name- and quote-dropping really frustrating. I wanted to hear what Neville's <i>interviewees</i> had to say,but their comments often got lost amidst the flood of secondary source material. How could you not want more of fabulous lines like this: "Porn is mostly for wanking, erotica is more towards inspiring the imagination towards wanking, and romance is more about making your heart feel like it's wanking" (126-27)?<br />
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Chapter 2, which discusses why women watch m/m porn and Chapter 3, which asks why readers read m/m slash fiction, struck me as quite relevant to m/m romance, too, as did and Chapters 5 and 6, which explore in more depth the reasons behind two general reader explanations for why they enjoy m/m SEM (the absence of female actresses/characters in Chapter 5, the combination of sex and emotional intimacy in Chapter 6).<br />
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So, what reasons did Neville's respondents give for watching m/m porn?<br />
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EYE CANDY: The most common reason was "the seemingly unradical notion that many women find men attractive, and therefore like looking at them, particularly without their clothes on" (50). Women like eye candy, but eye candy is rarely found in heterosexual media. Thus, women turn to m/m SEM to get what they want.<br />
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Their reasons for engaging with m/m slash fiction were far more numerous, and include:<br />
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"DEAD GIRLFRIEND OF THE WEEK" SYNDROME<br />
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There are far more male characters in popular culture than female ones (especially in the 1970s and 80s, when many of the study's respondents were growing up), so "many of the characters I care about most are male" (84). Since many slash readers prefer to read about characters they already know and care about, those characters end up being largely male.<br />
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THE PRIVILEGING OF BROMANCE<br />
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Homosocial partnership between males has far older culture roots than does heterosexual romance, which only emerged during the age of chivalry. Friendships between men, then, are held up as more noble, self-sacrificing, and worthy than friendships between women, or friendships between men and women. "All that slash fans do, then, is observe the homosociality they see all around them, and choose to frame it as homosexuality. Unlike others, they do not <i>presume</i> heterosexuality" (91). Additionally, men don't have to change in order to be with other men, unlike much traditional romance, where women must "often drop everything to be supported by him" (94).<br />
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POACHING/POWER GRABS<br />
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According to media scholar Henry Jenkins, "Fans operate from a position of cultural marginality and social weakness.... [They] lack direct access to the means of commercial cultural productions and have only the most limited resources with which to influence the entertainment industry's decisions" (Neville 97). And also, sneaking into privileged ground to poach is part of the thrill (101).<br />
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POLITICS<br />
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Written primarily by women, produced, distributed, and consumed primarily by women, slash is "both resistance and creative appropriation" and as such, is overtly political (103).<br />
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ETHICAL, FEMINIST PORNOGRAPHY<br />
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Slash doesn't raise some of the moral and ethical problems that readers and writers often have with visual pornography. There are no real people, no actual bodies involved, so there are no concerns over exploitation or coercion. And since slash circulates for free, there is no issue of capitalist exploitation to worry over (107)<br />
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THE ABSENCE OF FEMALE BODIES/CHARACTERS<br />
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Neville devotes an entire chapter to this issue, with its many nuances and valences. Here are the main reasons she suggests her respondents enjoyed <i>not</i> seeing women in their SEM:<br />
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<i>Don't Hurt Her: </i>As Clarissa Smith notes, "female consumers of pornography are constantly dogged by questions of harm, subordination, objectification, and authenticity, and the need to consider women's well-being before their own pleasures in watching porn." Neville finds that for many of her respondents, engaging with m/m SEM "is a way to sidestep some of these questions and start putting their own desires first" (155-56). In particular, "entrenched notions about power and submission with regards to penetration" in porn are hard to evade when there are female bodies on display, but in "m/m SEM men are doing things to or with other men—there is no woman to potentially feel bad for" (157).<br />
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<i>My Sexual Pleasure Shouldn't Be Someone Else's Work</i>: Many women, although they do not have a problem with sex work <i>per se</i>, are reluctant to consume sex for their own pleasure knowing that the sex they are watching was performed as <i>work</i>.<br />
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<i>Don't Trigger Me</i>: For women who have experienced rape or sexual assault, it can be triggering or re-traumatizing to see a woman in sexually explicit materials.<br />
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<i>Female Bodies are Upsetting/Gross</i>: Some women dislike seeing the female body in sexually explicit materials, either because they don't like to think about their own bodily perfections, or because they find female genitalia and sexuality "actively unpleasant" (158)<br />
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<i>"It's Hard to Miss a Hard-On"</i>: You can't "see" female arousal with the same ease that you can see male arousal. There isn't any visual correlate to the erect penis or "come shot" for women. How can you enjoy pleasure if you can't see it? (145-9)<br />
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<i>Same Body, Better Pleasure</i>: Many study participants also believed that "same-sex partners are more proficient at pleasuring each other because of their familiarity with their own (male) bodies and preferences" (161)<br />
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<i>Power Dynamics: </i>One study Neville mentions found that "female sexual arousal in response to SEM is facilitated when participants perceive their identification figure as being in control of, or dominating, the sexual interaction." Neville goes on to report that "a lot of the women I spoke to struggle to find this in m/f SEM, either written or visual." But m/m SEM requires that they identify with a man, which allows them to identify with the controlling figure (162)<br />
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<i>Unsexy Feminists:</i> Neville quotes Judith Butler to explain this one: "among gay men, a certain focus on pleasure and sexuality that [i]sn't always available in women's communities highly mediated by feminism" (quoted in Neville p. 165)<br />
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<i>Equality:</i> Study respondents discussed a sense of equality between men that is often lacking between men and women. "This dynamic can in and of itself, be extremely erotic for some women" (165)<br />
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<i>Payback:</i> A small number of respondents enjoyed the fact that m/m SEM objectifies male bodies, which serves "as a form of payback for women's objectification in patriarchal culture as a whole" (180). As one respondent notes, "There's a little thrill of revenge when reading about men getting abused just like women. It's nasty, but it makes one feel better about the general situation of women in society to remember that this can happen to men, too" (181)<br />
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INTIMATOPIA<br />
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In chapter 6, Neville discusses one additional reason why female readers enjoy m/m SEM: "intimatopia." "For many of the women I spoke to, porn and love are not polar opposites. Instead, it is the fusion of these two things that gives them the most pleasure: sexually and emotionally" (191). Neville refers here to Elizabeth Woledge's 2006 coinage of the term "intimatopia" to describe the fantasy world of certain types of slash fiction, a fantasy space which allows both sexually charged relationships and a high degree of sustained emotional connection. Woledge argues that while romance and porn "seek to separate sex and intimacy," slash fiction brings them together (212-213).<br />
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For those of you who read m/m romance, do any of these reasons strike a chord with you? And are there other reasons you enjoy m/m romance that Neville's focus on SEM failed to capture?<br />
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<u>Photo credits:</u><br />
• Bromance: <a href="https://www.insidehook.com/nation/are-you-in-a-bromance-study">Inside Hook</a><br />
• Revenge & Payback: <a href="https://photobucket.com/gallery/user/follett1433/media/bWVkaWFJZDoxMjI2NzY0Nw==/?ref=">Photobucket</a><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/criminology/people/dr-lucy-neville">Lucy Neville</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys</i>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Palgrave/Macmillan, 2018</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-28994798692554758352019-02-22T09:00:00.000-05:002019-02-22T09:00:03.962-05:00Secrets and Narrative Manipulation in Jo Goodman's A TOUCH OF FLAME<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Much of the romantic tension in Harlequin romances of the 1970s and 80s stems from the fact that readers are allowed access into the minds of only <i>one</i> of their books' two romantic leads. Authors show us what their female protagonists think, feel, and desire, but the thoughts, feelings, and desires of their male leads remain hidden, a mystery. Readers, like the heroine herself, are put into a state of suspense, looking for clues about the hero's goals and motivations but never really certain of them until the story's climax, when the hero declares his love. Only after the hero had given voice to previously private, secret feelings can readers, and the heroine, be certain they <i>really</i> know what is inside his head and heart.<br />
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Much contemporary romance fiction takes a different tack. Dual (or occasionally multiple) point of view is far more common now than single point of view. The two (or occasionally more) protagonists in a romance novel may not know what the other is really thinking or feeling, but the narrative puts the reader in a more privileged position. Authors allow us to see inside the heads of all parties who are falling in love. The pleasure now is less about the suspense of whether one romantic lead really has feelings for the other, but instead in knowing more than each of the protagonists do, being privy to the reasons why they belong together, even if they themselves do not yet see them.<br />
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And then we come to Jo Goodman. Goodman's most recent American-set historical romances are narrated using dual point of view. But even while they give access to the inner workings of both romantic leads, they often do not tell the reader <i>everything</i> the character is thinking or feeling. Her narrative voice is not unreliable, precisely; instead, it feels canny, strategically laconic. Appropriate, no doubt, given that her setting is the 19th century American West, a setting known for the iconic figure of the strong, silent cowboy. As readers, we are being manipulated by Goodman's narrative reticence; assuming we have access to all the important thoughts and feelings of our main characters, Goodman can then later surprise us when one of them reveals something we assumed we would have or should have been told or shown earlier if it had been important to the story. But the manipulation never feels like a betrayal, at least not to me; instead, it makes me just want to stand back and laugh, admiring the skill with which Goodman has shown me some of her cards, while slyly keeping others back.<br />
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Goodman's narrative style struck me especially delicious in her latest, <i>A Touch of Flame</i>, in large part because the male romantic lead, twenty-nine-year-old Ben Madison, does not at all resemble the iconic laconic cowboy of western novel and film. Although Ben has just been elected to the position of Sheriff in 1898 Frost Falls, Colorado, he's hardly the strong, silent gunslinger type. We're introduced to him as he's trying to take a nap on the boardwalk in front of the jail:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">He tugged on the brim of his pearl gray Stetson and pulled it forward to cover his eyes and the bridge of his lightly freckled nose. Positioning the hat in such a way meant uncovering more of the back of his head and exposing his carrot-colored hair to passersby who'd known him all their lives and still seemed to think they were the first to comment on it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Nothing about being the newly elected sheriff of Frost Falls changed that. (1)</span><br />
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Ben's a friendly, steady presence in Frost Falls, always ready to engage its citizens with a funny story, cheerful word, or kind compliment. And always ready to be teased, or to position himself as butt of his own self-deprecating jokes:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Did I insult you?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Insult me? No. I don't even know if that's possible."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Thick-skinned?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Dull-witted. I don't know an insult even when it's poking me in the chest." (18)</span><br />
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But the joke is certainly on Ben when he goes to the train station to meet the new doctor that his friend, Dr. Dunlop, arranged to take over his practice before he moved back east. Because the new doctor, one E. Ridley Woodhouse, is not a white man, as everyone in Frost Falls, including Ben, assumed. She's a white <i>woman</i>.<br />
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Ben promised Dunlop that he'd offer his support for the new doctor during the transition, a transition that has become far more fraught, given Dunlop's keeping the sex of his replacement a secret. And that the women of Frost Falls are even more opposed to a female physician than are its men. Dr. E. Ridley Woodhouse is mannerly, but private, "willing to listen, not willing to share" (120), which makes it hard for the people of Frost Falls to put their trust in her. And she's prickly, too, quick to take umbrage with those who question her skills, or her independence, even if they do so inadvertently.<br />
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In order to keep his promise to Dr. Dunlop, Ben chooses to work behind the scenes, deciding when and if to reveal things he knows, and things he is doing, to Ridley and to his fellow townsfolk. Not that this is something that Goodman tells her reader directly; instead, she shows us Ben choosing not to tell the new doctor that he's the sheriff, or to tell the townsfolk they encounter that she's the new doctor, the first day she's in town. And Goodman has Ben think only in passing about the "spies" he relies upon to keep track of the new arrival during the weeks that follow, without giving us any details of who they are, or even if they are aware that Ben is using them for his own secret purposes.<br />
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And though a reader certainly assumes that since Ben and Ridley are the two characters from whose points of view Goodman tells her story, the two are headed for future romance, she rarely shows either thinking lascivious, or even romantic, thoughts about the other, at least not until the two are practically in bed together. And while they snip and snipe at one another, their banter is never mean-spirited; Goodman, like Ben, wants to make us laugh, and includes plenty of dry, wry humor as she slowly builds the romance between her amusing lawman and her serious doctor.<br />
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If she's going to keep secrets from the reader, why should Goodman choose dual point of view, rather than tell this story entirely through Ridley's eyes? Perhaps to reassure the reader that the secrets that Ben is hiding behind his oh-so-cheerful facade are not secrets that will be damaging or harmful to Ridley if she places her trust in him. Early in the story, Ridley thinks "It was difficult to argue with [Ben]... but it did not keep her from trying. He simply grinned at her in that maddening way of his and rolled over her objections by never addressing them at all. He never really argued so he never lost an argument. It was frustrating and just a little unnerving" (127). If we didn't have <i>any</i> access to Ben's interior thoughts and feelings, such behavior could be read as demeaning to Ridley, a sign of a man hiding a dangerously controlling streak behind a false front of good cheer.<br />
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Instead, showing us <i>some</i> of the thoughts inside Ben's head, Goodman shows us a man worthy of our admiration and trust. And thus we cheer him on as he and Ridley gradually being to join forces to help the residents of Frost Falls. They work together to rescue a family overcome by poisonous gas from by a faulty stove; to foil a robbery at the town bank; to figure out why the town's most influential woman, a woman who actively worked to promote women's suffrage, is trying to undermine Ridley's reputation. And most importantly, to come up with a way to help a family whose male head is becoming increasingly prone to drinking and physically abusing his wife, when said wife will not tell the truth about what has been happening to her.<br />
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As they work together trying to address the town's problems, Ben and Ridley also make the conscious decision, mid-book, to become lovers. They aren't moved by torrid passion, or uncontrollable desire, but by wry humor, by affection and appreciation, and by deep respect for the strengths and needs of the other. Though on the surface, they appear to be opposites—Ben amusing, Ridley serious; Ben open, Ridley self-contained—at heart, they are quite similar, and quite suited:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Sometimes I take things too seriously, myself included."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Sometimes." He paused, bent his head to catch her eye. "And sometimes I fail to see when things <i>are</i> serious."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> She shook her head. "No, you don't. I never think that. You merely wear a different suit of armor than I do."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Ben said nothing. She had captured it exactly. (263) </span><br />
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Ben's preferred method of dealing with problems is to deploy his particular suit of armor, what might best be described as "soft power": influencing others so that they see what he wants them to see, wants what he wants them to think. Rather than taking the more traditionally masculine path of force, physical or verbal, Ben uses methods more commonly associated with feminine persuasion: he works behind the scenes, placing this bit of information in that person's ear, another bit in someone else's. Which is perhaps why many of the problems he and Ridley tackle—the inequality of traditional gender norms, domestic violence—have clear feminist implications.<br />
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And why in the end, their story asserts, some secrets are better kept than revealed.<br />
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As least, as long as they're not kept from the reader...<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.jogoodman.com/">Jo Goodman</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">A Touch of Flame</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Cowboys of Colorado #2</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Berkley, 2018</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-71117411533814493362019-02-15T09:00:00.000-05:002019-02-15T09:00:03.463-05:00The Appeal (or not) of Compulsory Demisexuality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've always had decidedly mixed feelings about the "fated mate" romance, but could never quite articulate why. Until this past week, when I came across the term "compulsory demisexuality." It's a fascinating concept, and one that helped me understand the sexist implications of the "I'm only sexually attracted to my one true love" ideology that's found in many single title and even more category romances.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoS3Kx1GPYkbCwmRzExwFqxVKYnxaCIsixwx0cIxOLTv9zs1tSBEIQLfI0GtpdBVlGVX3uJ3GZeuUo2tKilPbfPSONkR4JFigHf4bbtE7RGhYKCPAVn1ii_GXOdwG8ZrBFDxYP3w6qxq8/s1600/15906650.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoS3Kx1GPYkbCwmRzExwFqxVKYnxaCIsixwx0cIxOLTv9zs1tSBEIQLfI0GtpdBVlGVX3uJ3GZeuUo2tKilPbfPSONkR4JFigHf4bbtE7RGhYKCPAVn1ii_GXOdwG8ZrBFDxYP3w6qxq8/s1600/15906650.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jodi McAlister, in her other guise as<br />YA author</td></tr>
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Over the course of my years of reading about and studying gender and genre, I've often come across the term "compulsory heterosexuality." But this past week was the first time I'd heard the similar coinage, "compulsory demisexuality." The phrase appears in Lucy Neville's book <i>Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica</i> (about which I plan to write more in a future blog post), but the term was first coined by romance scholar Jodi McAlister. Wanting to find out more about this fascinating idea, I checked Neville's footnotes, and then tracked down the <i>Australasian Journal of Popular Culture</i> from 2014, in which McAlister's article, " 'That complete fusion of spirit as well as body': Heroines, Heroes, Desire, and Compulsory Demisexuality in the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance Novel," was first published.<br />
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Lesbian feminist poet and essayist Adrienne Rich used the phrase "compulsory heterosexuality" to describe the way that our society compels its members to believe that opposite-sex attraction is normal and natural, and to regard same-sex attraction as unnatural and deviant. The phrase is meant to call into question these so-called "natural" assumptions, to point out that they are not inherent to humanity, but are instead social constructions.*<br />
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McAlister's riff on Rich's term, "compulsory demisexuality," has a narrower scope and but a similar purpose. At the start of the majority of Harlequin Mills & Boon category romances, the female protagonist, or heroine, is demisexual: she can only feel sexual desire towards someone for whom she first feels an emotional attachment. But compulsory demisexuality takes demisexuality one step further. As McAlister explains, "someone who is actually demisexual is capable of experiencing attraction to a number of partners, as long as they have an emotional attachment to those partners" (300). But in the HM&B romance, "demisexuality intersects with the narrative of one true love" (300), so that a romance heroine can only feel sexual desire for <i>one</i> man, the man who is her soulmate. Women, according to the category romance, are (or at least <i>should be</i>, if they are proper heroine material), <i>innately</i> demisexual. A heroine will know the man she loves because it is only with him that she will share "that complete fusion of spirit as well as body" (in the words of Denise Robins, author of the 1933 Mills & Boon romance <i>Shatter the Sky).</i><br />
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McAlister goes on to make two additional important points about compulsory demisexuality in the category romance. First, that while the male protagonist in such books is rarely demisexual at the start of the romance, by its end, he, like the heroine, is decidedly demisexual. Think of those passages in your romances when, after being attracted to the heroine, the hero suddenly discovers that the pleasure he once took in looking at, or sexually interacting with, other women has suddenly disappeared. He's just not that into looking at other women, at playing the field, anymore; he only has eyes (and a hard-on) for her. Converting the hero to demisexuality signals the triumph of the heroine; she has brought him into her world, a world in which "sex and love are tied together." As McAlister pungently puts it, "she gives him love as a sexually transmitted disease" (307).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of a 1961 edition</td></tr>
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Second, the "way in which compulsory demisexuality has been realized within category romances has... changed over time." In <i>Shatter the Sky</i>, published all the way back in 1933, "the happy ending of the novel is less a victory for the heroine and more a victory for loving demisexual relationships in general... a victory for [heroine] and [hero], rather than a victory of [heroine] <i>over</i> [hero]" (308, emphasis added). But the demisexual paradigm becomes <i>more</i>, rather than <i>less</i>, associated with the feminine over the course of the twentieth century, especially in the period after World War II:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Although the idea that sex and love should be linked has been a consistent hallmark of the Mills & Boon novel, there seems to be a growing emphasis on the idea that this is a uniquely feminine viewpoint, and it is this viewpoint—her viewpoint—that triumphs at the end of the romance novel. (309)</span><br />
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McAlister describes the pattern of compulsory demisexuality in her article, but she doesn't speculate about its implications, or its potential effects on romance readers. Is it a problem that category romances demand compulsory demisexuality of their protagonists? And that many many single title-length romances do as well?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sexier cover, same compulsory<br />demisexual message: 2009's<br /><i>Desert Prince, Bride of Innocence</i></td></tr>
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I think it is. First, by demanding compulsory demisexuality of female protagonists, category romances suggest that female sexual desire cannot and should not exist without first being activated by a man. And not just any man, but only by the "one true love" a heterosexual woman is destined to be romantically linked to for the rest of her life. If a reader identifies with the heroine of such romances, or sees said heroine as a role model, she may passively accept such beliefs without even realizing she is doing so. What's even worse, those beliefs implicit shame any girl or woman who experiences sexual desire before she meets her "one true love." Compulsory demisexuality functions to control female sexuality, to contain it within the safety of a patriarchal relationship. Hardly the sex-positive attitude a feminist would wish for her in her romance reading.<br />
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And compulsory demisexuality also works to instill the idea that there is and must always be a "one true love" for each and every woman in the world, a belief that can lead to the idealization of romantic relationships and unrealistic expectations of a romantic partner. It can also lead to the belief that life is not complete if one has not found "one true love," and/or to a justification for looking down on those who haven't yet found (or have no desire to find) a "soulmate."<br />
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Are there any upsides to compulsory demisexuality that I'm overlooking? Or when we come across messages of compulsory demisexuality in our romances, should we set them aside and look for romance options that don't promulgate the compulsory demisexuality message?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* Rich, Adrienne. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." <i>Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society</i> 5.4 (Summer 1980): 631-660.</span><br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Jodi McAlister: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15906650.Jodi_McAlister">Goodreads</a></span><br />
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-59779736070685029432019-02-12T09:00:00.000-05:002019-02-12T09:00:00.272-05:00Navigating the Line Between Stalking and Devotion: Katie Ruggle's HOLD YOUR BREATH and CD Reiss's BODYGUARD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've never been much of a fan of romantic suspense, especially those stories that feature a villain who stalks the a female heterosexual heroine. They often seem to ask a reader to share in the feeling of said protagonist, the feeling of fear and terror that knowing that there is someone out there, usually a male someone, who has crossed to the wrong side of the line between selfless devotion and dangerous obsession. For some readers, being invited to share such feelings proves cathartic, because by the end of a work of each romantic suspense novel, the love interest who is dangerously, often violently obsessed is always banished or defeated, dis/replaced by a love interest who understands what it really means to love, honor, and protect his heroine. But for me, there is no thrill in the fear; being invited to share in someone else's fears when my own are already sometimes too strong to stomach is not something to which I'm inclined to issue a "yes" RSVP.<br />
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Which is why I was surprised to find myself enjoying two recent works of romantic suspense, one that takes the conventional formula and pushes it to the edge of its feminist possibilities, another which shifts the focus away from the more traditional formula to think more deliberately about just where the line is between stalking and devotion.<br />
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Katie Ruggle's <i>Hold Your Breath</i> (the first book in her <i>Search and Rescue</i>) series, is told mostly from the point of view of twenty-six-year-old Lou (Louise) Sparks, who has recently relocated from the comfort of her white privileged New England upbringing for a life in the Rockies. Though she pays the bills for her small cabin by working as a barista in the local coffee shop, Lou has decided to put her expensive diving lessons to good use by joining the local volunteer rescue ice diving team. Current-day Lou is a quick-talking ball of fire, messy and impulsive, who immediately catches the attention of her polar opposite, strong and silent Nordic-looking Callum Cook, the head of the diving squad. Methodical and controlled, Callum also has the typical alpha hero's protective streak, and quietly but immediately beings to help Lou when it looks like she's being stalked by her ex.<br />
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Lou both resents and appreciates said protectiveness. She resents it, because her goal in moving away from home and family was to reinvent herself as a stronger, more self-sufficient woman, and Callum's insistence on helping not only plays into sexist stereotypes ("I am fully stocked with tools, despite being in possession of a vagina" Lou wisecracks [116]), but makes her feel far too tempted to just "dump everything" in Callum's lap, "and lie on a fainting couch while you fan me with palm fronds and feed me grapes" (251). Lou doesn't want "to go back to that helpless, weak person I was before," back when she did whatever her parents, and her controlling boyfriend, ask/demanded her to do (251). But the book's message is that everyone, not just women, need to rely on others, even in the self-sufficient wilds of the Colorado Rockies. As Callum explains, "It's okay to have help. When we go on dive-team calls, we are never alone. We're stronger together, safer together" (252).<br />
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Ruggle still relies on putting her heroine in danger, over and over again—slashed tires, dive safety line cut, house set on fire, and body attacked directly, not just once but twice, by Mr. Stalker. And while we aren't privy to Callum's inner thoughts or feelings, we are given the occasional glimpse inside the mind of Lou's stalker. While I understand that this is a standard move in the romantic suspense formula, used to simultaneously heighten suspense by give the reader advanced notice that something really bad is about to happen, and also to reassure the reader, by giving her more knowledge that the protagonists don't yet have, I always end up feeling squicky when I have to read those scenes, because they force me to identify even for a few moments with a villain who hates the female heroine in large part because of her gender.<br />
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Though Callum helps Lou escape several times from the dangers of her stalker throughout the course of the novel, he also states quite directly that he doesn't admire Lou because he thinks she's weak and thereby makes him feel strong by comparison. Quite the opposite: "You are smart, and you might not know how to do something, but you figure it out. You're tough and brave, and I respect you" (282). And Ruggle constructs the final confrontation not one in which Callum rescues Lou, but one in which she rescues him, and herself. An event which allows her to accept the book's overall message that it is not weak to rely on others:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"In the hospital I had a lot of time to think, and I realized that loving you doesn't make me weaker. To save you, I dove into a frozen reservoir, killed a guy, and almost died."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> He flinched, and she gave him an apologetic grimace. "Loving you actually made me into a kind of badass." (366)</span><br />
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It's about as feminist as you can expect a romantic suspense novel to be if it still also hews to the key tropes of the formula. So if you don't mind the parts of RS that squick me out, you might want to give Ruggle's book a try.<br />
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If you're looking for something that interrogates the romantic suspense formula, rather than pushes its boundaries, then CD Reiss's <i>Bodyguard</i> might be more up your alley. The second book in her Hollywood A-List series, <i>Bodyguard</i> features the classic trope of a heroine in danger and the bodyguard hired to protect her falling for one another. But the basic set-up is just about all that is familiar here in Reiss' unconventional imagining of the classic trope.<br />
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In fact, Carter Kincaid isn't choreographer Emily Barrett's bodyguard at all, at least not at the start of the novel. He's been hired to join the security team for Emily's best friend, pop singing sensation Darlene McKenna. Even though they came from quite different socioeconomic backgrounds, white Emily and black Darlene bonded over gymnastics camp, then over dancing and singing, and left Chicago together as high school grads to chase their dreams of fame in LA. But once there, the two women's dreams took off in opposite directions: Darlene's towards stardom, Emily's to obscurity due to a bum knee and a boyfriend who disliked sharing his woman with the spotlight. Darlene had enough experience with abusive relationships to recognize that Vince was not a good influence on Emily, it wasn't until Vince moved from verbal to physical abuse that Emily was able to listen to her friend's advice and dump him. Darlene proves a staunch friend, not only helping Emily gain a restraining order against Vince, but also hiring her to choreograph her shows and videos.<br />
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All this has happened before the start of the novel. The trouble now is that the restraining order against Vince is about to expire, and Darlene is convinced that he'll be back. In real life, breaking free from one's stalker isn't just a matter of physical confrontation; there's the law, the legal system, and the prejudices of individual judges who administer them to deal with, too. As Emily explains to Carter when he observes that a one-year restraining order is pretty mild,<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"The judge was unusually hostile to women. Said Vince only hit me once so he'd probably forget about me in a week. No need to inconvenience <i>him</i> further... And he insinuated I was going back to him anyways. Judge Croner, and I'll never forget his name, didn't want to 'remove incentive for Ms. Barrett to work on the relationship as opposed to lean on the courts when things get rough.' Which was another way of saying I was crazy enough to deserve it.</span>"<br />
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And so Darlene ups her security by adding Carter (who is presumably white) to her team. And after Emily is the victim of a not-so-funny anonymous prank, one that no one on the team prevented, Carter is given the specific assignment of watching out for Emily.<br />
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Which, interestingly, turns out to be only a temporary gig, as both Carter and Emily find themselves physically drawn to each other. Carter does the "I shouldn't/I must/I shouldn't dance for a few chapters, but fairly early on in the book asks to be reassigned, knowing that his growing feelings for Emily will only get in the way if he is assigned to protect her. In most bodyguard/target love stories, the two sides of the pair are forced to remain together throughout, the threats (and attempts to implement said threats) to one used to heighten the romantic feelings of each for the other. But in Carter's case, there is no need for such external heightening; his feelings for Emily skyrocket in intensity all on their own. And we know this because the narrative is a dual viewpoint one: we get inside both Emily's head <i>and</i> Carter's (but not, significantly, inside Vince's):<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"I didn't have any control around Emily. I knew plenty of beautiful women and plenty of smart ones. She had real talent, but in Hollywood, talent is cheap. My reaction to her came from the gut. My body overrode my common sense. I had to have her. I'd never been addicted to anything, so I was unprepared for what an addiction did to a guy. I didn't know if I liked it, but I knew I couldn't do anything about it. Like an addict, I felt powerless in the face of my addiction" (112)</span><br />
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Romantic? Or stalkerish? If one didn't know any better, the intensity of the above might suggest that these are the thoughts of Emily's ex, Vince, rather than Carter, her supposedly more sane new love interest. Even Carter himself realizes this, and asks himself, "Where was the line between stalking and devotion? When could a woman be convinced? How could I show her I wanted her without scaring her?" (170). Given that Carter's family is also haunted by the aftereffects of obsession gone frighteningly awry, it's not a question that he, or the narrative, takes lightly.<br />
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And thus Reiss's romance is not about Carter's strength in the face of Emily's weakness, or Emily's endangerment. Or the push-pull thrill of protagonists in repeated danger. It is instead about the need for privacy and trust, the damage done when privacy and trust are violently violated, and how far one can and should go to protect oneself, and the people one loves, in the face of such violation.<br />
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I like the conclusion that Reiss comes to (in Emily words): "Nothing was guaranteed. Life wasn't sure, protected, or secure. But [Carter] made love feel as if it wasn't a risk. Love was the good part. The joy. The reason. Love was the one thing worth protecting." (316)<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Ice rescue training: <a href="http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_30677006/ice-rescue-training-boulder">Daily Camera Bolder News</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stalking Awareness: <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/features/prevent-stalking/infographic.html">Centers for Disease Control</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Two women singing: ©Blend Images <a href="https://www.fotosearch.com/BLD018/jg0223764/">www.fotosearch.com</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">1 in 4/1 in 13: <a href="http://wwav-no.org/facts-about-stalking-for-national-stalking-awareness-month">Women with a Vision</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://katieruggle.com/">Katie Ruggle</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Hold Your Breath</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue #1</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sourcebooks/Casablanca, 2016</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://cdreiss.com/">CD Reiss</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Bodyguard</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hollywood A-List #2</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Montlake Romance, 2017</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-40533982169216487752019-01-22T09:00:00.000-05:002019-01-22T09:00:08.070-05:00Thoughts on John Markert's PUBLISHING ROMANCE: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Looking back at my Goodreads history, I see that I began reading John Markert's <i>Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present</i> all the way back in November of 2017. It's an invaluable piece of research about the history of the business, moving beyond Margaret Ann Jensen's <i>Love's Sweet Return: The Harlequin Story </i>(1984) and Jay Dixon's <i>The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon</i> <i>1909-1990s</i> (1999) to examine <i>all </i>of the North American publishers that, at one time or another over the course of the past 75 years, been actively engaged in printing and selling books in the genre known as romance. Markert's book serves as a vital resource for those interested in how business decisions have shaping the romance novel as we know it today; his interviews with many key industry players will serve as rich primary source material for scholars far into the future. But that very strength is also one of this volume's main weaknesses: taking at face value the assertions of his interviewees, or occasionally even misreading them, and not probing very deeply about other possible motivations besides business-related ones for the decisions they made, often make the book feel at times like a look at an industry by an outsider than a thoughtful, analytical history. The result, then, is a book as frustrating as it is informative, which is perhaps why it took me so long to get through it.<br />
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In ten chapters, Markert takes the reader from the emergence of contemporary mass-market publishing in the 1940s, with Pocket Books' innovation of printing cheap, paperback editions of volumes previously published only in hardback in the American market, to the mid 2010's, just on the cusp of the self-publishing revolution. Because of the major innovations the industry has witnessed during the last decade, Markert's book already feels dated, only just hinting at the major disruptions to the industry that the Kindle and other e-reading platforms, self-publishing, and the subsequent decline of the mass-market paperback romance have made. But for those wishing to know more about the business of genre romance in the twentieth century, Markert gives a detailed history:<br />
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Chapter 1 recounts the beginnings of the mass market paperback, with the creation of Pocket Books in the 1940s.<br />
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Chapter 2 focuses on Canadian publisher Harlequin from 1949 to 1979. Beginning with its move from a general mass-market to a specialized product publisher of romance only, Markert charts the decisions that led to the company's dominance of the genre romance market, particularly after newly appointed President Lawrence Heisey began to market the Harlequin "brand" rather than its individual books and authors. Much of the same ground is covered in the above-mentioned<i> Love's Sweet Return</i>, although interviews with key Harlequin layers add color and detail to the familiar story.<br />
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Chapter 3 presents a round-up of the other, primarily New York City-based, publishers who entered (or attempted to enter) the suddenly lucrative romance market in the wake of the emergence of the new "sensual historical romance" pioneered by Avon with the publication of Kathleen Woodiwiss's paperback original <i>The Flame and the Flower</i> (1972) and Rosemary Rodgers' <i>Sweet Savage Love</i> (1974). <a href="http://romancenovelsforfeminists.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-origins-of-bodice-ripper-cover.html">As I wrote about earlier on the blog</a>, this chapter notes the now almost forgotten role that Playboy Press took in the popularization of what later became known as "bodice ripper" of the 1970s, in particular their invention of the "heaving bosom"-style cover illustration. But it also touches upon other, often less successful publishing forays into the newly lucrative romance market, by publisher such as Zebra Books, Fawcett Books, and Richard Gallen Books.<br />
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Chapter 4 traces the introduction and growth of Silhouette Books, a romance line created by Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books to compete with Harlequin, after Harlequin terminated its distribution agreement with S&S. The battle for romance market share between the two companies lasted only four years, from 1980 to 1984, until Harlequin offered to purchase Silhouette and integrated the other company's lines into its own.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vivian Stephens</td></tr>
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Chapter 5 introduces the "romance phenomenon of the 1980s," with the rise of "contemporary liberated romances," epitomized by Dell's new "Ecstacy" line edited by the innovative Vivian Stephens. Many more other publishers, finally overlooking their sexist contempt for the genre and recognizing the potential for romance to be a major contributor to their bottom lines, began to start their own romance lines, too, and to promote women to edit the books for them. Berkley-Jove's <i>Second Chance at Love</i> line, edited by Carolyn Nichols, and Bantam's <i>Circle of Love</i>, which was later dropped and replaced by <i>Loveswept</i> (also edited by Nichols, who had moved to Bantam in 1983) were the most successful.<br />
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Chapter 6 focuses on less successful attempts to cash in on the growth of the genre romance market, such as those at NAL and Ballantine, few of which survived after 1985. Markert attributes their failure to poor management decisions, pushing editors to churn out higher and higher numbers of books, leading to a subsequent decrease in literary quality. Markert also notes the beginnings of romance "niches," or subgenres, during the mid-1980s, with Christian publishers entering the market, and Harlequin's new line of romance-mysteries.<br />
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Chapter 7, which draws primarily on a dissertation by Katherine Kirkland and on Markert's own previous research, examines what Markert terms the editorial reasons for the failure of many romance lines in the 1980s. "Editors, however, were somewhat myopic in their evaluation of the field. Editors asked romance readers to tell them what they wanted from the novels of the 1980s, but by and large they turned a deaf ear to the input they solicited," Markert opines. This chapter contains some pretty broad, and not always substantiated, claims, I felt, claims that occasionally veer into sexist territory. Did writers who wrote because they cared about money, not because they had a passion for the genre, truly lower romance writing standards? Did younger editors, caught up in the sexual revolution of the 1970s, simply ignore the wishes of older readers for books with more traditional gender roles, or is this rather the interpretation of more established romance writers, discontented by the requests their younger editors were making of them (see <i>Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance</i>)? Might the failures of many publishers who tried to enter the romance field be due to poor or misguided marketing, rather than (or only because of) "authors of dubious talent [seeking] to grab their fifteen minutes of fame" (133)?<br />
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Markert seems on firmer ground in Chapter 8, in which he describes Harlequin's recapturing of romance market supremacy after its purchase of Silhouette from Pocket Books. The purchase of Harlequin by Torstar in 1975 marked the beginning of a shift in the business, from what Markert terms "a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants upstart" to a "corporate giant" (144). Under the direction of David Galloway (1983-88), Brian Hickey (1988-2001) and Donna Hayes (2002-2013), Harlequin grew from a company with sales of over $300 million (1989) to $468 million (2010). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the myriad publishing lines Harlequin has opened (and closed) over the twenty-five year period between 1990 and 2014, and a discussion of Harlequin's growth in the international market: by 2010, its books had been published in 111 countries and in 32 languages (184).<br />
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In Chapter 9, Markert's focus is on "Line Diversification." He opens by discussing publishers other that Harlequin that are players in the current romance market: the "Big Five" New York City houses Bertelsmann (which acquired Bantam and later Doubleday and Random House), Hachette, HarperCollins (now the owner of Harlequin), Simon & Schuster, and Holtzbrinck; and the three large independent houses Kensington, Scholastic, and Sourcebooks. At the opening of the twenty-first century, all eight companies are facing challenges from the introduction of digital and self-publishing; as Markert notes, "Mainstream publishers are now suddenly finding that they are not competing with each other but with smaller companies that have not been on their radar; they now find themselves trying to adapt, but they are reacting too slowly and losing ground to the smaller upstarts" (201). The bulk of the chapter focuses on formerly "niche" romance subgenres that now serve as the largest, or the main, income stream for many smaller publishers: YA for Scholastic; Christian romance for Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, Bethany House, Revell; LGBTQ for Riptide, Bold Strokes, Cleis, Dreamspinner, and others; and erotica for Ellora's Cave, Samhain, Siren, Totally Bound, Entangled, Loose Id, and more. That many of the "xrotic" (erotic) publishers that Markert cites as success stories have closed their doors since the publication of his book demonstrates just how volatile the current romance market is.<br />
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This chapter ends with a discussion of the "long, somewhat tortuous road for American American romances" (242), from Elsie Bernice Washington's <i>Entwined Destinies</i> in 1980 to the introduction of several African-American romance lines by publishers whose other lines continue to feature primarily white protagonists. Markert proves rather oblivious to his own whiteness in this section, stating, for example, "The cover is likely to feature a picture of an African-American if the author is African-American, and this can be off-putting for a white reader." He cites African-American romance author Farrah Rochon to support his claim: "I think... a [white] reader might say [to herself] that this isn't for me if it has a black character on it," he quotes Rochon as telling him in an interview (246). That Rochon was probably too polite to point out to white Markert that such white readers were acting out of racism doesn't excuse his use of her quote to make it seem that "being an African American writer garners sales among African [Americans] but at the same time prevents them from becoming a success among a wider audience," is just an unfortunate fact of the business rather than the result of lingering stereotypes and racist attitudes among white romance readers, editors, and publishers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Kathryn Falk announcing the closure of </i>Romantic Times</td></tr>
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Chapter 10, which discusses "romance publishing at the Outset of the New Millennium," proves the most disappointing of the book. As noted earlier, major changes have taken place in the industry since Markert finished writing his book, changes that are already remaking the industry: the closure of many digital-only publishers; the increasing rise of mid-list romance authors self-publishing; the closing of many Harlequin lines in the wake of Simon & Schuster's 2014 acquisition of the Canadian publisher; and <a href="https://youtu.be/9bZM4gzewR0">the demise of <i>Romantic Times</i></a>, which Markert points to as a major influencer in the romance market.<br />
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Markert concludes by arguing that "the forecast of publishing's demise is greatly exaggerated. Mainstream houses may not be doomed, but they do have to change the way they do business, and they are" (281). Given the current tumult in the book publishing market, particular in the genre romance market, I'm not sure I am as sanguine about traditional publishers' futures as Markert is. Even if his future predictions for the the traditional romance market prove to be flawed, Markert's survey of the wider romance publishing business in the second half of the twentieth century gives those of us who study the genre, as well as those more generally interested in its history and development, a wealth of information and primary sources in which to delve.<br />
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<u>Photo credits:</u><br />
Pocket Books: <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/558305685033976060/">Pinterest</a><br />
Vivian Stephens: <a href="https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl/named/stephens.html">Bowling Green State University Library</a><br />
40 publishers: <a href="https://thejohnfox.com/2017/07/40-romance-publishers/">Bookfox</a><br />
Kathryn Faulk at RT: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZM4gzewR0">youtube</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">John Markert</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/newly-published-publishing-romance/">Publishing Romance: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present</a></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">McFarland, 2016</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-74038304516190384872019-01-18T09:00:00.000-05:002019-01-18T15:22:04.022-05:00Anti-romance? Or romance prep? JACK OF HEARTS (AND OTHER PARTS)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's a bit odd, I know, starting off a new year of <i>Romance Novels for Feminists</i> by reviewing a book that is decidedly <i>not</i> a romance novel. But after I finished reading L. C. Rosen's YA novel <i>Jack of Hearts</i>, I couldn't help but admire how this story of a high school sex-advice columnist helps teen readers recognize the difference between romance and sex, especially when so much in our culture suggests that the two are (or should be) one and the same. And to celebrate, rather than mourn, the rise of hook-up culture among the high school and college-aged, as so many popular press pieces have been doing of late.</div>
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The Jack of the title is Jack Rothman, a seventeen-year-old who loves fashion, partying, and sex with boys. In fact, his sex life is the stuff of gossip for many of his school peers, even though "my reputation for sluttiness is only partially deserved" (Kindle Loc 85). Who better to write a sex advice column than Jack? thinks Jack's best friend Jenna. After being kicked off the school newspaper for "pursuing an agenda of aggressive anti-Parkhurst School spirit," Jenna started her own blog, "writing about the stuff the school doesn't want us to know" (123). And one of the things adults decidedly don't want teens to know about is sex.</div>
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Jack's sex column advice is direct, personal, and imbued with the belief that consensual sex is one of life's true joys. The questions he chooses to answer aren't the ones I remember being posed in the well-meaning but often shaming or restrictive sex books for teens of my young adulthood. What's anal sex like? Did my boyfriend just break up with me because my first attempt at oral sex went badly? I'm finally ready to come out—how do I ask a boy out? Why do I always start to get feelings for a girl after I have sex with her? Am I unfeminist to want to spank the girls I sleep with? </div>
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And the answers are far more <i><a href="http://www.scarleteen.com/" target="_blank">Scarleteen</a></i> ("Sex Ed for the Real World") than <i>Girls and Sex</i>, the 1970 book my mother had left for me to replace the copy of <i>Everything You Every Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask</i> (1969) that I'd stolen from my Dad's bookshelf downstairs and hidden under a chair in my room. Practical details about the mechanics of anal, paired with the story of Jack's first time (both pleasures and pitfalls). Thoughts about what the boyfriend who hasn't called after the bad blow job might be feeling and suggestions for his maybe-former girlfriend on how to talk to him about it. Congratulations on accepting your sexuality, as well as advice about how to talk (or how not to talk) to others about it. Lessons about the attachment hormones that accompany sex, and how to contextualize those feelings so that sex doesn't get mistaken for liking or love. All with a healthy helping of advice about how to enjoy sex safely, and how to communicate with a partner so that everyone's expectations and limits are understood. And what it means to be feminist <i>and</i> kinky.</div>
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Romance novels, by their very nature, suggest that people who do not want to be in a committed romantic relationship are a problem that must be fixed. People (especially men or guys) who enjoy casual sex are often regarded in romance as puzzles to be solved, if not villains to be scorned. YA novels often have a similar message about casual sex. But not <i>Jack of Hearts</i>. As Jack explains to a guy he hooks up with:</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"I'm not opposed to repeats. I just don't want... the idea of having to worry about someone else before myself. The idea of having to think, 'Wait, is this okay with my boyfriend?' before kissing some cute boy I just met at a party. I'm... too selfish right now. And I'm okay with that, because I'm not, like, getting into relationships and hurting people." (2196)</span></div>
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<i>Jack of Hearts</i> is one of the first books I've read from the point of view of a character who engages in casual sex but who isn't rehabilitated by falling in love, or by falling into monogamy, by book's end. And who isn't the villain because of it. It's okay, especially when you're a teen exploring your identity and your sexuality, to be selfish, to keep your options open. A message that I wish adolescents of <i>all</i> genders could benefit from hearing.</div>
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The book also contains a more specific message, one aimed at stereotypically queer young men and those who try to shame them, purportedly for their own good. For even while Jack is happy that his column is helping others, and his new "sexlebrity" is making him attractive to partners old and new, his junior year isn't all unicorns and champagne. Because he's started to get "love" notes, pink origami animals shoved into his locker containing messages that grow increasingly stalkerish as his column grows in popularity. Despite attending a progressive NYC private school, several people—including his ex-boyfriend and the school's principal—keep telling him he should tone it down, stop calling attention to himself, stop playing into gay boy stereotypes. In short, to stop being the "wrong" kind of queer. At first, Jack's quick to hit back against such respectability politics, but as his stalker's messages grow increasingly frightening—and all of Jack and his friends' efforts to discover the stalker's identity come to naught—Jack starts to feel helpless, to hang back, to shine a bit less brightly than is his usual style. The final revelation of the stalker's identity may feel a bit anticlimactic, perhaps in part because Jack's stalker's efforts to control and constrain him only take to an extreme an already existing social message: it's okay to be gay only as long as you're gay in the "right" way. A message against which this novel vehemently protests.</div>
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I have to admit that I'm decidedly jealous of today's teens, who get to enjoy and learn from a book like <i>Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts)</i>. A book that tries to meet teens where they are, sexually, rather than shame or blame them into pretending that sex isn't important, isn't an appropriate subject for curiosity, isn't a central part of many of their lives. A book that celebrates sex without insisting that it be wrapped in the respectability of romance would have been comforting, reassuring when I was a teen—and might have better prepared me for when romance actually <i>did</i> come calling.</div>
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Ask Jack of Hearts": <a href="https://www.attitude.co.uk/article/ask-jack-as-a-gay-teen-whos-yet-to-have-sex-what-counts-as-losing-your-virginity/18706/">Attitude.com</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Tone it Down": <a href="https://imgflip.com/i/n3tyv" target="_blank">imgflip</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.levacrosen.com/">L. C. Rosen</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Little, Brown 2018</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-2866415208747323662019-01-04T09:00:00.000-05:002019-01-04T09:00:06.987-05:00RNFF's Best of 2018<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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HISTORICAL</span></h2>
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<a href="http://kjcharleswriter.com/" target="_blank">K. J. Charles, <i style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">Band Sinister</i></a></h3>
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Another stand-out historical romance from Charles, this one set in the Regency. Shy Guy Frisby finds himself a guest in the house of his disreputable neighbor, Sir Philip Rookwood, after his overly-inquisitive sister takes a bad fall while spying on Sir Philip and his guests. Guy may be timid and stammering, but when it comes to standing up for his sister, no one is braver. If only Guy would care as much about Philip, who has an abundance of friends and casual lovers, but no one who has ever <i>chosen</i> to care about him solely for himself... Charles takes the two men from distaste and dislike through gradual appreciation, attraction, and deep caring, with a convincing warmth and charm.</div>
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<a href="https://www.elizabethkingstonbooks.com/" target="_blank">Elizabeth Kingston, House of Cads</a></h3>
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An insouciant yet pragmatic Frenchwoman exiled from London after being pushed to the edge of respectability by a past scandal is drawn to an American ex-conman trying to earn a respectable living by peddling gossip about the ton in a historical that crackles with equal parts wit and lust. Marie-Anne is recalled from her country exile by her almost sister-in-law, who is desperate for her help in disengaging her two sisters from unsuitable betrothals. One of which is to the aforementioned disreputable American, Mr. Mason, who proves far more attracted to the lady intent on breaking up his engagement than with his actual fiancée. My favorite het historical of the year.</div>
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<a href="http://judelucens.com/" target="_blank">Jude Lucens, Behind These Doors (Radical Proposals #1)</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFE2_F279WK6UqX0EkmuGCVpjsGgxMhHDOmd86TwqNA_Y3jlUGaB9ioSJrOibXxyHJgXzRFqyoBOBGzo4uS3g0maHZYe_URuvdS8-kpKDtDPNryJ_NVAHdhxL0tE8YF4xX9IqZnMkVdiI/s1600/51mHZSurcpL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="332" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFE2_F279WK6UqX0EkmuGCVpjsGgxMhHDOmd86TwqNA_Y3jlUGaB9ioSJrOibXxyHJgXzRFqyoBOBGzo4uS3g0maHZYe_URuvdS8-kpKDtDPNryJ_NVAHdhxL0tE8YF4xX9IqZnMkVdiI/s320/51mHZSurcpL.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
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Society-page writer Lucien Saxby has little in common with titled and wealthy people about whom he writes—until a sexual encounter with the Honorable Aubrey Fanshawe turns into something more than a pleasurable one-time event. But Aubrey is already emotionally and sexually involved with a husband and wife of his own rank, a relationship which he cannot trust a journalist to keep secret. Or can he? An unusual Edwardian-set historical that combines rich class critique, sympathetically-drawn characters, and polyamorous relationships to brilliant effect.</div>
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<a href="http://www.courtneymilan.com/" target="_blank"><span style="text-align: center;">Courtney Milan, </span><i style="text-align: center;">After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)</i></a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaL6RW2LognkyHVCyfr8DEF0oAljUBmYMEvY6ukTHa-1PqNqKJB6tTGtAXJLndF7xOdP987qE8CQpcGN1vGojApKOiPOBdMx1NG3m_mT3DML49dBoQWLt79J60BmgW3-hw2UbZ-haIlyo/s1600/22817537.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaL6RW2LognkyHVCyfr8DEF0oAljUBmYMEvY6ukTHa-1PqNqKJB6tTGtAXJLndF7xOdP987qE8CQpcGN1vGojApKOiPOBdMx1NG3m_mT3DML49dBoQWLt79J60BmgW3-hw2UbZ-haIlyo/s320/22817537.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
A romance about two people with irrepressible hope as the cornerstone of their characters—especially when the two are involved in an interracial romance in Victorian England—would not typically be my cup of tea. Yet such is Milan's skill that she makes such characters not just understable, but immensely sympathetic an appealing, even to one like me who is prone to undervaluing the Hufflepuffs of the world. Add in a trenchant critique of whites who purport to be allies in the struggle against racism but who continue to push aside any real demands for change with the excuse that "others" aren't quite ready for it yet, and you've the making of a historical that does more than just feature historical marginalized characters: you have a historical that puts their experiences, and the racism against which they struggle, at the center of what is typically all too often prefers to ignore, rather than highlight, the deep racism upon which the fantasy of the historical romance past is too often built.<br />
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<a href="https://www.scarlettpeckham.com/" target="_blank">Scarlett Peckham, The Duke I Tempted (The Secrets of Charlotte Street #1)</a></h3>
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P<span style="font-family: inherit;">eckham's debut proved a strange, but deeply compelling read: a historical that took its history seriously, but which also included a strong BDSM/erotic thread, a far from usual combination. Poppy Cavendish, granddaughter to a viscount, is about to lose her beloved greenhouse, and all the plants she's been cultivating therein, after the death of her guardian, her unconventional beloved uncle. But when the sister of her neighbor, the Duke of Westmead, offers her a commission to decorate her brother's ballroom with her blossoms, and throws in help moving her plants as part of the payment, Poppy agrees, despite having to spend time with the brusque Duke. For his part, Archer is on the look-out for a wife, and decides to propose to Poppy, framing the proposal as strictly business: she will provide him with an heir, and he will give her the money to start up a major plant importing business. She should not expect him to give her love or affection in return. To Poppy's surprise, though, their early married days are tender and affectionate. So when Archer inevitably pulls away, Poppy is both hurt and deeply unhappy. I enjoyed Peckham's deft character development, and the clear affection both Poppy and Archer slowly develop for one another, and am looking forward to reading more by this new author.</span><br />
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<a href="https://catsebastian.com/" target="_blank">Cat Sebastian, A Gentleman Never Keeps Score</a></h3>
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A historical with decidedly contemporary, and intersectional, concerns, featuring a white man who formerly moved in elite society but who has been exiled due to rumors about his youthful affair with an older gentleman, and a black former boxer who now owns his own pub and spends his time helping others in his community in Regency London. Sam encounters Hartley while trying to help his soon-to-be sister-in-law recover a salacious portrait of her, a painting commissioned by Hartley's now-deceased former lover. Race and class are not the only obstacles to Sam and Hartley's growing affection and attraction; Hartley's earlier relationship, which was built on coercion rather than consent, has made him afraid of being touched. A bit darker than Sebastian's debut novel, but still rich with hope, charm, and joy.<br />
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<a href="http://www.erinsatie.com/" target="_blank">Erin Satie, Bed of Flowers (Sweetness and Light #1)</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmQ0-u3f-Fpfl09pYwMvFHTS8qI6X64yDj9LNZq_8la8hljif2x70fZFJDzITM9vivar91FZ7zLRFK-LC8pAXXHgqXbARe0u0TrVWFtwX6B7FbqidhGxSJWZXG-S3KV5sDbc-zAyZQtnA/s1600/39974062.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmQ0-u3f-Fpfl09pYwMvFHTS8qI6X64yDj9LNZq_8la8hljif2x70fZFJDzITM9vivar91FZ7zLRFK-LC8pAXXHgqXbARe0u0TrVWFtwX6B7FbqidhGxSJWZXG-S3KV5sDbc-zAyZQtnA/s320/39974062.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
A beauty and the beast retelling set in a small town in mid-Victorian England, a town that's been economically decimated by a fire eight years earlier. That fire, accidentally set by Orson Loel, the pampered heir of the local lord, pushed Bonny Reed's family from wealth to shabby gentility, a position from which Bonny's incipient marriage to local scion Charles Gavin is meant to liberate them. But when Bonny calls on her enemy Lord Loel to beg for additions to the circulating library she and her friend Cordelia have established for working-class women, a mishap with one of Loel's prize orchids means Bonny is in her enemy's debt. And after the reclusive Loel tells her a shocking secret about her intended, Bonny has to decide whether to keep sacrificing for her family's sake, or to take a more ethnical stand in the face of social wrongs.<br />
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<a href="https://austinchant.com/" target="_blank">Austin Chant, Peter Darling</a></h3>
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This is a 2017 release, but I did not read it until this year, worrying that my familiarity with the original story (I taught <i>Peter Pan</i> for more than a decade to children's literature students) would get in the way of my enjoying this retelling. Boy was I wrong. Chant's Peter is a trans man who returns once again to Neverland after ten years back in the real world, unable to conform to a life as the female Wendy Darling. But life in Peter's fantasy world has changed drastically, with the make-believe of war now turned deadly—and with Captain Hook, once his dreaded enemy, now a compellingly attractive temptation. Bursting with intelligence, unexpected turns, deep emotions, and lovely language, Chant's brief novella is one of the best Pan retellings I've ever read.<br />
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<a href="https://www.taliahibbert.com/" target="_blank">Talia Hibbert, Mating the Huntress: An Interracial Romance</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgptnLMo3LYg2W9rHsoDOeK5Owlm2FM4GiC26RcVgSdEwyMlA-sOKc0sJUgxDcvAku3rgPrLeVMrfDwEnavlJiAyPTMw8XhfV64vkC5bQTO13mZ_QHhdwIv7ou-2-I_2ctW9qiHw6oSZKE/s1600/42034959.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgptnLMo3LYg2W9rHsoDOeK5Owlm2FM4GiC26RcVgSdEwyMlA-sOKc0sJUgxDcvAku3rgPrLeVMrfDwEnavlJiAyPTMw8XhfV64vkC5bQTO13mZ_QHhdwIv7ou-2-I_2ctW9qiHw6oSZKE/s320/42034959.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
Hibbert was a new discovery for me this year, and I could have put almost any of her many 2018 releases on this list. But I decided on <i>Huntress</i> for its clever invoking and inverting of traditional fantasy and romance tropes, especially the deeply problematic trope of the fated mate. When Chastity Adofo was a baby, an oracle prophesied that if she followed her family's tradition and became a huntress, "her first kill would rip out her own heart." Her overprotective family has kept Chastity from the hunt for werewolves ever since. But when a werewolf walks into Cup o'Go, his attention fixed on her, Chastity vows to take him down and take her rightful place in the family hunting matriarchy. Weaving a story about issues of consent into a story about fated mates takes a truly inventive author; that Hibbert not only accomplishes it, but does it with such comical flair, makes her one of the most talented romance authors to come along in many a year.<br />
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YA/NEW ADULT</span></h2>
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<a href="https://www.sarinabowen.com/" target="_blank">Sarina Bowen, The Accidentals</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCqE-TVzGdYVQD4FinVE7a-opJprmagGEibGVq55RDtc69kgdCCZ5whkj4kQwLfWLcLvxvATB1kv20qPBDI2lWwt7TFu8nrKPoB13wefB6C_vdQgCFX_tjeweSIsmE4lLP2oBKtEkKQaM/s1600/40378934.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCqE-TVzGdYVQD4FinVE7a-opJprmagGEibGVq55RDtc69kgdCCZ5whkj4kQwLfWLcLvxvATB1kv20qPBDI2lWwt7TFu8nrKPoB13wefB6C_vdQgCFX_tjeweSIsmE4lLP2oBKtEkKQaM/s320/40378934.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
While Bowen established herself writing New Adult romances, <i>The Accidentals</i> proves she's got just as deft a touch writing about high schoolers as she does depicting the college-aged. Nearly eighteen, Rachel is reeling from the death of her mother, and from the unexpected appearance of the father she's never met, rock star Freddy Ricks. Rachel's best friend Haze wants Rachel to stay with him in Florida, wary of her absentee-father's sudden interest, but Rachel decides to take a chance by spending the remainder of the summer with Freddy. And then she's off to prep school in New England for her senior year come September. The novel focuses as much on Rachel's developing relationship with her father as it does on the love triangle between Rachel, Haze, and Jake, a swoonworthy guy she meets at her new school, but its tackling of how to balance one's commitments to friends (especially male ones) with one's own needs and desires earns it a place on this year's list.<br />
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<a href="http://www.choitotheworld.com/" target="_blank">Mary H. K. Choi, Emergency Contact</a></h3>
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Penny Lee (Korean, not Japanese, thank you very much, geisha-referencing bully classmate) can't wait to get out of her decidedly <i>not</i> diverse Texas home town and escape to college at UT Austin. Serious Penny is seriously done worrying about her rather hapless single mom; she's hardly expecting to become someone else's "emergency contact" in Austin, especially hot barista Sam, the twenty-one-year-old sort-of uncle of her new roommate. I loved that this debut author had the courage to write a flawed, often unpleasant main character, and to wait until deep into the story to explain why Penny is so cruel to her teen-like mom. Also loved that Sam, who first becomes Penny's text-only friend, and then her IRL one, is kind and emo, even while his own far worse lack of family support has him majorly struggling with adulting, especially after his former girlfriend tells him she might be pregnant. The writing here has frequent laugh-out-loud moments, and is especially adept at depicting the difficulties people, especially teens, often have in communicating, not just out of fear of their own vulnerabilities, but also out of plain confusion about what they actually want from and for themselves and others.<br />
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<a href="https://www.clairekann.com/" target="_blank">Claire Kann, Let's Talk About Love</a></h3>
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Nineteen-year-old Alice is hoping to spend a quiet summer at her job at the library, taking time off from dating after being dumped by her former girlfriend for not caring enough about sex. But she's thrown for a loop by her unexpected attraction to her new coworker, Takumi. Alice has finally figured out who she is (asexual, biromantic, definitely <i>not</i> a lawyer-to-be, despite pressure from her all-lawyer family); why is she suddenly changing now? And what should she do about Takumi, who definitely seems to like her, too—not just romantically, but sexually? And about her best friend and roommate Feenie, who is suddenly jealous of all the time she's spending with Takumi, despite having a boyfriend of her own? Especially when her <i>modus</i> <i>operandi</i> is to dodge and avoid, not to speak out and confront?<br />
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<a href="https://www.susannahnix.com/" target="_blank">
Susannah Nix, </a><i><a href="https://www.susannahnix.com/" target="_blank">Advanced Physical Chemistry</a> (Chemistry Lessons #3)</i></h3>
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Nix has become my go-to author for romances about the current generation of post-college feminist women. In this latest addition to her <i>Chemistry Lessons</i> series, "pleasantly plump" Penny Popplestone decides to take a break from dating after her fourth boyfriend in a row cheats on her. After some serious self-analysis, Penny realizes that her propensity to take care of others often leads to taking too much care of her lovers, which leads them to take her too much for granted. Her determination to change her "nice girl" ways leads her to pursue the hot but shy barista at her local coffee shop; when Caleb tells her he's leaving town in a month for med school, Penny pushes herself to take a risk and jump into her first sexual relationship with a clear end date. Being "not nice" has never been so much fun...<br />
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<a href="https://cathyyardley.com/" target="_blank">
Cathy Yardley, </a><i><a href="https://cathyyardley.com/" target="_blank">What Happens at Con</a> (Fandom Hearts #4)</i></h3>
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Yardley bills her romances as "fun, geeky, and diverse," a promise her <i>Fandom Hearts</i> series delivers on in spades. I enjoyed <i>Level Up</i>, the first book, when it came out back in 2016, but somehow the series managed to drop off my radar after that. Which means that I got to enjoy binge reading the subsequent 3 novels and 2 novellas which Yardley has since written in one delicious gulp this past fall when I came across Yardley again. I'm pretty oblivious to many of the nerdy pop culture references littered throughout the series, but I do appreciate the clear feminist messages in the books, especially the one that says feminist heterosexual women prefer men who support them, rather than push them to the back in their rush to protect them from harm (i.e., prove their superior masculinity). <i>What Happens at Con</i> was especially appealing; Yardley clearly has sympathy for her white privileged alpha-hole hero, but never lets him off the hook for his sexism and racism, working to educate, rather than just condemn him as he struggles to make sense of his attraction to strong, smart STEM grad student Ani.</div>
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<span style="color: #990000;">CONTEMPORARY</span></h2>
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<a href="http://www.rebeccagraceallen.com/" target="_blank">Rebecca Grace Allen, </a><i><a href="http://www.rebeccagraceallen.com/" target="_blank">Her Claim</a> (Legally Bound #2)</i></h3>
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High-powered lawyer Cassie Albright (39, half Cuban, half Caucasian) has been "battling the gender gap and racial bias" for as long as she can remember. Hearing from one of the boys' club partners that she hasn't yet made herself "invaluable" to the firm, and that she needs to bring in more big business if she wants to make partner, is just the most recent obstacle she's had to overcome. She lets off some of her work tension by verbally sparring with friend-of-a-friend white boy Patrick, a certified "man-whoring chauvinist pig." But when the two take their sparring from the barroom to the bedroom, Cassie's able to indulge in power play fantasies that she never before had the courage to ask for: "She wanted a man to prove himself—to show that as tough as she was, he could be tougher. Because what turned her on the most was the idea of being physically controlled by someone she couldn't fight off." How Cassie comes to reconcile her multiple, often conflicting identities, while inspiring Patrick to confront his own baggage, makes for a kinky romance as thought-provoking as it is sexy.<br />
<a href="https://www.kateclayborn.com/" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="https://www.kateclayborn.com/" target="_blank"><br /></a>
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<a href="https://www.kateclayborn.com/" target="_blank">
Kate Clayborn, </a><i><a href="https://www.kateclayborn.com/" target="_blank">Best of Luck</a> (Chance of Lifetime, Book #3)</i></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6KlxObqHhQt24lio0ihz207xrfau5waZq7SB_-trBJODgTM6DIlxLDnzHPyjptu32azliGzt8UYVcIinTfePikROCkdu_dzkyLPNCBc005r96aIdaJ_8BmYs1f0R9i-gtz8UCVme22vg/s1600/39109499.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6KlxObqHhQt24lio0ihz207xrfau5waZq7SB_-trBJODgTM6DIlxLDnzHPyjptu32azliGzt8UYVcIinTfePikROCkdu_dzkyLPNCBc005r96aIdaJ_8BmYs1f0R9i-gtz8UCVme22vg/s320/39109499.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
I've enjoyed Clayborn's entire <i>Chance of a Lifetime</i> series, which focuses on three female friends who banded together to purchase a surprise winning lottery ticket, but was particularly drawn to the heroine in this one, quiet observer Greer. Greer's used her share of the winnings to pay off the debts of her parents, incurred largely through paying for treatment of the chronic illness with which she was diagnosed as a teen. Only one thing stands between her and finally finishing her college degree: a missed art requirement. The professor will only let her enroll late in a photography class if her friend, Alex Averin, a world-famous photographer, agrees to participate, too. Greer turns the situation from on in which she is yet again dependent into one which will help Alex, too: she'll allow him to instruct her in photography if he agrees to get help from the panic attacks he's been suffering from since returning from his latest trip. Clayborn does deft, sensitive work portraying the difficulties both of dealing with a chronic, often debilitating physical illness and those that stem from psychological traumas. Her book's dual message—to prioritize self-care AND to allow the ill autonomy and control over themselves and their dreams—plays out against the slow-burn romance between Greer and Alex, while simultaneously exploring the many different interpretations of "luck," the subject of Greer's photography class project.<br />
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<a href="http://www.miahopkinsauthor.com/p/welcome.html" target="_blank">Mia Hopkins, </a><i><a href="http://www.miahopkinsauthor.com/p/welcome.html" target="_blank">Thirsty</a> (Eastside Brewery #1)</i></h3>
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Romanticized depictions of bikers and gangs abound in Romancelandia. What's far less common are books about the difficulties former gang members experience trying to turn their lives around post-incarceration, especially ones told entirely from the male point of view. Six months out of jail for carjacking and assault, former Los Angeles gang member Sal "Ghost" Rosas has returned to the <i>barrio</i>, working two part-time jobs to earn enough for a decent apartment for him and his brother, who'll soon be out of prison, too. After he gets tossed out of the friend's place where he'd been crashing, a local <i>chismosa</i> (neighborhood gossip) takes pity on him, and offers him a cot in the rundown garage at the back of her house. Only problem: single mom Vanessa, whom Sal remembers from his childhood as one of the kids who didn't take the "gangster track," lives with Chinita, too, and is appalled to have a former gang member camping out in her backyard. Hopkins' work volunteering with a gang intervention and reentry program, and the interviews she conducted with trainees there, clearly informs her gritty, empathetic depiction of both the tight-knit bonds of neighbor and family that pull Sal and Vanessa together and the institutional classism and racism that throws oppressive barriers in the way of their dreams.<br />
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<a href="https://www.helenhoang.com/" target="_blank">Helen Hoang, <i>The Kiss Quotient</i></a></h3>
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This debut romance featuring a heroine with Asperger's and a sex worker hero has been on almost everyone's best of the year lists, and for good reason. Mathematically gifted but socially awkward econometrician Stella Lane experiences an "ah-ha" moment after a conversation with a rude co-worker: "Maybe sex was just another interpersonal thing she needed to exert extra effort on—like casual conversation, eye contact, and etiquette." And so she comes up with a logical, rational plan: she'll hire an "escort" to teach her how to be better at sex, so she'll be able to not just enjoy the deed, but attract a "regular" man who will stay with her despite her odd ways. But Stella isn't counting on the emotions that often come along with sex—especially sex with a man as kind, and as gorgeous, as Michael Phan. And neither is Michael... Self-acceptance is the underlying message here, not just for Stella but also for Michael, who is burdened with his own insecurities and guilt. But it comes with a healthy helping of kindly laughter, as well as deep insight into the challenges of being an odd duck in a world that would prefer everyone quack to the same beat.<br />
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<a href="https://lolakeeley.co.uk/" target="_blank">Lola Keeley, <i>The Music and the Mirror</i></a></h3>
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An unusual workplace romance, set against the backdrop of a professional ballet company. Twenty one-year-old white dancer Anna Gale is in awe of everything and everyone at the Metropolitan Performing Arts Center—especially the company's legendary director, Victoria Ford. Victoria's dancing inspired a far younger Anna to devote her own life to ballet, and Anna has long nursed a crush on the greatest ballerina in modern history. Having the chance to work professionally with her idol is almost more than Anna can believe, even if Victoria is more Ice Queen than kindly fairy godmother. But somehow the older white woman finds herself drawn to Anna despite their obvious differences, the girl who looks like the sun but who has a backbone of steel slowly drawing the ice queen into the orbit of her trust and care. Added bonuses: cool gender flipping of ballet roles; the celebration rather than denigration of female ambition; a climax that takes an unusual, but deeply satisfying turn; and a compelling present-tense narration with tons of detail about the world of professional ballet.<br />
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<a href="https://jackielaubooks.com/" target="_blank">Jackie Lau, <i>Not Another Family Wedding</i></a></h3>
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Weddings in the Chin-Williams family always end in disaster. Which is why 36-year-old climatology professor Natalie invites long-time best friend, doctor Connor Douglas, to be her plus-one when she receives the invitation to her baby sister's. Besides, Connor's presence is sure to keep the "when are you getting married/having a baby" comments from well-intentioned family and friends to a minimum, even if they aren't dating. But when the inevitable disaster emotionally derails Natalie mid-reception, Connor's there to distract her from her pain, not just with a friendly smile but with a smoking hot body, and Natalie must make some major reassessments about her formerly platonic friendship. I'm not usually a big fan of category-length romances, but Lau touches upon rarely explored feminist issues of abortion, the desire not to be a parent, and personal choice into this short work, earning it a place on the feminist best of 2018.<br />
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<a href="https://avian30.com/" target="_blank">Erin MacRae and Racheline Maltese, The Art of Three</a></h3>
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In my reading experience, polyamory romances tend to focus more on the erotics than on the emotions, which is why <i>The Art of Three </i>proved such a refreshing read for me. Not only do MacRae and Maltese depict the emotions of 24-year-old burgeoning film star Jamie, fifty-something heartthrob co-star Callum, and Callum's wife, Nerea as they as they attempt to transform Jamie and Callum's on-set fling into something more long-term; they also explore how the trio work to integrate family and friends into their nontraditional relationship with love, kindness, and above all, communication. Developing "the ability to check in on everyone's wants and desires and comforts, asking the uncomfortable but necessary questions" are vital skills not only for those in polyamorous relationships, but also for those more monogamously-inclined.<br />
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<a href="http://ainsliepaton.com.au/" target="_blank">Ainslie Paton, </a><i><a href="http://ainsliepaton.com.au/" target="_blank">One Night Wife</a> (The Confidence Game #1)</i></h3>
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Paton has secured her place on my list of consistently feminist romance writers with her latest series, which features a family of professional grifters who steal from the 1% to give back to charities the wealthy tend to overlook (i.e., the ones that address the social problems stemming from their own privilege). After a falling-out with his longtime "one night wife," the woman to whom he pretends to be married during his cons, Cal, the eldest Sherwood brother, is looking for a new partner. Sexy charity administrator Finley Cartwright might temporarily fit the bill, especially if he can keep her in the dark about what his con is really about. But can Finley reign in her lust for Cal long enough to keep herself in the game? The thrills of a great con film, married to a strong commitment to social justice and to empowered female characters? Keep those Sherwood books coming!<br />
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<a href="https://penelope-peters.com/" target="_blank">Penelope Peters, <i>Ben's Bakery and the Hanukkah Miracle</i></a></h3>
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So many Christmas romances abound this time of year that a holiday romance featuring a different religion feels as rare, and as refreshing, as a cool breeze in the desert. Having grown up Jewish in a predominantly Christian town, Ben has recently opened a "kosher-friendly" bakery in greater Boston, hoping to forge a stronger connection to his religious roots. Ben knows that he'll make a lot more money selling Christmas cookies and cakes, but this year he's taking a stand: seven days of Hanukkah-themed baked goods, with nary a fruitcakes or Christmas cookie on offer. When a hot French-Canadian peewee hockey coach visiting for a tournament follows his players into the bakery, Ben's immediately attracted—especially when the man turns out to be the son of a rabbi. But can Adam, who grew up steeped in Judaism, stop condescending to Ben's more flexible interpretation of what it means to be a Jew? Bonus points for nuanced character development and for Adam's pre-teen boy hockey players, who egg on Ben and Adam's burgeoning romance as if homophobic worry had been banished from sports for so long, it had never even crossed their radar.<br />
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<a href="https://www.roanparrish.com/" target="_blank">Roan Parrish, <i>Rend</i></a></h3>
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Parrish appears on RNFF's Best of list for the second year in a row, this time for her portrayal of a marriage floundering on the shoals of secrets and unresolved trauma. After a whirlwind courtship, charity worker Matt Argento and musician Rhys Nyland tied the knot eighteen months ago. Both are deeply in love, and deeply committed to one another, but neither anticipated the effect that Rhys' going on tour would have on Matt, who experienced abandonment after abandonment growing up in New York's foster care system. Even though Matt's rational brain is telling him that Rhys is coming back, his unconscious one sends him deeper and deeper into a morass of emotional doubt. Trying not to ruin Rhys' tour with his own insecurities, Matt keeps his growing inability to cope from his husband, which in turn puts emotional distance in their formerly close relationship. Parrish once again demonstrates her ability to depict characters struggling with mental illness with empathy and deep understanding, as well as the pain, frustration, and love of those who struggle alongside them.<br />
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<a href="https://www.enlightenment-productions.com/shamim-sarif/" target="_blank">Shamin Sarif, <i>I Can't Think Straight</i></a></h3>
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Jet-setting Christian Palestinian Tala is instantly attracted to shy Indian Muslim Leyla, whose love of family has her stagnating in an accounting job in her family's company rather than attempting the fiction writing she longs to pursue. But Tala is engaged to a kind, progressive man back in Jordan, and her mother will disown her if she backs out of this fourth engagement. And Leyla is almost engaged, too, to an equally eligible Londoner. Not a traditional romance, but an ensemble piece that gives us the points of view of family and friends in each woman's extended circle as well as their own, as they struggle to come to terms not only with a sexuality that neither of their cultures fully accepts or even openly acknowledges, but also with their unexpected attraction to one another.<br />
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<a href="https://victoriahelenstone.com/" target="_blank">Victoria Helen Stone, <i>Jane Doe</i></a></h3>
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Stone's latest is less romance and more thriller, but its biting indictment of manipulative male gender privilege makes it a vital addition to this year's "Best of" list. Sociopath Jane schemes to avenge her best friend Meg by taking down Meg's ex, the upstanding son of a minister whose continual gaslighting and verbal abuse led Meg to take her own life. Knowing just what kind of woman appeals most to Steven Hepsworth, Jane dons the mask of shy, insecure, easily controlled girl and performs it for Steven's benefit, even as her inner narrative shows what she really thinks of the bullying Steven. Of course, Steven is instantly smitten, which allows Jane to worm her way into his life, find his weakest spot, and exploit it so that he will "live in misery for years," even while she finds a very different man for real self, a man who is drawn to her for the very things others point to as flaws. A fascinating, on-point inversion of the woman-as-crazy-stalker trope, replacing the misogyny of the male infidelity morality tale with a razor-sharp critique of the misogyny inherent in patriarchy.<br />
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What were your favorite feminist romances of 2018?<br />
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-37638031872344949542018-12-28T09:00:00.000-05:002019-01-08T13:00:53.247-05:00Seriously Gross and Anti-Feminist?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #990000;">Addendum 1/8/19:</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;">This blog post offended many of Snyder's readers and fans, who saw it as an attack on the author. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;">It was not my intention to suggest that Snyder had written <i>Tikka Chance on Me</i>, or any line in that book, out of "petty vengeance" towards me, as <a href="https://twitter.com/suleikhasnyder/status/1079204861277802496" target="_blank">Snyder felt called to explain on Twitter</a>. I apologize to both the author and to her fans and readers.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;">When so many of people have such a negative reaction to something I've written, I owe it to them, and to myself, to go back and reexamine it. And now, having done that, to point out the places where I fucked up, and apologize for them. And to ask myself questions, where I'm not sure if, or how, I offended. Fucking up, still, but fucking up with some humility. I've done so in the comments below.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;">This was not an auspicious return to blogging. I will try to do better in the coming year.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;">I always appreciate criticism and comments that help me learn and grow, especially on the difficult issues of race. But no one should feel that they have to take the time and energy to educate me unless they choose to. I pledge to work harder to educate myself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I hadn't been this passionate about something in years. Once upon a time, I'd wanted to be an anthropologist. To travel the world and study indigenous cultures—especially some of the Adivasi communities in India. I'd </span><i style="font-size: small;">committed</i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> to that, even with all the partying. But then I came home. I gave up. I stopped dreaming. It was seriously gross and antifeminist to credit a </span><i style="font-size: small;">man</i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> with me coming alive again, but I couldn't deny the truth. Trucker Carrigan had changed me. —Suleikha Snyder, </span><i style="font-size: small;">Tikka Chance on Me</i><br />
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The fall and early winter of 2018 have not been a good time for me and the RNFF blog. I've still been reading romances, and have written many a review or general post in my head that has never made it down to the keyboard. But the pairing of family health issues with a mild but still unpleasant case of seasonal depression brought on by the dark, rain-filled end of the year, perimenopausal PMDD, and the sorry political state of my country made sitting down at the computer and putting words to screen feel more a crushing burden than a soul-lightening joy. Hence the blog silence for the past two months.<br />
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I don't know if I've managed to shake off the doldrums completely yet, but after I read the above passage in Suleikah Snyder's latest novella, <i>Tikka Chance on Me</i>, I felt the urge for the first time in a while to try to grapple with the often contested intersections of genre and gender. Is it "seriously gross and antifeminist" for Snyder's character, American desi Pinky Grover, to credit Trucker Carrigan, unlikely guy she's been lusting after, for her "coming alive again"?<br />
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After high school, Pinky left her small Indiana hometown for Chicago, easily balancing both of the city's intellectual and amorous opportunities by working toward a BA, and then a PhD, at the University of Chicago while simultaneously exploring her sexuality with many a glorious and wild partner. But two years ago, she'd dropped both to return to Eastville after her mother was diagnosed with Stage One breast cancer. Though her mom is well on the road to recovery, Pinky at the start of this story finds herself listless, unmotivated, not at all eager to return to her more expansive life in the big city. Until, that is, she begins a torrid affair with Trucker Carrigan, "six feet three inches of pure unadulterated trouble. I knew it, he knew it, everybody in town knew it. He'd been born bad and grown up worse" (Kindle Loc 34).<br />
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Though he, like Pinky, left town after high school, Trucker, too, has washed back up again in Eastville. Now a leading member of the Eastville Eagles Motorcycle "Club," Trucker is deeply involved in the gang's less than legal activities. Though Trucker is working-class Irish to Pinky's middle-class Punjabi, he has a curious taste for Indian food, and brings his club members to Pinky's family's restaurant, the Taj Mahal, the only Indian restaurant within fifty miles, often enough that the Eagles have their own table there. For months, Pinky's been eyeing Trucker, and Trucker's been eyeing her right back, but neither has done anything about it.<br />
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Until a chance encounter at a local Wal-mart leads to some unexpected insights into each other's characters. Followed by a hotter-than-hot bout of sex in the cab of Trucker's pickup. Followed by another bout of physically and emotionally intense sex in a motel room.<br />
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Followed by Pinky's insightful realization that Trucker may not be quite who he appears to be...<br />
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It is at this point in the story, after the hot banging and the realization that any relationship between them has a clear end date, that Pinky has the insight quoted at the start of this post. Though Pinky goes on to tell the reader "I didn't think it was arrogant to say that I'd changed him, too," does she truly believe that it is "gross and unfeminist" to "credit a <i>man</i> with making [her] come alive again"? Or is she speaking to an implied feminist critic, negatively judging her for giving such credit to a member of the opposite sex?<br />
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The famous second-wage feminist adage asserts that "<a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/10/18/fish-bicycle/" target="_blank">A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle</a>." But does the inverse also apply? Is a woman <i>with</i> a man, a woman who allows a man to influence her, make her come alive, just a fish <i>with</i> a bicycle, an oddity, a freak? Is she "gross"? "Unfeminist"?<br />
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Suleikha Snyder and RNFF have a difficult history. In the early days of the blog, I wrote and published a <a href="http://romancenovelsforfeminists.blogspot.com/2014/02/rewriting-beastly-suleikha-snyders.html" target="_blank">review of her 2014 Bollywood romance, </a><i><a href="http://romancenovelsforfeminists.blogspot.com/2014/02/rewriting-beastly-suleikha-snyders.html" target="_blank">Bollywood and the Beast</a>. </i>While I intended that review to be positive, I was also worried about proving my bona fides as a literary critic, feeling I had to validate the existence of the blog and my authority to write about romance. That need to show off my knowledge led me to use postcolonial literary theory in a problematic, and racist, manner. Said comment had a negative impact on Snyder. I later discovered that <a href="http://www.suleikhasnyder.com/2015/03/spilling-tea-choking-on-silence-and.html" target="_blank">Snyder had written a blog post about the racism she and other romance writers of color experience</a>, and linked to my blog as an example of one of many moments of racist silencing and criticism of romance writers of color.<br />
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Given this history, I can't help but think that one iteration of the feminist critic to whom the imaginary Pinky in Snyder's latest story might be speaking is me.<br />
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But I'm not inclined to adopt the role of this implied feminist critic, a critic who would call a woman "gross" and "unfeminist" when she recognizes and acknowledges that she is being pulled out of an emotional funk by her emerging feelings for a man. In fact, the comment makes me want to jump up and down in frustration, and point to the gap between Millennials who say they believe in gender equality (55-66%, depending on the race of the respondent) and the far lower percentage who actually identify as feminist (13-20%). As Cathy Cohen, the University of Chicago political science professor who conducted the genFORW>RD study from which these figures were drawn, notes, "the media has narrated a pretty rigid understanding of feminism" (<a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2018/08/27/economy/most-millennials-believe-gender-equity-avoid-feminist-label" target="_blank">Marketplace interview</a>), an understanding that has somehow detached "feminism" from its central <i>raison d'être </i>of gaining rights and equality for women, and made Millenials wary of adopting the name for their own.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUKdHs4YnIs7bcR_2juc_6ZUk5FE9bDS5Sfb4Jdfpg2XHnVcrwJCYfkeucOe1EWIQuriiIgja0Uh9DGvqcvDCLj1l3WRWOoMLY_Kr3WBI7za1DAkFx6SaMcA1VxQY8ErOjecIkCr7N06M/s1600/chart+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1126" data-original-width="1346" height="532" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUKdHs4YnIs7bcR_2juc_6ZUk5FE9bDS5Sfb4Jdfpg2XHnVcrwJCYfkeucOe1EWIQuriiIgja0Uh9DGvqcvDCLj1l3WRWOoMLY_Kr3WBI7za1DAkFx6SaMcA1VxQY8ErOjecIkCr7N06M/s640/chart+1.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://genforwardsurvey.com/gender-equity-slides/" target="_blank">genFORW>RD</a></td></tr>
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Fifty+ years after the rise of second-wave feminism, it seems that many a woman has forgotten, or never been taught, about the historical context in which second-wave feminism first arose. It rose at a very particular moment in time—as a reaction against post-WWII culture, with its widespread idealization of a non-working mother and a wage-earning father. In fact Betty Friedan's <i>The Feminine Mystique</i> (1963), which first gave voice to second-wave feminism, argues that American media in the 1930s featured far more positive depictions of working women than did the media of the 1950s. Friedan pointed to the limitations of the 1950's belief that a woman's <i>only</i> path to fulfillment was through being a housewife and a mother. Her book's conclusion advises women to stop viewing housework as a career; to stop expecting motherhood and marriage to fulfill all their needs; and to search for meaningful work that draws on their intellectual, as well as their emotional, abilities. It never urges heterosexual women to throw out their boyfriends and husbands with the bicycles and fish, to cut all heterosexual relationships out of their lives. It doesn't call married women, or women in heterosexual relationships, gross or accuse such women of not toeing the proper feminist line. Later more radical iterations of feminism might espouse a feminist separatism, urging women to cut men from their lives, but such ideologies were always in the feminist minority.<br />
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If any woman without a man is like every fish without a bicycle, doesn't that make <i>all</i> heterosexual romance, built upon the assumption that the two (or more) people involved in a developing romantic relationship exert a positive influence on one another, inherently anti-feminist? Doesn't that make any real-life heterosexual woman anti-feminist?<br />
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Snyder's own novel argues against Pinky's momentary negative self-labeling. For while she may be in a temporary funk at novel's start, she's clearly not a woman who views marriage, motherhood, and housework (or working in her parents' restaurant) as the only fulfilling career option available to her. Nor does she expect her relationship with Trucker to fulfill all her needs. And near the story's end, she's back in Chicago, once again pursuing her intellectual interests—initially on her own, without Trucker.<br />
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But not for long...<br />
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Earlier in the story, Pinky actually provides the best answer to those who would falsely pit feminism against heterosexual romance. Trucker says to her: "I could do this all night. Hold you in my arms. But you're not here for that, are you? You're here to be fucked by the bad boy." Pinky thinks to herself, "The words were a low growl against my jaw. And I wasn't sure who he was mad at. Me or himself." And then challenges his assumption: "Why can't it be both? Can't you hold me and fuck me?" (352)<br />
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You can work towards gender equality <i>and</i> be in a heterosexual romantic relationship. Both and, not either/or.<br />
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And you can call yourself a feminist, too.<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Fish without a bicycle shirt: <a href="https://www.feministapparel.com/products/feminism-feminist-shirts-feminist-t-shirts-feminist-gifts-a-woman-without-a-man-is-like-a-fish-without-a-bicycle-womens-t-shirt-tanktop" target="_blank">Feminist apparel</a></span><br />
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-36228309263469024262018-10-05T09:00:00.000-04:002018-10-05T09:00:13.537-04:00A Dark Heroine for Dark Times: Victoria Helen Stone's JANE DOE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What's the next word that pops into your head after someone says the word "sociopath"? I'm betting that "romance" or "heroine" are not likely to make your short list.<br />
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And perhaps it's not quite fair to term Victoria Helen Stone's latest novel, <i>Jane Doe</i>, a romance. A work of suspense, definitely. A novel of romantic suspense, yes—but only if you welcome a work in that sub-genre that doesn't depend on putting a female body in danger for its major thrills. <i>Jane Doe</i> starts, in fact, after violence has already been visited upon a female body, the body of the narrator's best friend, Meg. Meg has been subject to both verbal and physical abuse: the former at the hands of her manipulative former boyfriend, Steven Hepsworth; the latter at her own hands, through the one act of control Meg can take: killing herself.<br />
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Bringing Meg back isn't possible. But avenging her death certainly is, especially for a person like Jane. When Jane was a kid, she knew she was different from most people. Especially her emotional, melodramatic family. As Jane explains, she didn't feel sorry for her older brother when he was sent to jail for selling stolen goods out of the back of her car, like her parents and grandmother did; it only seemed logical. Being white, Jane reasoned, her brother's sentence was far more lenient than those given out to many men of color in the same situation, so why complain? Besides, she knew what a lazy, shiftless guy he was. Hadn't he only gotten what he deserved? "Nasty, cold-blooded, selfish, grasping, uppity, ungrateful goddamn little bitch," her family replies (37).<br />
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And Jane can't disagree. She doesn't feel emotions, unlike most other people do, or rather, she has <i>some</i> emotions, but she "can usually choose when to feel them. And more important, I choose when not to" (5). A situation stemming in part from her own childhood, raised by careless, selfish, at times abusive parents who allowed her to be abused by others as well.<br />
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Jane didn't understand what she terms her "disability" until she took a Psychology elective her senior year of high school, and came across the concept of sociopathy, or what the current DSM Manual labels "Antisocial Personality Disorder." Reading about all the serial killers and other criminals labeled as sociopaths, Jane was at first upset by her discovery. But further research reassured her: "Most people like me don't grow up to be killers. We lie and manipulate and take advantage, but usually that just makes us great at business. Yay for capitalism" (37).<br />
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One feeling Jane does allow herself is loyalty to Meg, the single person who stood as her friend despite her oddball lack of social graces. And so after Meg takes her own life after years of being alternately praised and then denigrated by Steven, Jane decides to take revenge into her own hands. Who better than a sociopath to bring down a sexist, manipulative, self-righteous man?<br />
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To that end, Jane takes a leave of absence from her high-powered financial job in Malaysia and scores a job working in data entry in Minneapolis—at an office whose supervisor just happens to be Steven. Knowing just what kind of woman Stephen goes for from all her long phone conversations with an emotionally upset Meg, Jane dons the mask of shy, uncertain, easily controlled girl and performs it for Stephen's benefit.<br />
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And Steven is instantly smitten.<br />
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Steven, of course, us completely unaware that all the while Jane is narrating a running commentary about Steven's own manipulations, selfishness, and lack of empathy. Is Jane the real sociopath, here? Or is Steven?<br />
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Jane's plan is to worm her way into Steven's life, even to the extent of becoming his girlfriend, so that she can get close enough to find out his "weakest point" and then exploit it, so that he will "live in misery for years" (39). As Jane explains it:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">This relationship will be tedious and nearly unbearable, but the end will justify the means. Maybe I'll destroy his family. Maybe I'll set him up for embezzlement. Maybe I'll kill him. I'll find what's most important to him and then I'll take it away. However that plays out is fine with me. (29)</span><br />
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By acting as if she has a Meg-like personality, Jane <i>shows</i> the reader rather than just tells what it is that a man like Stephen needs from a woman—and worse, what a woman has to hide and suppress of her own thoughts, needs, and desires in order to prove herself "worthy" of a man like Stephen. Jane's acerbic commentary only adds to the biting gender critique:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I nod but let him see that I'm shaken by the very idea of putting out. A woman shouldn't have her own sexual needs. My role is to resist. That makes me a nice girl. (17)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">After all, everyone knows that women are responsible for how men behave. If we're not careful, they might decide to take what they want. They can't help it. But somehow I'm the one with the psychological impairment. (61)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">In the first years of our friendship, I was fascinated by the way Meg interacted with me. She always made herself smaller, and they always loved it. At first I admired it as manipulation, but I later realized that once she'd established herself as small, she couldn't make herself bigger again.... She would shrug and say she felt shy with men she liked, but that wasn't it. It wasn't shyness. It was fading. She dimmed her light to make a certain kind of man feel vibrant. And it worked. (71-72)</span><br />
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But during the early days of her campaign against Stephen, Jane runs into someone she knows from college—an old boyfriend, Luke, who seems eager to take up with her again. As Jane and Luke begin to become reacquainted, the reader is again show the difference between a man who uses a woman for his own benefit, and a man who wants to engage with a romantic partner for their mutual pleasure and joy.<br />
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Will Jane kill Stephen? Will she dig up some good dirt on him, and share it with friends, family, and members of his father's church? Or will Luke find out about her vengeance plot and insist she stop or he'll leave her? Or might Luke convince her that turning the other cheek is better than demanding an eye for an eye?<br />
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With so many commentators today suggesting that the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/1/17923374/brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-kellyanne-conway-me-too" target="_blank">#metoo movement has unleashed indiscriminate female anger</a>, anger uncaring of the innocence or guilt of the men it targets, it seems a stroke of genius to create an female figure of vengeance who is not driven at all by emotions.<br />
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A fascinating, on-point inversion of the woman-as-crazy-stalker trope familiar from the film <i>Fatal Attraction</i> and its many followers, replacing the misogyny of the male infidelity morality tale with a razor-sharp critique of the misogyny inherent in patriarchy.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://victoriahelenstone.com/books/" target="_blank">Victoria Helen Stone</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>Jane Doe</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lake Union Publishing, 2018</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-26142533291654396002018-09-27T13:29:00.000-04:002018-09-27T13:29:04.317-04:00Adjunct to a Media Storm: Yale, Kavanaugh, and reporting sexual misconduct<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been getting a lot of phone calls from the media the past two weeks. Not, alas, because the press has discovered a sudden interest in romance novels. But because I attended Yale in the 1980s, and lived in the same dorm freshman year as the current nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh. At the time, Yale had about 10,000 students, 5,000 undergrads, 1200 of them first years. With <a href="https://admissions.yale.edu/residential-colleges" target="_blank">12 residential colleges</a> (think dorms, but each with its own culture, governance, and community), that meant about 100 freshman were assigned to share the same peer group. Each cohort shared a dorm on Old Campus, the quad where the majority of first years lived.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lawrance Hall, Old Campus, Yale University</td></tr>
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I became good friends with a handful of the 100 who were assigned, like me, to Ezra Stiles College, and who all lived in Old Campus's Lawrance Hall in the fall of 1983 and spring of 1984. I was nodding acquaintances with many of the others. But while I recognize both Kavanaugh's name and photograph today, I never numbered him among either of those two groups back then.<br />
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Most of the reporters lose interest after I tell them that I didn't really know Kavanaugh, and wasn't part of his friend group at the time.<br />
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Others, though, have been asking more generally what it was like to be at Yale in the mid 80s. "Is this the Yale you remember?" "Did anyone talk to students about sexual harassment?" "Would you have known how to report it if something like that happened to you?" "Did the sexual misbehavior at the party that purportedly happened one entryway over from yours in Lawrance Hall seem probable? Likely?"<br />
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All these questions have got me thinking a lot about those early college days. And talking to a lot of my college friends about what it was like then, and how things are different (or the same) now. Especially when it comes to issues of gender.<br />
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There is a huge difference between how Yale dealt with rape and sexual harassment and misbehavior then, and how it does now. Date rape, or acquaintance rape, was a relatively new concept in the public consciousness when we arrived on campus in September of 1983. My spouse (who is also Stiles '87) remembered reading an article about the concept in the <i>Yale Daily News</i> sometime during our first or second year. His memory set me off on a search of the YDN archives, which turned up <a href="http://digital.library.yale.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/yale-ydn/id/201052/rec/1" target="_blank">this article</a>, the first of a two-part series, in the February 28, 1984 edition: "Victims talk about acquaintance rape." The article opens with these disturbing words:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> There are no full statistics available on rape between students at Yale anywhere—not at University Health Services (UHS), not with the Yale Police, and not in the Yale Dean's office. There is no mention of rape in the 1983-84 Undergraduate Regulations. There is no procedure for a victim to file a formal complaint of rape with the University.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> But there is rape between students at Yale. (page 1)</span><br />
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If there were no procedures for reporting rape, there were certainly no procedures for reporting sexual harassment or sexual misconduct of the type Deborah Ramirez asserts she experienced at the hands of several Yale men in Lawrence Hall.<br />
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To the best of my memory, no one told any of us during our early days on campus what to do if someone sexually assaulted us.<br />
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Many of us female undergrads had been raised in homes or in cultures where the idea of harassment or assault was never broached, either. Or, if it was, it was framed as the girl's/woman's fault. As the director of the Rape Crisis Services at the New Haven YWCA reports in the <i>YDN</i> article, "When a rape is committed by an acquaintance, it is sometimes difficult for the victim to convince others as well as herself that it was a rape."<br />
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I don't think it likely that an incident such as the one Deborah Ramirez describes would have been "the talk of the campus," as Kavanaugh recently opined <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/24/brett-kavanaughs-fox-news-interview-transcript-annotated/?utm_term=.e221f040a2c7" target="_blank">in an interview with FOX News</a>. And even if it had, who would have known what to do about it?<br />
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Nor does it seem at all surprising that Ramirez would not have talked about the incident she describes occurring with anyone else, friends or people in authority. The <i>YDN</i> article features the stories of two Yale women who talked about being raped by fellow students, mentioning that one made a formal complaint about the incident to the Yale College Executive Board, "which is comprised of Yale students, faculty, and professors" and which "hears complaints ranging from library offenses to assault and coercion" (3). <a href="http://digital.library.yale.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/yale-ydn/id/201057/rec/1" target="_blank">Part two of the article, in the 2/29/84 edition</a>, describes the adjudication of that case. "Donald" (names were changed in the article), the alleged rapist, was determined to be guilty by the Board; "as punishment, they banned him from living on campus and participating in any college ceremonies, including graduation, and suspended his diploma for six months." Allison asked that "Donald" be forced to attend counseling sessions, but the Board had no authority to order such a thing.<br />
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And at Commencement later that spring, Allison saw Donald receiving his diploma. When she contacted the Yale Dean's Office, she was told that "Donald" had later appealed the Board's decision, claiming that "since one member of the Executive Committee had been assaulted in the past, this had biased that Committee member and the Committee, against him," "Allison" was told. Because of this, "Donald's" punishment was lifted.<br />
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No one informed Allison of either of Donald's appeal, or its result.<br />
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The article ends with a call for Yale to make "a greater effort to deal with the problem of rape between students" (3): first, acknowledging that it happens; second, setting up a special Committee to address the issue; and third, that they inform students of how to report such acts.<br />
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Is it any wonder in such an environment that a young college woman would not report a less severe act of sexual misconduct?<br />
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For those of you who attended college in the 1980s, do you remember if/what you were told during your first year orientation about sexual harassment and assault? Did your college have a procedure in place to report rape? Sexual misconduct and/or harassment? When did it institute one?<br />
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And what is the earliest romance novel you can remember that deals with sexual harassment/misbehavior in a college setting?<br />
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<u>Photo credits:</u><br />
Lawrance Hall: <a href="http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Old_Campus_(Yale_University)" target="_blank">Wikiwand</a><br />
"Considering Seeking Help": <a href="https://sharecenter.yale.edu/filing-complaint/confidentiality" target="_blank">Yale SHARE</a><br />
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-16888444602419440332018-09-21T09:00:00.000-04:002018-09-21T09:00:02.414-04:00Feminism and the Beast: Juliet Marillier's HEART'S BLOOD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Feminism has long had a hate relationship with the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast." From the animal bridegroom folktale, which Frenchwoman Suzanne de Villeneuve drew on for the first written version of "La Belle et La Bête" in 1740, to the most recent film version of B&B by Disney, feminist literary and cultural critics have often written about the not-so-hidden messages, messages encourage girls and women to stay with and even love "beastly" (i.e. abusive) men, that seem inherent in this trope.<br />
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Which is why it is such a pleasure to read contemporary novels or stories penned by authors who draw on the trope, but do so with a clear aim of subverting its sexism. My favorite short story of this type has long been Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride," from her 1979 collection <i>The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales</i>, in which it is the beauty who embraces the beastly rather than the beast who is transformed into a beauty. And I've enjoyed novel-length B&B and animal bridegroom novel retellings, too, both for young adults (Robin McKinley's <i>Beauty</i> [1978]; S. Jae Jones' <i>Wintersong</i> [2017]) and for adult romance readers (Mary Balogh's <i>Lord Carew's Bride</i> [1995]; Elizabeth Hoyt's <i>To Beguile a Beast</i> [2009]), novels that draw into question some of the central assumptions of the more sexist versions of the B&B trope.<br />
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My new favorite, though, might just be Juliet Marillier's 2009 retelling, <i>Heart's Blood</i>.<br />
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Set in a 12th century Ireland rife with magic, Marillier's novel opens with heroine Caitrin fleeing toward the beast's home not to save a father, but instead out of grief for one. Berach, a scribe, taught his daughter Caitrin his trade, and the two spent many an hour working together, bent over quill and scroll. But after Berach's sudden death, Caitrin falls into a deep depression, during which distant cousins come and claim her home. Showing a kind face to the town, but an abusive one to Caitrin, Cillian and his mother Ita insult and physically abuse Caitrin until she has internalized all their aspersions:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">You're nothing, her dream voice reminded her. You're nobody. Your father shouldn't have filled your head with wild ideas and impossible aspirations.... Bel glad you have responsible kinsfolk to take care of you, Caitrin. It's not as if you've demonstrated an ability to look after yourself since your father died. (12).</span><br />
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When Cillian insists that he and Caitrin wed, however, Caitrin knows she can remain no longer in her once safe home. And so she flees, with only a change of clothes and a small box containing the tools of her trade. And the hopes that she can somehow find her way back to the "old Caitrin, the confident, serene one," rather than the person she has become since her father's death, the person who could not find the power or the will to speak up in the face of Cillian and Ita's abuse (62).<br />
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The folk of a far-western settlement Caitrin lands in warn her against accepting the post as scribe at the castle of their local chieftain—"I can't think of one good thing to say about the man, crooked, miserable parasite that he is" (10). But Caitrin, fearful of a pursuing Cillian, won't let herself belief that their stories of a 100-year curse, a horrible lord, a dog large enough to eat a fully grown ram in a single bite, and tiny beings that whispered in traveler's ears and led the off the path are anything more than fearful exaggeration. Caitrin is not coerced into going to the beast's lair to save her father, as in most Beauty and the Beast retellings; she accepts a job willingly, a job which she hopes will help her find herself.<br />
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When Caitrin arrives at Whistling Tor, it is to discover that each and every story is true—at least, in its own way. Anluan, the young chieftain, limps, has the use of only one arm, and has a strangely unsymmetrical face. Caitrin's first sight of Anluan clearly places him in the "Beast" role: "There was an odd beauty in his isolation and his sadness, like that of a forlorn prince ensorcelled by a wicked enchantress, or a traveler lost forever in a world far from home." But Caitrin immediately chastises herself for placing him in such a traditional role: "I must stop being so fanciful. Less than a day here, and already I was inventing wild stories about the folk of the house. This was no enchanted prince, just an ill-tempered chieftain with no manners" (45).<br />
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Anluan has tragic reasons for his temper, his physical disabilities, and for his lack of social graces, reasons which are gradually revealed to Caitrin over the course of her weeks at the Tor. And though Anluan often falls prey to abrupt bouts of verbal anger, he never acts violently or harms the handful of faithful retainers who remain. What he does lack is hope—the hope that things might change, the hope that the dark cloud under which he has been living might ever abate. And hope is the one thing of which Caitrin will not let go. It is not physical beastliness, then, but despair, which it will be Caitrin's task to banish—not just from Anluan, but from herself.<br />
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Caitrin's job at Whistling Tor is to transcribe the documents of Anluan's ancestor Nechtan, searching for a spell which Nechtan apparently could never find. Not a spell to summon dark power, but rather to disperse it: to send the whispering denizens of the forest, the dark legacy Nechtan's willingness to dabble in black sorcery in order to gain power over his rivals, back from whence they were unnaturally summoned. Many of Nechtan's notes are in Latin, a language which Anluan's father did not have the chance to teach him before he took his life when Anluan was only nine, the most recent of a string of early deaths among the chieftain's ancestors.<br />
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The task must be completed by the end of summer, Anluan insists, without ever telling Caitrin why. But when rumors of invading Normans begin to swirl, and acts of hurtful vandalism begin to plague the Tor, the search grows ever more urgent. Caitrin is free to leave at any time; she is no prisoner. And she certainly doesn't long to return home, at least, not to a family that no longer exists. But after receiving a threatening emissary from a Norman lord, Anluan insists on sending Caitrin away. Because he doesn't love her? Or because he loves her too much?<br />
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(Spoiler: "At last I begin to understand why my father acted as I did. To lose you is to spill my heat's blood. I do not know if I can bear the pain" [315].)<br />
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Again, unlike the traditional B&B story, Caitrin's time "home" is not about proving how bad home really is when compared to the luxury of "away." Rather, it is about conquering her particular monster, banishing those who made her feel less than her true self, and remaking her once destroyed family. A task she undertakes not on her own, but with the help of allies she meets during her journey home.<br />
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Community and hope, rather than isolation, doubt, and despair, are what Caitrin needs in order to reclaim her birthright—and then, to claim her place by Anluan's side while he faces his own worst fears.<br />
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What are your favorite Beauty and the Beast retellings?<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Castle: <a href="https://www.geni.com/projects/Castles-of-Ireland-ROI/18318" target="_blank">Geni</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Bleeding heart: <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/moonbeam13/art/Bleeding-heart-18436389" target="_blank">Moonbeam 13, Deviant Art</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.julietmarillier.com/" target="_blank">Juliet Marillier</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Heart's Blood</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Tor, 2009</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-87307204608636247102018-09-18T10:50:00.001-04:002018-09-18T10:50:18.390-04:00Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Just a short post today, to announce the publication of Kristin Ramsdell's <i>Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction</i>, to which I am thrilled to be a contributor (the actual pub date is September 30, but I just got my copy in the mail today and wanted to give it a shout out). The first encyclopedia devoted to romance fiction, this volume should prove an invaluable resource to those wanting to learn more about the genre, including readers with either an academic or personal interest in the topic.</div>
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From the publisher's blurb:<br />
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<i>Included are alphabetically arranged reference entries on significant authors along with works, themes, and other topics. The articles are written by scholars, librarians, and industry professionals with a deep knowledge of the genre and so provide a thorough understanding of the subject. An index provides easy access to information within the entries, and bibliographies at the end of each entry, a general bibliography, and a suggested romance reading list allow for further study of the genre.</i></div>
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And this, from a <i>Booklist </i>review:</div>
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"What makes this single volume stand out is the range of scholarly issues (feminism, cultural issues) addressed in accessible language with clearly cited sources. . . . This will be a welcome addition to any reference collection, but it is essential to those that serve students of literature and women's studies."</div>
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The <i>Encyclopedia</i> is a bit on the pricey side, but I'm guessing that most academic libraries and even some public ones will order a copy, making it accessible to many readers.</div>
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The entries I wrote:</div>
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• Arranged marriage plot</div>
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• Domestic sentimentalists</div>
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• <i>Pamela</i></div>
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• Rape in romance</div>
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• Romance readers</div>
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• Royal Ascot Awards</div>
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• Samuel Richardson</div>
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• YA Romance</div>
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Looking back in my files, I see that I initially researched these entries way back in 2012. I think I might have included different examples if I had written the entries more recently, but I'm still very happy with the way they came out. My thanks to Kristen Ramsdell for her excellent editorial eye.</div>
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Looking forward to reading the entries from my fellow contributors, including Wendy Crutcher, jay Dixon, Erin Fry, An Goris, Laurie Kahn, Eric Murphy Selinger, and many other scholars, librarians, and industry professionals.</div>
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If you pick up a copy for yourself, or browse through one in your local or college library, let me know what you think!</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><a href="https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=B3259C" target="_blank">Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Kristin Ramsdell, editor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Greenwood, 2018</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-2487433500097883122018-09-11T09:00:00.000-04:002018-09-11T09:00:07.576-04:00Working Romance: Talia Hibbert's UNTOUCHABLE and Lola Keeley's THE MUSIC AND THE MIRROR<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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RNFF is back from a summer hiatus, and is thinking about romance in the workplace. I just read a contemporary romance that I had major problems in the way it addressed (or waved its hands at, instead of addressing) issues of power and consent in a employer/employee setting. Or in this case, a college professor/undergraduate student relationship. No matter than the professor was actually a graduate student just on the verge of defending her dissertation, and the student was a professional athlete going back to school to earn the final credits for his bachelor's degree after leaving college to go pro years earlier. The two are instantly drawn to one another even before their first class together, and soon start socializing outside of class, and then burning up the sheets between classes. Neither one thinks of solutions to the forbidden romance: transferring to a different section; dropping the class altogether; informing a supervisor about the relationship, and asking for a different grad student or professor to grade the student's work. They just keep sleeping together, and dismiss the idea that there is anything problematic about the situation. Did the author think that because the woman was the person in power, and the man in the subordinate position, that the situation wasn't worth fretting about? If so, she might want to check out this recent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html" target="_blank"><i>New York Times</i> article</a> about a female professor who has been reprimanded for harassing a male student.<br />
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Even if the #metoo and #TimesUp movements have made workplace romances less common (a February 2018 <a href="http://press.careerbuilder.com/2018-02-01-Office-Romance-Hits-10-Year-Low-According-to-CareerBuilders-Annual-Valentines-Day-Survey" target="_blank">CareerBuilders' survey</a> cites the figure at 36%, down from 41% in 2017 and 40% in 2008), a sizable number of Americans still meet romantic partners at the office. Can romance novels depict such romances, but in a way that takes into account the concerns raised by #metoo and #TimesUp?<br />
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In Talia Hibbert's <i>Untouchable</i>, the workplace setting isn't an office, but a home. Thirty year old Hannah Kabbah always dreamed of a job working with children. But a conviction for maliciously damaging the car of her sister's secret (and abusive) boyfriend scuttled those plans long ago. But after running into former schoolmate Nate Davis and his two kids, all of whom are desperately in need of a nanny, Hannah gets a second chance to do what she loves. Only complication: her adolescent crush on Nate is turning into a mature, adult longing for the former angry bad boy turned into really kind guy. And Nate's pretty drawn to grumpy, direct Hannah, too ("The earth hadn't moved, when her skin had brushed his. The stars hadn't aligned, and his heart hadn't pounded its way right out of his chest. It only felt that way" [Kindle Loc 1162]).<br />
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But Nate is Hannah's employer, something he is aware of almost every time he finds himself thinking sexy thoughts about the quirky, curvy woman who is taking care of his children:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">...but for some reason she held back her irritation. No; not some reason. She held it back because they weren't at school, and she wasn't just some girl he watched with interest from afar. She was his employee, and she was cautious around him. He had power over her, and she remembered that, even if he didn't." (1745)</span><br />
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The situation is triply complicated, both by the fact that Hannah is of African descent, while Nate is of European, and that Hannah suffers from biological depression, while Nate has long since recovered from the situational depression he experienced after the death of his wife years earlier. But after months of keeping their polite distance, interspersed with vivid moments of heart-stopping attraction, Nate can't keep his feelings to himself any longer (especially because his standoffishness is apparently hurting Hannah's feelings):<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Because I'm not that kind of guy! I don't lust after women who work for me! I don't spend hours thinking about women I can't have and shouldn't want. I don't take advantage of people—I don't even think about it. But I can't stop thinking of you. And dreaming of you, and wishing I could touch you, and tryin to make you smile—and you want to tell me it'll blow over? Do you know how many times in the last few years I've wished I could want someone like this? I didn't think I could! And now it's you, and I shouldn't, and I—fuck!" (2563)</span><br />
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After Nate's confession, Nate and Hannah have to openly discuss what they will do about their mutual attraction. And how they will negotiate the power dynamics inherent in an employer who is sleeping with his employee. And how they will explain the situation to Hannah's family and friends, all of whom are quite protective of the woman who declares to all that she can well-protect herself, thank you very much. And ultimately, both realize that the only way forward is to make a choice: to be an employer and employee, OR to be a couple. There is no both/and possible here, not if their romantic relationship is to have a chance of being an equitable one.<br />
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Lola Keeley's debut novel, <i>The Music and the Mirror, </i>approaches the workplace romance from a different angle altogether. The workplace in question here is even more un-office-like than in <i>Untouchable</i>: a professional ballet company. Twenty-one-year-old dancer Anna Gale is in awe of everything and everyone at the Metropolitan Performing Arts Center—especially the company's legendary artistic director, Victoria Ford. Victoria's dancing inspired a far younger Anna to devote her own life to ballet, and Anna has long nursed a crush on the greatest ballerina in modern history. Having the chance to work professionally with her idol is almost more than Anna can believe.<br />
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Victoria (a white woman, like Anna), is the only woman in the world to work as the artistic director of a major ballet company, a job that requires her to be tougher than old leather. She's in almost constant pain due to her career-ending injury, something else Victoria will never allow anyone else to see. No, Victoria is all Ice Queen. Which Anna finds out when her cell phone rings, interrupting her very first rehearsal:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"The charity case. Of course. Just another millennial who thinks the centuries-long history of ballet owes them any career they bother to pick up for themselves. This is what happens when people fawn over your first tutu and tell you that you're special, Anya." (193)</span><br />
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But despite her "corny-as-Kansas exterior," Anna contains a "glint of steel" (892). Victoria may think she can humiliate her, but Anna is used to dancing for her career, which "feels a whole lot like dancing for her life." Rather than stumble through a difficult routine that Victoria dictates she demonstrate before she is dismissed from the company, Anna blocks out the audience and makes the steps hers as soon as she starts to move.<br />
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Which impresses the hell out of Victoria, though Victoria would be the last one to admit it. What she does do, though, is even more shocking—she offers Anna a principal role in one of the season's upcoming ballets. It could be seen as the move of a boss seeking to influence an employee to impart sexual favors—if roles at the company were not so clearly given because of talent, rather than favoritism. Other dancers protest at Anna's sudden promotion, but none can gainsay Victoria's decision after watching Anna dance. Or after seeing how hard Victoria makes Anna practice, extra private lessons on top of her regular work with the rest of the corps. What looks to be nearly abuse to the average person is a reason for determination and pride in a professional ballet dancer: "Something in the way Victoria's never happy and never quite lets up makes Anna feel like she can dance right through the floorboards if she has to" (1119). And makes the crush Anna's still nursing on almost-forty Victoria even more potent—and even more hopeless.<br />
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It's been twelve years since Victoria's dancing career ended, but her ambition is as fierce as ever. She's always believed that ambition leaves no room for the feelings for others ("Perhaps Victoria shouldn't invest much time in this girl who'll stab Anna in the back for her shot, but it's not a failing, not where Victoria is concerned. She respects a fell shark at work. It's just Anna who mistakes them all for dolphins" [3825]). But somehow she finds herself drawn to Anna in spite of their differences. Anna manages to combine breathtaking talent with a sunny, and bone-kind, temperament, all wrapped up in direct, blunt way of speaking that is far different than the deferential way in which most of the rest of the company treats Victoria. And slowly, so very slowly, the girl who looks like the sun pulls the ice queen into her orbit of her trust and care.<br />
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Anna worries that being Victoria's romantic partner means keeping their relationship a secret. But Victoria surprises her:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"You, the one who likes to assume things, are assuming you're m dirty little secret?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Anna nods. What else could she possibly think?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> .....</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Well," [Victoria] considers out loud. "Fuck that."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Ex-excuse me?" Thank God Anna has finished her coffee, or it would be all over Victoria's immaculate brushed-linen bedding.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Oh yes, it's quite the sapphic scandal." Victoria rolls her eyes. "Do you know how many men in my position have fucked their way to greatness? Claiming an exceptional dancer as their muse and riding her talent to fame or their own? Not," she clarifies, "that it's what I intend with you."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "You're already way more renowned," Anna points out.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "Well, of course I am. All I mean is that no one ever judged those men and their muses. Often the fights were more dramatic than the performances, but it never stopped them. Why the hell else are we in the arts, if not to shrug off that pedestrian bullshit?" (5077)</span><br />
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Rather than reject their relationship, or hide it, Victoria and Anna own it. They don't go around announcing it to everyone in the company. But they don't hide it either, especially after Anna experiences an injury during practice. And the company's members are soon speculating about their "official start date," for the betting pool they've all been running about when the two would finally take the plunge. No one, it seems, is as surprised by this romantic development as are Anna and Victoria. And no one worries that Anna is taking advantage of Victoria, or Victoria of Anna. They all work too hard, and too much under each others' eyes, for any sexual favoritism or misconduct to be tolerated. Neither is fucking her way to greatness; each is talented enough in her own self, ambitious enough for her own self, for their romantic relationship to be regarded as problematic, by themselves or by their peers.<br />
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Added bonuses: cool gender flipping of ballet roles; the celebration rather than denigration of female ambition; and a climax that takes an unusual, but deeply satisfying turn. Not to mention a compelling present-tense narration with tons of detail about the world of professional ballet. I'm no balletomane myself, but I'd say that <i>The Music and the Mirror</i> is one of the best romances I've read all year.<br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credits:</span></u></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">heart/keyboard: <a href="http://sharpheels.com/2014/02/workplace-romance/" target="_blank">Sharp Heels</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Nanny t-shirt: <a href="https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/1480276-im-a-nanny-whats-your-superpower-personalized-gran?utm_source=paid_search&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=PLA&utm_content=tshirt-unisex&feed_sku=1480276D1V&utm_source=paid_search&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=T-ShirtsTopLevelNotApproved&ar_clx=yes&ar_channel=adwords&ar_campaign=T-ShirtsTopLevelNotApproved&ar_adgroup=NotApproved&gclid=CjwKCAjwrNjcBRA3EiwAIIOvq0lBHlKEm4qoHV7p9_z0I_hiO_XrjDqaF5yGDoZqvcWt9JqdhZ6aaRoC_q8QAvD_BwE" target="_blank">T-Public</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Ballerina in black tutu: <span style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/O0MMZHEXQlE?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Jamie Mink</a><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>on<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://unsplash.com/search/photos/blonde-ballerina?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Ballet slippers: <span style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/T8iPsixsYoE?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Donald Giannatti</a><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>on<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://unsplash.com/search/photos/ballet-rehearsal?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto; transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.taliahibbert.com/" target="_blank">Talia Hibbert</a></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">Untouchable</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">(Ravenswood #2)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nixon House, 2018</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://lolakeeley.co.uk/" target="_blank">Lola Keeley</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">The Music & the Mirror</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ylva Publishing, 2018</span></div>
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Jackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.com1