Short Takes: Spring 2019 Historicals by RNFF favorites

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:

Courtney Milan'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, Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure, 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 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.

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 Violetta's 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.

An Unconditional Freedom, the third entry in Alyssa Cole's American Civil War-set series 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, An Extraordinary Union) 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.

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.

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:

     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.
     You don't need to see such things. You are a Sanchez. You don't have to endure such ugliness.
     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?"
     "That man tried to start an insurrection. They had to make an example of him."
     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.
     "What did you do?" she asked Daniel, and saw the muscles beneath the scars tense.
     "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.
     "No! I—I meant, why did they do this to you?"
     He shook his head and pulled his shirt back up over his shoulder, not turning to face her as he did up his buttons.
     "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)

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.

After Elizabeth Kingston's call for "Reclaiming Historical Romance" in the December 2018 issue of RWA's Romance Writers' Report, 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 online store). The third book in her Welsh Blades series, Desire Lines, 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.

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.

Not to mention the falcons and hawks...

Race and Romance: The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing Report 2018

Early this month, the Ripped Bodice bookstore released their third annual "The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing Report." 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 American populace who identify as something other than white (38.7%). Fewer than half of the publishers surveyed can even boast about having a lowly 10% of authors of color on their lists.

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.

An anecdote by way of suggesting why:

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.

One of the "multicultural" books. Written by
author Mwenye Hadithi, aka Bruce Hobson

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 books (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?

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.


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 statistics on children's books publishing diversity by the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) 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).

Infographic courtesy of Lee & Low Books

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:

• Total percentage of books by authors/illustrators of color: 14%

• Percentage of books by black, Latinx, and Native authors: 7%

• Percentage of books by people of color that focus on multicultural content: 9%

• Percentage of books by whites that focus on multicultural content: 16%

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...

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.

Some additional things that might help:

• 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?

• 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?

• More scholars to study the genre, to supply some of the answers to the above questions

• 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

• The continued voices of Romancelandia Twitterverse speaking out in protest of the current situation

• More white readers to buy books about and by writers of color

• 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

• More blogs and reviews about romances by/about people of color

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?

Who's Talking About Diversity in Romance?

A reposting today of two romance & diversity-related announcements. First, this announcement from the Bawdy Bookworms about the start of their "Diverse Romance Press List," a database intended to "help connect diverse authors and the media/librarians" by sending out a monthly email with "a link to a database of diverse romances that will be released in the next 3 months." For more info, check out the full announcement here.

(And if you're specifically interested in romances by women of color, check out Rebekah Weatherspoon's Women of Color in Romance on Tumblr, and Facebook, and Twitter, which has been doing similar work since 2015).

Second, a report from Romance Writers of America on the Diversity Summit held during July 2018's national conference, which can be found here. I found the report of 2000 romance readers on their reading preferences and habits, compiled by NPD Book for RWA, particularly telling (the full report is available only to RWA members, but some of the highlights are summarized here). The take-away? The reading habits of younger readers are far different than those of older readers, so if authors and publishers want to keep the industry growing, it is vital to appeal to this more racially and sexually diverse, more male, and more social media-engaged group.

Here's to keeping the diversity conversations going...

Urge RWA to follow up on "The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing"

Last Thursday, The Ripped Bodice, the new romance-only bookstore in Culver City, California, published a fantastic (or, rather, fantastically dismaying)  4-panel infographic entitled "The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing 2016." The infographic opens by explaining "It has become abundantly clear that there are racial disparities in mainstream romance publishing. We have found it difficult to continue the conversation without hard data."

Hard data that neither publishers, nor professional organizations such as the Romance Writers of America, have heretofore made the effort to collect or to publicize. So Bea and Leah Koch, owners of The Ripped Bodice, decided to do the research themselves. Taking a page out of the Cooperative Children's Book Center folks, who have been collecting and publishing data on diversity in children's literature since 2002, the Kochs contacted and polled 20 commercial romance publishers, asking them to supply data on how many authors of color their houses published in 2016; collected data on books published from publishers who declined to participate; researched how individual romance authors self-identify, racially; and then compiled and analyzed the resulting figures to present a snapshot of the state of racial diversity in the romance publishing field.

And pretty sad figures they are. The low end of the scale dips distressingly low: 1.8% for Random House; 2.8% for Avon Romance; 3.9% for Berkley; and a dismal 0% for HQN & Tule. The high end is worth noting: 12.2% for Crimson Romance; 17.5% for Forever/Forever Yours; and 19.8% for Kensington. Yet those three presses account for only a small fraction of the larger market, and are the only houses out of the 20 featured whose 2016 titles included at least 10% by of authors of color. Half of the publishers surveyed had fewer than 5% of their books written by people of color.

One of the bigger surprises for me: the low figures from LGBTQ publishers Riptide (1.4%) and Dreamspinner Press (5.8%).

That two bookstore owners, rather than romance's own professional organization, felt the need to take on this work is more than a little sad. I hope members of RWA will urge the organization to work with The Ripped Bodice to build on this preliminary research, so that the group can be an informed, as well as a passionate, advocate for romance authors of color.

In addition to conducting a yearly survey of the state of diversity in commercial romance publishing, RWA seems in the ideal position to gather information on:

     # of POC on the lists of small press publishers
     # of POC as Independent/self published authors
     # of POC Membership in RWA


What other research do you hope RWA (or, in its absence, The Ripped Bodice or some scholarly researcher) will undertake to call attention to the immense racial disparities in the romance field?

You can find the full pdf file of the infographic at the Ripped Bodice store website, here.

Arguing about Diversity

Two groups with which I am affiliated—the community of children's literature scholars, and community of romance writers—experienced upsetting, divisive, but ultimately productive public discussions about issues of diversity and racism during the dog days of August. Though the latter may be of more interest to readers of this blog, I'd like to talk about each of them here, to show that these debates are not isolated occurences, the sign of problems or disputes limited to one backward or racist group, but are debates that are roiling groups and communities across the United States.

The children's literature discussion stemmed from the call for papers from the Children's Literature Association (ChLA), the primary scholarly association for professors and others who study children's literature in an academic manner, for its 2018 conference (Full disclosure: I am a past and current member of the ChLA Board of Directors). The conference committee for the 2018 conference, which will be held in San Antonio, Texas, issued a Call for Papers in July that many scholars in the organization found not just disrespectful of cultural diversity, but tainted by white bias, tokenism, and cultural erasure. Many scholars began to discuss this problem on social media, in particular on Twitter, expressing dismay, disgust, and anger. The ChLA had been working on issues of diversity for several years, but scholars of color were getting tired of waiting for that work to reap results, and of staying quiet, or having to defend themselves or educate others, when confronted with white scholars' prejudices and biases.

The romance writers' discussion stemmed from a post to RWA's PAN (Published Authors Network) listserv from a New York Times bestselling author, a post in response to earlier discussions about standards for entering and judging the organization's contest, the RITA Awards. This post both expressed dismay at the drop in membership numbers of RWA, and attributed said drop to the direction of the current RWA board, in particular the board's focus on "social issues" rather than "publishing ones." Members of RWA's board are all subscribed to the PAN listserv, and several of them responded to the original post to state that membership numbers had in fact not decreased, and the original poster was incorrect. Others, including both board and general members, were more concerned about the other piece of the original poster's statement, and asked the original poster to clarify what was meant by "social issues." Many assumed that it referred to board's focus on increasing diversity within the organization, and posted both their endorsement of the board's actions in this regard, as well as stories about how in years past, they had been openly or implicitly discriminated against by members of the organization. The original poster returned to the forum to clarify her position, but went on to fan the flames of the debate by stating that "diversity for the sake of diversity is discrimination. It just is." Members of the group mentioned this statement to friends outside the PAN community, and soon Twitter and Facebook were abuzz. Amid the following flood of posts to the PAN listserv decrying such a statement, the original poster choose not to continue participating in the conversation.


How did each organization respond to these explosive discussions? In the first, a member of the ChLA Board who is a frequent participant in discussions of issues of diversity in children's literature (not me) saw the social posts from frustrated members, and requested that these scholars reach out to the Board of ChLA with their concerns. The board subsequently received a letter with a "request for action," in particular, that the Call for Papers be revised, and that the problem be acknowledged on the ChLA's web site and in the next issue of the organization's journal. The Board read through the objections cited by the group, reworked the Call for Papers in conjunction with the San Antonio Conference Committee to address those objections, and distributed the new CfP to its members, along with a note explaining why such an unprecedented action as changing a previously posted CfP had been necessary, and extending an apology to all its members. You can see that note, and links to the original and the revised CfP, here. The most important lines, to my mind, are these: "ChLA works to foster an environment—at our conference, online, in our journals and newsletters—where all members feel welcomed, included, valued, and respected. Please share this notice with others in the ChLA community so that we can continue to have open, transparent dialogues with one another."

The CfP problems, however, led to collateral damage, spilling over as they did onto the Child_Lit listserv, a group unaffiliated with ChLA, moderated by a single senior scholar.  On Child_Lit, the initial problem grew into a broader philosophical discussion, with scholars advocating for freedom of speech clashing with those who argued that freedom of speech arguments had been, and continued to be, code words for suppressing the dissent of marginalized or oppressed groups. In the midst of these debates, the owner of the Child_Lit listserv abruptly announced that he would be shutting the list down as of September 1st, bringing to an end an  immensely influential, productive online community that had weathered other many another acrimonious discussions over its more than twenty-year existence.

Since the RWA debates stemmed from a single member's comments, rather than from a publication from the organization itself, RWA Nationals has not taken any public action in response to the racially insensitive comments on the PAN loop. But they did discover, as a result of subsequent posts taking some posters to task for revealing what they had assumed was confidential information from the loop to those outside the PAN community, that the organization had three different, and in some cases conflicting, regulations about what is and is not permissible to share with the public from an RWA-owned listserv. The organization is currently working to clarify and consolidate these conflicting rules so that all members can know and understand what is, and what is not, ok to share. Many on the loop are hoping that those rules will not be so restrictive as to stifle debate; in the past, many have felt policed by members who insist that everyone should be "nice," "kind," and "supportive," no matter how egregiously they have been discriminated against. I encourage the board to consider ways that RWA, like ChLA, can continue to foster "open, transparent dialogues with one another."

The PAN listserv, unlike the Child_Lit listserv, continues. The dozens, even hundreds, of comments posted by PAN members expressing outrage at the prejudice coded within the original poster's "diversity for diversity's sake is discrimination" statement have been amazing to read. White authors are expressing support for the organization's diversity efforts, and support of their colleagues of color, and pointing those who feel they do not know enough about the issue to outside resources to educate themselves about institutional and organizational racism. Many authors of color, and many who identify as LGBTQ+ or write queer romance, have written to say how surprised they are that so many members have written in support of diversity, and how much more positive they feel about the organization than they had before this issue exploded on the PAN loop. Board members have written to explain why making RWA more diverse is not just good politics, it's good business practice. Although a few posters have lamented that some members are feeling afraid to express their opinions, for fear of being perceived as not-PC or being attacked by "mean girls," the debate has been far freer of attacks and counterattacks than one might expect from such a sensitive, often deeply divisive, issue, and filled with the real desire to understand others' points of view.


Conversations about race and racism in the United States are hard. Damn fucking hard. Feelings run high, and people on all sides are both angry and afraid—angry at being discriminated against; afraid of being called out for offenses they never intended; angry at being labeled racist; afraid of being disappointed yet again when asked to have faith for the nth time in the good intentions of privileged others. But until we can face those feelings, confront those angers and fears, and begin talking with each other in the communities and organizations to which we each belong about the ways that race continues to impact people of all colors, privileging some, oppressing others, we won't be able to honestly say that we live in a country truly committed to "liberty and justice for all."


Illustration credits:
Children's Literature Association: ChLA Twitter
Romance Writers of America: RWA
Listserv: Slate

Reading Goals for 2017?

Having packed up my daughter back to college after her long winter break, held my first Board meeting as President of the New England Chapter of Romance Writers of America, gotten a handle on the revisions of my novel-in-progress, and ordered the new part that our HVAC folks finally figured out we needed to fix the heating pump that had been failing intermittently for the last month (so hard to write when you're sitting in a freezing cold house!), I'm finally ready to start blogging again. I have a few books that I'm eager to write about, but before I started reviewing again, I wanted to take a few minutes to think out loud about my goals for my reading this year.

First, I want to try and remember to list on my Goodreads account every book I read. I've tended to put off adding a book to my "read" list until I have the time to write a full review—and when I run into a busy period, I end up forgetting to post a bunch of books I've read but have already taken back to the library, or which have fallen too low on my Kindle listings, displaced by ever-new titles, for the mere sight of the covers to remind me I still owe that review. This year, then, I'm going to add books to my "read" list on Goodreads immediately after I finish reading them, even if I don't have the time then to write a review. Hopefully this will be a better jog to my memory, and I'll follow up with those reviews. If you're a Goodreads person, I'd love to hook up with you there (just search for me under my name, "Jackie Horne." There's 7 of us on Goodreads; I'm the one from Cambridge MA USA).

Second, I want to read more lesbian romance. When I first reconnected to romance a little less than a decade ago, I hadn't read any romances with queer characters. But now, queer romance takes up a significant chunk of my TBR pile, thanks to recommendations from online friends, reviewers, and writers. But such recommendations often tend to feature protagonists who identify as male, or as non-binary, far more often than they do as protagonists who identify as lesbian. I need to make more of an effort to connect with lesbian publishers, readers, reviewers, and writers, because otherwise it is too easy to fall into the totally unsubstantiated assumption that gay and queer writers are turning out far more interesting romances than lesbian writers, just because those are the books that I and my friends and acquaintances are reading. So, at least once every month, I'm going to spend time reading through the upcoming publication lists at Bella Books, Bold Strokes Books, Riptide Publishing, and any other lesbian romance presses you all might recommend, and pick a handful of books to try.

One of the many book challenges you can join online
Link to POC Reading Challenge

Third, I want to expand the Diversity Romance Bingo Challenge that Barb Funes promoted on Twitter and Goodreads (which ended at the end of 2016) into this year. My goal: to get a bingo every month, which would mean reading at least five romances with characters or authors who are from groups or identities underrepresented in the romance genre, with a different underrepresented group or identity in each of the five.

Finally, I want to keep making an effort to read books by authors I don't yet know. Since starting this blog in 2012, I've been introduced to so many terrific feminist romance authors, and I could spend every blog post writing only about my favs. But I don't want to overlook new authors, or to miss the chance to discover older books that I didn't catch when they were first published. If I don't write about every book by your favorite feminist author, it's not because I'm not reading and enjoying them; it's because I want to keep my ears open for new voices, not only the well-established ones.

I hope you won't mind if I use the blog to help keep me focused on goals (especially goals 2 & 3): I plan to report once a month here about my progress, unexpected finds and annoying frustrations.


What are your romance reading goals for 2017? And do you have any recommendations for goals RNFF should consider?

Courtney Milan's HOLD ME

My first exposure to transexual identity came, as I'm sure did many cisgendered folks' of my generation, via Neil Jordan's 1992 film The Crying Game. IRA volunteer Fergus promises to seek out the girlfriend of a British soldier his group has kidnapped if the soldier should be killed. The soldier does die (although not at Fergus's hands), and he eventually does seek out the girlfriend, who is named Dil, in London. Of course, Fergus begins to fall for Dil. Only when they are about to make love (about midway through the story) does the film reveal to both Fergus and the audience that Dil is transgender, in a visceral visual way.

The "big reveal" as spectacle, and the reveal/revulsion of the hero (and viewer)

Marketing for the film positioned this secret as the heart of the film: "The movie that everyone's talking about, but no one is giving away its secrets." Though the film itself is far more subtle, its structure cannot but help construct transgender identity as a secret, a secret so shocking (at least to the cisgendered) that it makes the viewer (identifying with seemingly straight Fergus) throw up in revulsion. It also positions transgender identity as a spectacle, a display that titillates even as it shocks. Even though by film's end, Fergus sacrifices himself on behalf of Dil, thereby validating Dil's identity and existence, it can never quite overcome the distaste of that initial moment of reveal/revulsion. What reviewers talked most about (or tried not to give away) was the secret of Dil's trans-ness; the shock of the big reveal, rather than the film's story as a whole, was what made the movie worth talking about.

Romances featuring transwomen often struggle with that burden established by The Crying Game's precedent (see for example Brian Katcher's YA Almost Perfect). How can you depict trans lives without turning them into spectacle, without making the romance at its heart be about the big secret, the big reveal? Which is why I found Courtney Milan's latest contemporary, Hold Me (book #2 in her Cyclone series) such a pleasure to read. Milan blows right by this "cis-person's burden" of trans-ness as spectacle by making the central problem for her heroine not the revelation of her trans identity, but instead the problematic ways other peoples' responses to that identity have shaped her, and her ability to trust in love.

The first meeting between sexy, gorgeous Maria Lopez and super-brainy physicist Aroon (aka Jay) na Thalang is a definitely meet-cranky. Maria comes to Berkeley in search of her brother, who has just joined Jay's lab. But the driven, demanding Jay has no time for distractions, especially one who looks as hot as does the stranger knocking on his door. "What are you selling, anyway? Lab supplies? Amway?" Jay's sexist rudeness catches Maria a bit off-guard, but when her always-late brother Gabe finally appears and formally introduces her to his friend/boss, her sharp tongue returns with a vengeance:

     "Did you know Jay's working on a top secret project for the Department of Defense? He uses invisible radiation to turn himself into an asshole."
     Gabe looks at me, then at his friend, then back at me. "I'm missing something."
     "Don't worry, little brother." I pat Gabe's shoulder. "His terrible transformation only happens around women. You're safe." (Kindle Loc 171).

Maria is used to having to deal with Gabe's "good guy" science friends, friends whose unthinking sexism leads them to dismiss or condescend to her, assuming that she's an intellectual lightweight. But unbeknownst to Gabe or to Jay or to any other male in the academic community, Maria is the writer of a science/fiction blog that is de rigeur reading for anyone with scientific chops. The blog, built around the premise that its writer is someone from the future who sends instructions back to the present to help people avoid apocalyptic events that threaten human existence, was Maria's way to keep her brain engaged between high school and college, during the years she was working to save up for surgery and hormones. Obnoxious Jay, who tells her during their first meeting that she needs to stop "distracting" her brother so he can focus all his energies on scoring a tenure-track job: "And look at you. You took a selfie with your brother. You're a girly-girl. You care about hour hair and clothes and pop culture. I've seen too many of my good friends struggle to get jobs. You don't know this market" (231). But Maria is proud to be a girly-girl, and won't let Jay reduce her to merely a "distraction," especially not to her brother, who was the only family member who has stood by her during her gender identity journey.

Enemies in person, lovers in print:
James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan
in Ernst Lubitch's Shop Around the Corner

Needless to say, Maria and Jay's in-person relationship only continues to go downhill as the two end up running into each other at every turn over the next few months. But in a Shop Around the Corner/You've Got Mail trope-move,  the commenter on Maria's blog with the moniker "Actual Physicist," the commentator with whom she's been corresponding and flirting with offline for the last eighteen months, is none other than her brother's boss, Jay na Thalang.

Milan not only rejects the big reveal of Maria's trans identity (Jay has had both boyfriends and girlfriends, and seems pretty unfazed when Maria tells him about her parents' rejection of her after she announced her desire to live as a girl at the age of twelve). She also rejects the secrecy that the Shop Around the Corner trope often demands: that even after one party discovers the real identity of their "pen pal," they must keep their own identity hidden from the one who has yet to learn the truth. For ultimately, what is keeping Jay and Maria apart is not the secrets they are keeping from one another, but the past traumas that have disrupted their relationships with their families of origin, traumas that have made both wary of trusting others with their most vulnerable selves.

Learning to trust is not about keeping secrets, and it's not about any big reveal, Milan's story suggests. Instead, it is about recognizing one's own blind spots (Jay coming to realize his own unthinking sexism; Maria recognizing her refusal to rock the boat so that she won't be rejected by those she loves). And above all, it's about the long series of small reveals, the everyday sharing of self with other, that builds a foundation of trust.


Photo credits:
The Crying Game: Deep Focus Reviews
Girly Girl t-shirt: Busy Bus
Shop Around the Corner: Film Forum

Courtney Milan

Hold Me

2016

Reflections on RWA Nationals

Quite a few romance writers and bloggers have already weighed in with their own insightful posts about last week's Romance Writers of America's annual national conference, with posts that range from the enthusiastic—Jenn Northington's "The 11 Best Things I Heard at the RWA"; All About Romance's day-by-day posts, the first one here—to the analytical—Suleikha Snyder's "RWA 2015: A Tale of Two Conferences"; Jessica Tripler's "Socioeconomic Class at RWA" to name just a few. Lots of food for thought, and for future action on many fronts.

I was wearing three different hats during this conference—a local Chapter Leader (as Treasurer of the NECRWA); a romance reviewer and blogger (RNFF); and a writer of a soon-to-be-self-published historical romance. This made for a rather disjointed conference at times, rushing from a workshop entitled "Not So Fast: Finding Success while writing in the Slow Lane" to a Chapter Leadership Networking Event, then on to "50 Shades of Love: Writing the Multicultural Romance"; from a retreat for not-yet-published writers to a General RWA Membership meeting to a workshop filled with advice about writing queer romance in a "post-gay" environment. Now that I've had a few days to reflect on the hectic experience of conferencing in the midst of the bizarreness of Times Square (did you know that its legal in NYC for women to go topless? and that people will pay to get their pictures taken with one who has painted her chest like an American flag??), these are the moments/events/ideas that are sticking with me:

• Learning about servants, music, fabric, interior decorating, and dancing with my fellow Regency romance writers at the Beau Monde mini-conference. I was really looking forward to getting dressed up in my newly made Regency ball gown and dance those Regency dances at the Beau Monde's evening soiree, and, despite my embarrassment at the fact that the majority of my fellow attendees were not in period garb when I waltzed into the Marriott Astor Ballroom that evening, I did manage to screw up my courage and trip the light fantastic for a few sets. Thanks so much to Susan De Guardiola (of Capering and Kickery) and her dance student ringers for stepping out with me and with my fellow Beau Monders.


• The continuing split in knowledge/understanding between those who have been traditionally published and those who self-publish. There are a lot of writers who are doing both, but for those who "grew up" publishing via one method and not the other, there can often be a big disconnect about what can and will lead to success in the other. Perhaps not surprisingly, the above-mentioned workshop on being successful while writing in the "slow lane" included panelists who had all been traditionally published (with only one who was a hybrid author), while the panelists on "The Midlist Guide to Making Six Figures in Indie Publishing" all spoke about working 50 (or 80, or 100)-hour workweeks to keep their readers interested and their businesses going. I didn't attend any workshops on hybrid publishing, though; perhaps the disconnects were less obvious among those who have followed both paths.


• But the national organization continues to adapt (if slowly) to the burgeoning shift in the romance market toward self-publishing. Self-published authors were once barred completely from the "PAN" (Published Authors Network) listserv and group; more recently, self-publishers were allowed in, but had to earn $5,000 on a single book title, in comparison to the $1,000 a traditionally published author had to earn, to qualify. But now, even that disparity has been erased; now, any author who has earned at least $1000 on a published book, whether published by a traditional house, a small publisher, or by him or herself, can join this elite subgroup within the national organization.

• Many bloggers have written about the high profile diversity in romance played at the conference. There was not just one, but four different panels on the whys and hows (and how-nots) to increase the diversity of romance characters, and the number of authors of color, in the field. Four authors of color (Alyssa Cole, Lena Hart, K. M. Jackson, and Falguni Kothari) put together a slick brochure, one that looked like a supplement to a Romance Times magazine, to distribute to attendees, which included "Do's, Don'ts, and Why nots!" as well as a good dollop of humor ("Celebrating the MOST used stock couple in any one genre!"), to jumpstart people's thinking about this important issue. What most bloggers have not mentioned is that the RWA Board announced at the General Member meeting that it had just approved the creation of an ad hoc committee on Diversity in the organization. No mandate or goals for said committee were mentioned, however. It will be fascinating to watch both activists on the individual and small group level, as well as this ad hoc committee on the national level, to see if their goals and end results converge or diverge over the next few years.


• The panelists in the workshop on "Writing Queer Romance" focused on our "post-gay cultural moment," arguing that in the wake of the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, and the more widespread acceptance of LGBTQ identities in wide swaths of American culture, romances featuring queer characters no longer have to be just about issues of coming out, or about problems of acceptance. How about a story about a lesbian couple, with one partner who wants to have a baby, but the other doesn't? Or have major philosophical or moral differences about adopting vs. giving birth? Even if the conflict is about being queer, it can be less about major homophobia, and more about the micro-aggressions LGBTQ people experience in their day-to-day lives.

After sitting in on this panel, and the one panel on diversity I was able to attend, it felt to me as if LGBTQ romance is farther along, acceptance-wise amongst readers and writers of romance, than is racially and ethnically diverse romance. Queer Romance panelists Sarah Frantz Lyons and Radclyffe both spoke about moving beyond the need to justify queer romance's mere existence, something that romance about and by people of color is having to work hard to do.


• The Chapter Leadership Networking Event on Saturday afternoon consisted primarily of a bunch of topic tables, the subjects of which reflected the current problems and issues facing local chapters today. "How to attract and keep members"; "How to get published authors involved"; "Chapter Finances"; "How to recruit chapter board members"; "Dealing with Difficult Personalities." Thanks to my fellow chapter officers for sharing complaints, and solutions, to the many difficulties chapters are currently facing, particularly in the wake of the recent changes in RWA bylaws.


• The most difficult panel I attended was also in many ways the most encouraging: "Writing Through Depression." Five well-known romance authors sat in the front of a hotel conference room and shared their experiences of what is often a shame-ridden, hidden illness. The panelists asked for no tweeting of particulars during the session, which means no blogging after the fact, either. But I did want to give a big "thank you" to both the panelists and to RWA for challenging the stigmatization around this important issue. Those of us who grapple with mental health issues really appreciate knowing that we are not alone.


Other RWA attendees, what did you take away from this year's conference? And for those who didn't attend, what are you curious to know about what did (and didn't) happen?

The Li.st Romance Panels: Is Romance Feminist?

Last week, eight romance authors, invited by the Li.st, gathered in a New York City work cooperative space to speak to an enthusiastic audience about romance, feminism, and sex. I was thrilled to be a part of the audience, and planned to write up a report for RNFF readers on the evening. Of course, now that I'm back home, unpacking after the RWA annual conference, which took place in the days following the Li.st panel, I can't for the life of me find the extensive notes I took as the authors talked and debated. Insert your favorite curse words here...

Luckily for me, fellow romance scholar Jayashree Kamble live-tweeted during the panels, and put her tweets together on Storify; you can find her tweets here.

"Feminism and Romance" panel: Alisha Rai, Sarah MacLean
Maya Rodale, and Carla Neggers. Photo from Alisha Rai's tweet

There are a few things that I'd like to add to Jayashree's thoughts. Maya Rodale, moderator of the first panel, "Romance Novels as a Feminist Trope Throughout the Centuries," opened the discussion by asking her fellow panelists "Are romance novels feminist?" Kamble suggests in her tweet that the response was "hell, yes" (or perhaps that was Kamble's answer?), but panelists' actual comments were more nuanced. There was a bit of silence at first, that funny pause that sometimes happens at the start of a panel talk when no one is quite sure who is meant to speak first, and Rodale interjected a few more questions "Are romances bad?" "Romances are written by women for women, about women, no?" MacLean and Rai then jumped in to note the difficulty of answering any of these questions with a simple "yes" or "no," especially given the breadth of the romance field at present. Carla Neggers, who has been publishing longer than any of the other panelists, added historical context, talking about many of the limits placed on romance authors when she was just beginning her career, and how many of those limits are no longer in place.

"How has the romance genre evolved over the past few decades?" was the next topic Rodale asked panelists to consider. The greater diversity of the genre, particularly in regards to the inclusion of romances featuring LGBTQ protagonists and protagonists of color. Rai had perhaps the best line of the night, though, when she noted that diversity still has a looooong way to go in the largely still-white world of romanceland: "We say evolution, but evolution is too slow. We need revolution." #weneeddiverseromance, indeed.

Sarah MacLean, who is white, did not disagree, but framed the issue somewhat differently, suggesting that the genre is on the edge of a huge shift, moving inexorably towards a more inclusive stance. Other panelists noted that diversity took hold first in the ranks of the self-published, and is only gradually (if at all) effecting the look of the pub lists of the big 5 romance publishers. It would be a cool research project, my academic self thinks, comparing the numbers of POC and LGBTQ characters in books by those publishers over the past 5, or perhaps 10, years...

Readers' often judgmental stance towards romance heroines formed another topic of discussion, but soon segued into thoughts about the prevalence of the billionaire hero in contemporary romance published in the past few years. MacLean put forth a theory that I've heard in other venues: that romance is a fantasy, and today, given the tough economic times and the dual role of worker and homemaker that the majority of American women have to play today, the fantasy of being swept away by a man who has so much money that you'll never need to worry about paying the bills again is vastly appealing.  Rodale concurred, focusing on the alpha male in billionaire romance not only being able to meet the heroine/reader's economic needs/worries, but also being able to address her other desires (sexual, emotional), desires that in everyday life often have to be pushed to the side. I get this argument, but I'm wondering why books in which the women are billionaires themselves, and fall in love with appreciative guys, aren't nearly as popular? Is there some gendered sense that a rich woman will be exploited? That a rich woman is somehow bad? That she must have had to do something not quite feminine in order to achieve wealth? That being a billionaire is hard work, but loving one is not? I'd love to hear readers' thoughts about this...

The question of happy endings—does romance require them, or can the genre take them or leave them?—concluded the first panel. Most audience members seemed to be in the former camp, despite Rodale's citing of many romance-writing and -reading friends who are happy to live without the HEA, or even the HFN. I wondered if there is anything inherently feminist, or anti-feminist, about the restrictiveness, of the HEA—what do you think?

"Erotic Writing and the Role of Women" panel. Photo from Alyssa Cole's tweet

The second panel, "Erotic Writing and the Role of the Woman," featured an entire panel of romance writers of color, a rarity at RWA or other meetings, unless the workshop/panel topic is about diversity (more about this in Friday's post). Feminista Jones, a sex-positive social worker, activist, blogger, and now BDSM romance novelist, moderated the discussion with fellow erotic romance writers Suleikha Snyder, Rebekkah Weatherspoon, and Jordan Silver.

I thought it was fascinating that all of the writers except for Jones began their writing careers penning fan fiction, then discovering through traditional or, more often, through self-publishing, that what they were giving away for free could be earning them money. Does the slash tradition of fan fiction make writers more comfortable with erotic romance publishing? Does the independence of fan fiction (no editors, no publishing houses) lead fan fiction writers more easily to self-publishing?

This panel, like the earlier one, talked about the changes in the romance genre over the past 20 years. The rise of self-publishing; the shift from heroines with no sexual agency to heroines whose sexual desires are affirmed; the rise of queer romance, and sex-positive romance—just a few of the changes the panelists noted.

A fascinating exchange occurred between Jordan Silver, who declared that she wasn't a feminist, that she liked alpha males and wanted to be taken care of, and Feminista Jones, who spoke about the often fraught relationship between black women and feminism (many black women feeling that feminism is a white girl thing, without any real relevance to their lives). Jones argued for a broader understanding of feminism and its focus on equality for women, no matter their race or ethnicity. The discussion highlighted a point made earlier in the evening, that there is no one black voice, no one black identity; the three women of African descent on the panel were all coming from different backgrounds and different cultures, and one's experience did not mirror that of the others'. Only when we have enough books with people of color will we be able to move beyond the assumption of a monolithic black identity.

Jones also spoke about the feminism she tried to portray in her BDSM romance, Push The Button, which she wrote partly in reaction against the misconceptions about the BDSM lifestyle she saw in the popular 50 Shades of Gray novels. A member of the BDSM community herself, Jones wrote Push to present the everyday life aspects of a s/D relationship. When I read Push, I didn't find it that feminist, to be honest. After hearing Jones speak, though, it's clear that she herself has a strong grounding in feminist ideas, and I'm curious to know more about how she sees those ideas playing out in her novel. I've emailed her to see if she might like to guest post here at RNFF; will keep you posted...

The panelists also discussed the difficulties in finding homes for their work with traditional publishers, in large part because of the paucity of agents and editors of color in the industry. I've seen far more younger editors in the business than there were when I worked in publishing (in the late 80s and the 90s), but until people of color hold positions of power within what are often very hierarchical publishing houses, the lack of real investment in the stories of writers of color is all too likely to continue.

Two other great comments from this portion of the evening: Feminista Jones took major issue with the idea that black women are not deserving of love; her goal in writing romance, she says, is to "show black women being adored." Suleikha Snyder mentioned that in one of her Bollywood novels, she had great fun writing one white character in her otherwise all Indian cast, ironically turning the tables on all of the token (insert minority identity here) portrayals found in the majority of American-published romance.

During the Q & A period, two questions white readers often ask of authors of color came to the fore: how do I find more books by writers of color, and how do I, as a white writer, include characters of color in my work without stereotyping/being offensive? The panel turned the first question back on the audience—rather than giving them places to find POC romance, the panelists challenged audience members to help create a publishing and consumer environment in which such romances will not be hard to find. Buy books by writers of color; use social media to promote writers of color; tell publishers that you want romances by writers of color. Don't let publishers off the hook by letting them continue to say that such romances do not sell.

The panelists were gracious in offering advice in response to the second question. Ask questions with thoughtfulness and respect, do research, run your stories by beta readers of color, even just make friends with people from cultures and ethnicities to which you yourself do not belong. What they did not say, but what I would like to add, is that it is not the responsibility of writers of color to make us white writers feel safe when writing about people outside our own cultures. We have to take a risk, be willing to make mistakes, be willing to be called out on them, learn from them, and keep going.

Just as writers of color have been doing all along.

More on Friday about the RWA National conference, and topics of interest there to feminist romance readers.