"So hood but such a brainiac": Aya de León's THE BOSS

Given current trends in the romance market, you'd probably expect a novel with the title The Boss to feature a hunky guy in a suit on its cover. Or a tie and a pair of cufflinks. Both of which would belong to a decidedly rich, decidedly white male. Aya de León turns the table on such expectations by placing a sexy black woman on the cover of the second title in her "Justice Hustlers" series. And by making her, not any man, the boss in question.

de Léon's book, which is one third romance, one third heist caper, and one third Norma Rae for sex workers, turns the tables on a lot of other romance expectations, too. It does so by calling into question the boundaries between the morally good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the white and those of color. Its protagonist, Tyesha Couvillier, grew up in Chicago's South Side, in a neighborhood that was 95% black. As a "broke, hot girl," Tyesha's choices as a teen seemed pretty limited:

You could date young Mr. Broke But Sincere. End up with three or four kids—because when you get pregnant, you wanna keep it since you so in love—and you end up being broke along with him. Meanwhile, you don't get to go to college, so you work at some dead-end job all your life and raise your kids. Maybe you save up to go on a cruise once a year. Or you do like my older sister. You hook up with a drug dealer, and you have money, but he's always the boss. (1250)

Tyesha knew that neither of those routes were for her. Instead, she leveraged her assets (her looks, her body) in order to become her own boss:

I learned you could date brothers with money, but not get all wifed up. Just hook up and let them do something for you. Your hair, your nails, your clothes. Get you a job interview, a scholarship. Something. That's how you get out of the hood and end up in New York getting your master's. (1256)

The social norms of white middle class romance dictate that money and love should be separate, in part to make women accept as "natural" the ways that their work (the "love" work of keeping a home and a family) is not financially compensated. But Tyesha doesn't buy into the myth; she sees how sex and romance are inextricably tied to economics, and uses what she has to bargain with in economic exchange. As her niece reminds her, "You always told me that it was okay to date a guy who could move your life forward in some way" (538). From dating for favors to being a Sugar Baby to being a paid "escort," Tyesha becomes involved in sex work to pay for her own higher education. Only once she has leveled the financial playing field can she, rather than some man, be her own "boss."

Tyesha has a foot in several different, seemingly opposed, cultures; as one stockbroker date admiringly says, "That's what I like about you, Tyesha. You can use 'fuck' in two different ways in an analogy about socially responsible investing. You're so hood but you're also such a brainiac" (268). Rather than setting higher education and sex work in opposition, de León insists that a woman like Tyesha can exist in both realms. And perhaps that the realms themselves aren't as separate as we like to believe them. And while feminism in the past may have primarily served the needs of white middle class women, its principles can just as beneficially be applied to the lives of women of color of all classes.

As an adult, Tyesha moved to New York, earned her Master's degree at Columbia, then worked her way up to the directorship of the women's clinic. As part of that job, she becomes involved in a strike by strip club workers, a storyline which allows de León to advocate both for the rights of sex workers, presenting many of the current unfair labor practices which they are currently subject to, and for the view that sex work between consenting adults should be decriminalized. And it also leads to some not quite legal theivery, stealing from the bad guys in service of the oppressed (in keeping with the ambiguity of the series' title, "Justice Hustlers").

Tyesha's romantic life calls into question a lot of conventional boundaries, too. Before the opening of the book, she had been on several dates with rap star Thug Woofer. Tyesha knew his songs were pretty misogynistic, but she "thought you could treat other women like shit in public but still be good to me. Because I was special or something. But it didn't work that way" (1304). So when Woof's behavior abruptly shifted from politeness to an assumption that of course they will be having sex ("Like it was my duty to have sex with you because I was a sex worker" [1300]), Tyesha kicks him to the curb.

She's hooked up with some handsome "bougie" guys via Tindr since then, but none of them quite do it for her in the way she wants. And now, Woof's come out with a new album—"Melvyn: The Real Me"—which shows a softer, less misogynistic side to the rapper. And he's hoping that his "big gesture" might lead Tyesha to give him a third chance.

Woof's change of heart isn't just some "bullshit good behavior" (1332); he's really has made some major changes in his own life. At the insistence of his record company, he's been through counseling for anger management; by his own choice, he's continued to see a therapist, where he's been learning about how black men are socialized to express anger to cover up their fear and shame. And he's taken the "Rapper Respect Pledge," something which the text doesn't explain but which I'm assuming has to do with respecting women rather than degrading them, in both life and in the music rappers create and perform. While it is romance novels' central promise that the bad boy is really a good boy at heart —"Underneath every hard-shell rapper is a guy who needs love"(591), as Woof tells Ellen DeGeneres during a television interview promoting his new album—Woof's change isn't just a hollow one, as his subsequent behavior to Tyesha goes on to prove.

Tyesha tells Woof that she'll only date him if "you really respect me." And that "you have respect for women in general. I can't really fuck with you if you're still making music like your early stuff" (1301). She's learned that there is no real line between "his" woman and women in general; how he treats other women will inevitably influence the way he treats her.

Woof manages to convince her to give him one more chance, and the two begin dating again. But sexism isn't all that easy to rid oneself of, even if one has the best of intentions. And tough Tyesha is more than ready to cut Woof loose if he makes even one misstep . . .

Equal parts entertaining and thought-provoking, The Boss is definitely one for the keeper shelves of any feminist-minded romance reader.


Photo credits:
Strippers' strike: Live Nude Girls Unite
"Independent" by Webbie: You Tube

Aya de León

The Boss

Justice Hustlers #2

Kensington 2017

Tropes and Tone: Lorelie Brown's FAR FROM HOME

When you begin to read a romance that draws on a familiar plot trope, do you have expectations not only about what will happen in the book, but also about the tone in which those events will be conveyed? When I picked up Lorelie Brown's RITA nominated short contemporary romance Far From Home and saw that it drew on the "marry for a green card" trope, I was expecting a light, funny read, á la the film Green Card and other similar romantic comedies that update the marriage of convenience trope for modern times. So when I began to read, I was surprised to discover that Far From Home isn't a comedy at all. Rather than have her two protagonists marry for convenience and then gradually, comically fall in love when they are forced into far more intimacy than a typically dating couple would experience, Brown uses a realistic, even at times melancholy, tone to explore several rather weighty issues: sexual identity; immigration rules and regulations; interracial relationships; mental health and recovery from addiction.

"I would marry you," says Rachel Fizel, the white first person narrator of Brown's romance, in the book's opening line. Rachel makes her joking offer in response to Pari Sadashiv, a friend of a friend who has come to Los Angeles from India courtesy of a H-1B work visa but would far prefer to be an independent consultant than remain with her current employer. Rachel's friends all assume her offer must be a joke; though she doesn't date much now, Rachel spent her teen years seeking approval by sleeping with a long series of guys ("poor vaginal choices," is her wry description of this period in her life [Kindle Loc 289]). But later at the party they are both attending, Pari, a "gold-star lesbian," seeks Rachel out, asking if she's perchance bisexual, and if the "large bills and a job that doesn't keep up" might just be incentive enough for Rachel to change her joking offer into a real one (104).

Rachel suddenly senses that this could be a life-changing moment, just like the moment when she finally admitted to her best friend, Nikki, that she had an eating disorder. Her job at a small studio doesn't really pay enough for her to keep up with the loans she accrued while earning her MFA in film, and it would be nice really to share expenses with another person. Especially a person as self-assured as Pari; maybe some of that young woman's assuredness will rub off on her, Rachel wishes.

Though she's typically reluctant to take chances, Rachel decides that it might be worth her time to go on a date with the elegant, composed, and occasionally minx-ish Pari. A date which quickly leads to an engagement. Which in turn leads to the arrival of Pari's mother, Niharika, from India, intent on planning a large, traditional Tamil wedding. And taking up quarters in Pari's two-bedroom apartment, forcing Rachel and Pari into the same bedroom. And the same bed.

Despite the myriad comic (and painfully stereotypical) possibilities of the above situation, Brown doesn't play her story for laughs. Instead, she allows us deep inside Rachel's head, showing how her distant parents and own "craving to be noticed" and "abhorrence of feeling superfluous" have shaped her starkly judgmental view of herself ("I'm aware that I'm medically still too skinny at the same time that I feel fat as a cow" [791]). And how her admiration of Pari, which initially takes the form of wishing she were more like her confident roommate ("Maybe if I was her, I wouldn't have to be me"), gradually transforms into an appreciation of Pari's intelligence, drive, and love of her own body and the pleasures it offers her. And an appreciation of the ways in which Pari forces her/allows her to pull down her protective guard, showing her real self, rather than the self Rachel constantly constructs to win the approval of others. And, finally, an appreciation of her own budding sexual desire, desire which only burgeons when she can engage in sex with a partner with whom she is emotionally as well as physically intimate.

But falling in love, even when that falling is mutual, puts a lot of pressure on a person. Pressure that Rachel, still prone to the self-doubts and self-hatred common to those who suffer from anorexia, does not want to admit she's feeling. Pressure that only mounts as the day of her wedding to Pari grows closer and closer. Will Pari's family, as tight-knit and loving as her family is distant and cold, accept her if they see that her anorexia is not fully under her control? Will Pari still love her if she's still sick?

Despite (or perhaps because of) thwarting my comic expectations, Far From Home proved a deeply satisfying read, a romance that doesn't shy away from important issues, but which never allows them to subsume the heart of any good marriage-of-convenience romance: how two people who thought only to help one another unexpectedly find themselves falling in love.

Photo credits:

Mendhi: I Love India.com

Lorelie Brown

Far From Home

A Belladonna Ink Novel

Riptide, 2016

Genetics and Romance: THE BOLLYWOOD BRIDE and PURSUED BY THE ROGUE

In the 1932 film adaptation of the 1922 British play A Bill of Divorcement, Katharine Hepburn (in her film debut) plays a woman on the verge of marriage. That is, until her father, who has been incarcerated in a mental institution for the past twenty years, shows up on her doorstep. Hepburn's character, Sydney Fairfield, had been told by her family that her father's mental illness was the result of shell shock he suffered during his military service in World War I. But her father's escape from the asylum brings the truth to light: Mr. Fairfield suffers from an inherited mental illness, an illness to which previous generations of Fairfields have also succumbed. And which Sydney—and Sydney's future children—may also someday face.

Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore as daughter
and father

In good 1930s melodrama form, the selfless Sydney gives up her fiancé and offers to live with and care for her mentally ill father. There is no romantic ending here—unless one considers refusing to give birth to potentially "abnormal" children, and self-sacrificing one's own romantic future to care for a parent, a satisfying happily ever after (as, apparently, did the reviewer for the New York Times, which deemed the "closing scene" "splendid"). Even though there is no way to know for certain that she will inherit her father's illness, Sydney refuses to gamble, refuses take a chance on love.

Today, with the advent of genetic testing for many inherited health issues, it's possible (at least for those with insurance that will cover it) to be tested and find out far more precisely just what the odds are that one will suffer from, or be a genetic carrier of, certain diseases. How has such technology, and the scientific advances that have accompanied it, affected the world of romance?

Sonali Dev's A Bollywood Bride and Kelly Hunter's Pursued by the Rogue both are built upon fear-of-inheriting-a-parent's-illness plotlines. For the heroine of Hunter's contemporary romance novella, Dawn Turner, genetic testing would reveal a definite "yes or no." With a father who suffers from Huntington disease, Dawn has either inherited the faulty HTT gene that causes the progressive brain disorder or hasn't. Dawn has spent her professional life researching technology related to gene mapping, but has not wanted to find out her own HTT status. Dawn has told herself that when she turns thirty, she'll get tested; since the onset of Huntington disease in adults typically does not occur until one's thirties or forties, knowing that she's a positive before then will only place a too-heavy emotional burden on her already difficult life.

For Dev's heroine, Ria Parkar, the situation is more complicated. Her mother's mental illness is never named beyond the general label "psychosis" ("a break from reality, often involving seeing hearing and believing things that aren't real," NAMI), but most mental illnesses that manifest psychotic behavior are not caused by a mutation in one single gene. As a study published last year in Nature revealed, scientists have "identified 128 gene variants associated with schizophrenia, in 108 distinct locations in the human genome." Genetic counselors and doctors can guesstimate Ria's inheritance risk ("Genetically the doctors had pinned Ria's chances at thirty-five percent" [Loc 872]), but Ria, unlike Dawn, cannot be tested and know for certain. And since Ria is a major Bollywood film star, she's kept the secret of her mother's illness—and her own potential genetic carrier status—deeply hidden.

To know or not to know; or to know but to not be certain—these are the "numbers games" that both Ria and Dawn are forced to play as they confront not only their own futures, but the futures of the men they love. Both heroines, intriguingly, have more in common than just a parent with an inheritable illness. Both have suffered early traumas, some as a result of their parent's illness, others unrelated, traumas that influence how they view relationships. Both fear that they are starting to show symptoms of inheriting their parent's illness. Both fell early and deeply for young men during their adolescences, young men who, for various reasons, they were forced to leave behind. And now, both are forced to confront those first loves again, as they struggle to come to terms with their relationships with their parents, their potential future health problems, and the scars and pain that their past and present traumas have dealt them.

The one major difference between the two books is in their choice of point of view. Both use third person, but Rogue uses a dual POV, while Bride focalizes the story entirely through Ria's eyes. Both choices work beautifully to highlight each book's larger themes. The dual viewpoint in Rogue shows how not knowing her HTT status has served not to free Dawn from pain, but to isolate her from emotional connection, the kind of connection that we see and value in the viewpoint of Dawn's first love and current friends-with-benefits guy Finn, the youngest boy in a large, close-knit Irish family. And using third person single POV allows Dev to create an at times almost detached, even dream-like narrative, one which if it were in the first person we might fear was the result of pending psychosis or mental illness in Ria. Instead, third person creates just enough of a sense of distance to make us unsure, wondering whether we are reading about a woman still haunted by past trauma, or one on the verge of mental breakdown in the present.

Since these are both romance novels, you'll probably have guessed that neither ends with the melancholy but noble self-sacrifice required of Katharine Hepburn's Sydney. In fact, both insist that self-sacrifice is in many ways the coward's way out, a way of running away from confronting and accepting the fears that genetic illnesses force us to confront, whether we are romantically partnered or no.


Can you think of other romances in which the possibility of negative genetic inheritance plays a role in a romantic relationship?



Photo credits:
Hepburn and Barrymore: Film Ka Ilm
Huntington inheritance chart: Genetics and IVF Institute
Psychosis perception: The Mental Elf

Sonali Dev

The Bollywood Bride

Kensington, 2015

Kelly Hunter

Pursued by the Rogue

Tule Publishing 2015

Surfacing Nice Guy Sexism: Alisha Rai's A GENTLEMAN IN THE STREET

Per Sylvia Day's useful definition of erotic romance, an erotic romance does not only feature hot sex scenes; it must also must use said scenes to depict and develop the character and romance arcs of its protagonists. And because erotic romance depicts sexual interactions in far more detail than mainstream romance, it often features empowered female characters, characters who break free from slut-shaming double standards to embrace their own sexuality, within said sex scenes. To discover an erotic romance that does all of the above, AND calls attention to the internalized sexism that can plague even the nicest of male characters, though—that's an erotic romance I'm immensely jazzed to write about for RNFF.

A little over a week ago, romance author Heidi Cullinan wrote a blog post in protest of the shallow article about the romance genre that recently appeared on the influential culture web site, TheMarySue. In addition to refuting many of the anti-feminist claims put forth about the genre by that article's author, Alex Townsend, Cullinan compiled several lists of romance novels that provided evidence to back up her refutations, including "Women in positions of power in romance."

Akira—soon to be #19 on the Fortune 500 list of female CEO's?

I discovered Alisha Rai's erotic romance, A Gentleman in the Street, on that list. But after reading Rai's romance, I'd argue that her accomplishment consists of far more than just giving her female lead a job as the CEO of her own company, A. M. Enterprises, which owns and operates "high-end bars and nightclubs in some of the most sophisticated places in the world: London, Dubai, New York, Miami" (Kindle Loc 477). For her novel actively explores the misogyny deployed to contain and restrain powerful women, including her protagonist, 34-year-old Japanese-American Akira Mori. What's more, it explores this not through some obviously evil, deluded, sexist villain, but instead through the story's main love interest, shy white nice guy Jacob Campbell.

Jacob's feckless doctor father and Akira's disapproving mother married after only a month's courtship, and divorced almost as quickly. Jacob and Akira were already old enough to be out on their own at the time of the marriage (good boy Jacob in college, bad girl Akira living off a trust fund from her hotelier grandfather), but even after only a few family get-togethers, each found him/herself unexpectedly, and unhappily, attracted to the other. Jacob, worried that the strength of his lust for Akira might lead him to act irresponsibly toward his family, as his father always has when he meets a new woman, treats Akira with all the distance and even contempt he can muster. And Akira, used to acting outrageously to try and attract the attention of her emotionally distant mother, dons the role of provocative temptress in response. Not that it's all an act; Akira's sexual tastes run to the free and kinky, even if with everyone besides her mother and Jacob she tends to keep that side of her life private.

Fast-forward fourteen years. Both Jacob's father and Akira's mother are dead, and Jacob and Akira have each crafted successful careers for themselves, Akira as the head of the above-mentioned conglomerate, Jacob as a writer of spy novels and surrogate parent for his younger sister. What still hasn't changed, though, is Jacob and Akira's apparent dislike of each other, a dislike that neither recognizes as a cover for their uncomfortable attraction to one another.

Early in the story, after an unexpectedly emotional encounter between Akira and Jacob turns sexual, Akira thinks to shock Jacob and drive him away once and for all by inviting him to watch another man have sex with her in a closet during a tony fundraising party. But Akiri is the one left reeling by Jacob's unexpected willingness to play voyeur. Turns out that Jacob is not as vanilla as he's always led others to believe.

When Akira challenges him to explain his shocking behavior, Jacob finally admits his long-time lust for his erstwhile stepsister: "I just can't look at you without... without wanting you" (971). But Jacob's admission of his passion doesn't lead to romance happily ever after; in fact, Jacob's confession makes Akira majorly pissed off:

It was nice when a man you desired reciprocated the attraction, but not when that man was otherwise repelled by you. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "You made me think you despised me for fourteen years, and now I find out it was because I committed the cardinal sin of attracting your lust.... Guess what? I reserve the right to not be punished for your desires." (990)

A fascinating passage, particularly because earlier in the novel, Jacob had punished his younger sister for calling Akira "slutty": "Judging her isn't your place.... Plus, she could have been naked, and it wouldn't give you an excuse to call her slutty" (446). When sister Kati protests, saying "Even Mei [Akira's mother] used to call Akira a slut," Jacob has real trouble controlling his anger. "I don't care what Mei said. I have never... called any woman a slut, let alone Akira. And I didn't raise anyone in this family to do so either" (446).

Actress Anna May Wong, who was often restricted
to playing stereotypical femme fatale roles
in early American films

Jacob clearly recognizes the sexism behind calling a woman a "slut," but at the same time, he hasn't seen how his own disapproving reaction to Akira has been silently slut-shaming her for the past fourteen years. He even made the villainess in his first novel a rich, sexy, mouthy, beautiful, shallow, unlikeable heir to a fortune, and an Asian to boot. She may have been Korean-American rather than Japanese-American, as Akira is, but even Jacob's younger brothers realize that "Lidia was Akira." And guess what? Jacob killed off femme fatale Lidia in that first novel, symbolically if unconsciously punishing Akira for "making" him desire her. Just what she accused him of. Men, even nice men, Rai's novel suggests, may be as prone to internalizing sexism as women are.

Jacob is appalled by what his brothers and Akira have shown him about his own behavior:

He prided himself on being a good man, a progressive man.... He could posture about disapproving of Mei calling her daughter a slut. He could take away all of Kati's electronics. But at the end of the day, was he really much better? He may not have said the derogatory words, but his aloofness could easily have been taken as disapproval. It didn't matter he hadn't intended it. What mattered was how he had made her feel. (1157, 1175)

And, good guy that he is, Jacob knows he has to make it up to Akira. Even if he has to act out, rather than just dream about, "the Pandora's box of [sexual] fantasies he had kept contained in his brain for the majority of his adult life" (1158). And given his fourteen years of disdain, it will take a lot of proof before Akira will let Jacob into not just into her sexual life, but also into her emotional one.

Let the erotic games begin.


Photo credits:
Female CEO's: Huffington Post
Anna May Wong: noirwhale

Alisha Rai

A Gentleman in the Street

self-published, 2014

You Don't Complete Me: Solace Ames' THE SUBMISSION GIFT

"You complete me." "You're my missing half." "You make me whole." Such phrases were once the stock in trade of romance, both of the filmic and the written variety. Find your soul mate, connect with your one true love, and you'd find the one person who could—and would—give you everything you'd ever wanted, ever needed. Fall in love, and you'd be happy and sated for the rest of your life.

In real life, people who expect their mates or spouses to fulfill their every need are doomed to disappointment. But even today, romances that reject the "you complete me" trope are far less common than those that embrace it. Perhaps that's why I found Solace Ames' The Submission Gift such a treat. For Ames' erotic romance (the second in her LA Doms series) insists that one can be happily married, even if one's partner can't meet all one's sexual desires.

Adriana and Jay, a Mexican-American couple, have had a difficult start to their married life. A car accident a little over a year ago seriously injured Jay, and Adriana has spent the subsequent months splitting her time between caring for her husband and working grueling hours as a sous chef. But now Jay's almost completely recovered, and ready to resume his life, including his sex life with his wife.

Jay loves Adriana so much, he'd do anything for her. Or, at least, almost everything. Adrianna's into being dominated in bed, but Jay's just not that into playing that role. Because he cares for her, Jay can sometimes get into such scenes:  "Even though he wasn't much into controlling—he played these games for her sake, not his own—sometimes he'd sink far enough into her feelings that he'd genuinely enjoy this easiest, most playful level of teasing, denying, restraining" (Kindle Loc 162). But he doesn't enjoy it enough to fully satisfy Adrianna: "If he gripped her wrists and held her down... She wanted that. Such a small thing, and he couldn't do it, couldn't take that step. Because she only wanted it if he wanted it. And he didn't, not really" (187).

Jay wants Adrianna to be happy, though, and comes up with the idea of using some of the insurance money they've just received to hire a "rent boy," a sex worker who can take on the dominant roles that Jay just doesn't enjoy. Jay finds Paul, a white thirty-year-old who specializes in BDSM work both with gay men and also with couples. As a threesome, and later, pairing off individually with Paul, Jay and Adrianna gradually find themselves growing not just more sexually fulfilled, but also developing a real emotional bond with Paul. A bond Paul, too, recognizes: "We've got a strong emotional connection.... I feel it as much as you. It's okay. It doesn't take away from what you have with Jay," Paul reassures Adrianna (1039).

All too soon, though, the extra settlement money is gone, and Jay and Adrianna can no longer afford Paul's services. But before they can tell Paul, Paul announces he's firing them as clients. Not because they've done anything wrong, but because he wants to "see you, both of you, on a non-paying relationship basis.... Dating. Or free sex. Whichever way you want to look at it. I'm easy. I'm very easy" (1915).

Ames gives us the point of view of all three members of this unusual threesome: Adrianna, tough and competent on the job and in everyday life, who gets off on sexual domination and pain, but not discipline or punishment; Jay, a "bi guy on the femme side," a social worker who counsels abused women (2867); and Paul, who enjoys his sex work but imagines leaving it behind someday, after he's earned his architecture degree. Each continually questions his or her own motives, his or her desires, wondering if they are wrong, if they are hurting one another, or themselves: for example, Jay thinks "Maybe there was something wrong with his mind, or his heart, for him to not feel particularly torn or jealous. But he just couldn't bring himself to care about whatever flaw it was. As long as she was happy, the whole issue was academic. Boring, even" (1159). They key is to find a proper balance, one that allows each member of this threesome the chance to have his or her needs met. Their sex together, as a threesome or in pairs, is hot, but it's not just there to titillate the reader; it's there to convey and develop a fascinating set of characters.

In typical romance novel fashion, secrets from Paul's past throw a huge monkey wrench of a black moment into the burgeoning relationship of this threesome. Add in some work angst, some overblown tempers, and, ultimately, some straight talk, and you have all the emotional lows and highs of a traditional monogamous romance story. It's a tribute to Ames' skills as a writer that she had this reader, with her own personal investment in monogamy, rooting for this unconventional threesome to overcome their differences and hurts and make their relationship work.


Photo credits:
Feet in bed: Advertolog

Solace Ames

The Submission Gift

LA Doms Book 2

Carina, 2014

Pet Peeve Reconsidered: Falguni Kothari's IT'S YOUR MOVE, WORDFREAK!

Women, Aryan reflected philosophically, were from Venus. a man wasn't meant to understand them.

My father got everything, including us, two children who needed their mother and who my father could not possibly care for because that's not what fathers do. It's not their job.

The rest of their dinner passed in quick-witted banter and some suggestive talk—mostly on his part. Boys will be boys, after all.


In one of the earliest posts I wrote for RNFF, I ranted about the prevalence of "It's a guy thing" and other gender-universalizing statements in romance novels. I labeled that post with the title "Pet Peeve," indicating my frustration with the limitations of such gendered ways of labeling thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the romance genre.

I went back and re-read the post today, trying to make sense of my reactions to a novel I read this week, one in which many such gender-normative statements are both thought and uttered by the romance's protagonists, especially by its heroine. But despite these annoyingly gendered universalizing statements, I found myself liking this book, even charmed by it at times. Was I just allowing the pleasures of the book to blind me to the sexism it contained? Or was something else going on here beyond attempts to police gender?

The question becomes even more fraught when I consider that the book—Falguni Kothari's It's Your Move, Wordfreak!—is set largely in a country (India) far different from my own, and written by an author who was born and raised in that country (though she now lives in the United States). And it was published by a company in India, suggesting that Indian, rather than American, readers are its primary intended audience. How do my own cultural assumptions about what constitutes feminism play into my reading of this book? How do they differ from those held by women in/from India? I don't have any definitive answers to such questions, only an awareness that they exist, and might influence (for good and for bad) the analysis that follows.


Alisha Menon has been playing online Scrabble for months under the moniker "Worddiva." Her fiercest competitor is a man who calls himself "Wordfreak"; their epic battles have gradually segued into online chatting, until, at novel's start, they are just on the verge of meeting face to face for the first time at a restaurant in their home city of Mumbai. The three quotes serving as epigraphs for this post all come from that initial meeting, quotes that demonstrate how both Alisha and Aryan (aka Wordfreak) hold fairly stereotypical (at least by the American norms with which I am most familiar) views about gender roles, especially the roles of men, at novel's start. Yet Alisha is a successful divorce lawyer, not a stay-at-home mother or a woman ready to drop her career at the first sign of a potential mate. And for his part, Aryan doesn't seem to care much for patriarchal gender norms, himself; not dismayed by losing more often than winning to Worddiva in their Scrabble matches; "exhilarated" by the challenge of their matches; "enchanted" by their online chats, including moments when Worddiva had "called him a fool so many times that he had lost count," Aryan has been captivated by Alisha's outspoken, determined personality long before the actual sight of her "knocked him flat out (Loc 121). His commitment to environmentally-conscious practices in his job (as an architect and civil engineer) suggest his progressivism in other areas as well.

Alisha's feminism is both very much on display (her outspokenness, her commitment to her job, her standing up to jerky men who are angry at her role in ending their marriages), yet also often serves as grounds for conveying the story's humor. For example, when, early in their relationship "Aryan stiffened slightly and signalled her in a come-hither motion," Alisha wants to "instantly obey his command.... How had one long, blunt finger unhinged her feminist pride so easily?" We laugh, though, when Aryan's gesture turns out not to be a move of seduction, but one intended for secrecy, so he can secretly ask Alisha why Vallima, a member of her house staff, is staring at him. Aryan's acceptance of Alisha's way of being, as well as of feminism in general, is also littered throughout the novel. For example, when Aryan suggests that her food be reheated because it got cold while she had to take a call from work, and she tells him, "You're very easygoing.... It's just that most men or the men I've come across are not so accommodating," Aryan just shrugs, "understanding perfectly what she was getting at. 'The world is changing,'" he tells her, then goes into a paragraph-long thought digression on said changes:

The boundaries between the sexes were fading. There was nothing like women's work or a man's job anymore. If one thought himself—or herself—capable of doing something, one went out and did it. With varying degrees of success perhaps, but people were stepping out of their gender slots. Even in India. (Loc 716)

Why, then, do such gender-based statements as the ones above keep popping up throughout the novel? Particularly those related to men? Alisha doesn't seem to take pleasure in feeling superior to poor inferior male Aryan; nor does she seem to relish difference, or take comfort from it to account for relationship problems, all theories I put forth in my earlier post as possible reasons for the presence of gender-universalizing statements in romance novels. Instead, I wonder if, in this novel at least, such statements might be a sign of both recognition of and frustration at the persistence of "gender slots" in Alisha and Aryan's culture, even in the midst of a time of great social change. The boundaries are "fading," Aryan admits, but he doesn't claim they are entirely gone, a situation the novel's mixed gender messages clearly convey.

We see signs of the mixed messages of gender in a scene mid-novel in which Aryan and some neighboring boys are building a treehouse. When Aryan invites Alisha to come up, one of the boys replies, "How can she climb up? She's a girl." Alisha thinks "He was tiny, barely coming up to her hip, a male chauvinist in the making," and quickly responds to reject his sexism: "Girls can do everything that a boy can. More in fact." "Teach them young and maybe the world would be a better place," Alisha thinks to herself.

But it turns out that when he's with the boys, Aryan isn't quite as feminist-friendly as he is with Alisha: "That's not what AB [i.e., Aryan] told us," the boy tells her. "He told us that boys were stronger, smarter and more talented." Aryan's response is meant to be humorous—"Aryan winced and shook his head at the boy. 'I should have also taught you that some things were meant to be kept secret from girls'"—but it's also telling. Aryan feels the need to code switch, to endorse traditional gender norms when he's with a group of boys, even while recognizing how his society is changing around him. Even while taking falling in love with a woman who has been in large part shaped by those very changes.

Alisha's initial response to Aryan's code switching is to fall back into her own gender-normed beliefs: "Alisha sneered. Boys would be boys" (Loc 1742). Then, she tries to joke her point across: "No wonder God has to repeatedly send down messiahs and avatars to save the world. Even She knows you men botch things up spectacularly" (Loc 1742). The boys, unfortunately, don't get the joke, "too young to understand the finer points of feminism" (Loc 1749). Finally, she tries demonstrating in their own terms, rather than explaining in hers: "How dare they think her a scaredy cat even if she was one? She could do this, she would show then. For all women all over the world, she squared her shoulders and grabbed the rope. 'Ready,' she squeaked" (Loc 1764).

Earlier, at a party, Alisha muses, "In her experience, most people projected different personas under different circumstances. Maybe not different personas so much as different traits in their personalities dominated in different surroundings" (Loc 1392). Should sexism be thought of in this way, too? As a personality trait one can emphasize or de-emphasize, depending on the circumstances in which one finds oneself?

I thought this might be the novel's intended message, until I reached its final scenes. The story's emotional arc is not about teaching Alisha not to be so strong, to accept that love means subsuming oneself to another (i.e., a man), as I had worried it might be. Alisha does learn the necessity of compromising, but it is Aryan, not Alisha, who undergoes the biggest character growth, having to come to terms with his feelings about the death of his mother when he was a teen. As Alisha upbraids him, "You're a hypocrite, you know that? What did you tell me that day? That I have boundaries and I had set limits on our relationship, that I don't let people in? What about you?" (Loc 3181). Aryan may be a man, and he may be acting foolishly, but that does not mean that Alisha should attribute his behavior to his gender, she finally realizes: "Then she sprinted after the foolish man. Men were so silly. No, that wasn't true. Why charge the entire gender with the crime. This man was so silly" (Loc 3041).

New insights co-exist with old assumptions, though; later, when Alisha asks Aryan why he doesn't ask his father about his mother's death, and he says "I just don't want to, that's all," "she looked at him incredulously. Men were so foolish. It was becoming her mantra" (3196). And during their big reconciliation scene, when Aryan admits that he was wrong about a lot of things regarding his parents, Alisha tells him, "Men are so foolish" (Loc 3614). But the declaration is accompanied by the thought, "She wasn't one to 'there, there' someone and nor was she the type to spout nonsense such as 'life is nothing but a learning curve' even if it was" (Loc 3614). Her response isn't an explanation, but a chiding, a way to keep Aryan from taking her too much for granted. And when Alisha's friend Diya tries to use the same excuse—"You do know that you're expecting all that from a man?.... They're not exactly equipped to deal with life's vicissitudes" (Loc 3313), Alisha rejects her reasoning: "What rubbish! I've said my piece. Now it's up to him." (Loc 3313).

Gender universalizing? Or gender equity and equality? Or a messy mixture of both? The mixed messages continue throughout the novel, even through the book's final scene, a disagreement between Aryan and Alisha over whether they should sign a pre-nuptial agreement. Will Aryan use the disagreement to teach Alisha that "She's not always going to get her way," as he defensively tells his future brother-in-law on the eve of his wedding? Or will he follow Alisha's lead and compromise? The novel leaves the question tantalizingly open, the ball in Aryan's, and, perhaps the reader's, court.



Photo credits:
Scrabble feminism: Feminspire
Treehouse: Asia Travel
Woman holding "Equal?" sign: Asia Development Dialogue

Falguni Kothari,

It's Your Move, Wordfreak!

Rupa Publications, 2012