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?

The slightly less white, not-quite-so-heteronormative world of the RITA awards

Earlier this week, Romance Writers of America® (RWA) announced their annual list of finalists for the RITA Award, which the organization bestows in recognition of excellence in published romance writing. In 2018, as in 2017, the award will be given in twelve different sub-genre categories, as well as an award for best first book.

Last year, after the 2017 RITA list (for books published in 2016) was announced, I wrote about the predominance of white authors amongst the finalists, as well as the predominance of white and heterosexual protagonists in their books. Out of the 85 distinct finalists (several books were up for best first book and best book in another sub-genre), four featured protagonists of color (with 3 of the 4 featuring a protagonist of color falling for a white partner); 4 books featured same-sex protagonists; 4-6 were written by authors of color.

This year, for the first time, the RITA contest was not restricted to authors with print books; in fact, no print books were allowed to be submitted. Instead, authors and/or publishers were required to submit pdf copies of books for judges to read and score.

Did this shift change the demographics of the winner pool? It did as far as the independent publisher/traditional publisher divide, with a whopping 22 self-published authors as named finalists, far more than had ever finalled before. Almost every sub-genre category (except for Young Adult and Long Historical) included at least one self-published title.

But did the shift change the demographics of the winner pool in terms of race and sexual orientation of the authors? Or their books' protagonists?

Given the report from The Ripped Bodice on "The State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing" released earlier this year, which found that fewer romances by authors of color had been published by leading romance publishers in 2017 than in 2016 (6.2% in 2017, down from 7.8% in 2016), I was guessing the answer would be "no." But the answer turned out to be a small but noticeable "yes."


Of course, many books, and most author bios, don't explicitly state a protagonist or author's race. So my calculations below are based on the following:

• In cases where I've read the book, I knew the race of the protagonists, either by being told directly in the narrative, or from context clues in the book

• In cases where I had not read the book, I examined book covers, book descriptions, Goodreads book reviews, and character names for hints about protagonists' racial or ethnic backgrounds, and made my best guess. Major room for error here, so if you see any mistakes below, please let me know!

• Similarly, for authors with whom I was familiar, and/or who had discussed their own racial backgrounds in public, I went with self-represented racial identities. I had to rely on author photographs and guess for the rest. Again, room for error (and correction) here.

Overall Statistics:

# of finalists
    2017: 78
    2016: 85

# of authors of color
    2017: 5-6
    2016: 4-6

% of authors of color
    2017: 6-7.7%
    2016: 4-7%

# of protagonists of color
    2017: 13*                                                     
    2016:   5

% of protagonists of color
    2017: 8.3%*                                             
    2016: 2.9%

# of queer protagonists
    2017: 12     
    2016:  8

% of queer protagonists
    2017: 7.6%                                               
    2016: 4%

Individual Sub-Genre Numbers:

Contemporary Romance Long
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 2 (or 3?)
# of protagonists of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 0

Contemporary Romance: Mid-Length
# of finalists: 9
# of authors of color: 1
# of protagonists of color: 2
# of queer protagonists: 2

Contemporary Romance: Short
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1? (he's a sheikh)
# of queer protagonists: 0

Erotic Romance:
# of finalists: 5
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 0

Historical Romance: Long
# of finalists: 5
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Historical Romance: Short
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 3 (1 is from Spain)
# of queer protagonists: 0

Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance:
# of finalists: 4
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 2

Paranormal Romance:
# of finalists: 8
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1? (several are fantasy worlds, so I couldn't really tell just by looking at the blurbs)
# of queer protagonists: 4

Romance Novella:
# of finalists: 8
# of authors of color: 1
# of protagonists of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 2

Romance with Religious/Spiritual Elements:
# of finalists: 5
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Romantic Suspense:
# of finalists: 9
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 1*
# of queer protagonists: 2

Young Adult Romance:
# of finalists: 4
# of authors of color: 1
# of protagonists of color: 1?
# of queer protagonists: 0



I'd be interested to see how the demographics of the RWA membership, and in particular, the demographics of the judges, compares to the demographics of the U.S. as a whole, and how those demographics compare to the percentages in the finalists selected by judges. Last year, RWA stated that it was going to poll its membership about demographic issues, but to date I don't believe any such information has been made public. I hope that it will, and soon.

Because this year's RITA finalist figures suggest that in terms of sexuality, the awards are quite representative of gay male experience, an improvement to celebrate. But though they are less racially imbalanced than last year's, they are still not at all close to reflecting the demographics of the country as a whole. And they do not represent female queer experience at all.

U.S. LGBT population: 3.8%

RITA Finalists with queer male characters: 7.6%

U.S. Census Data on race/ethnicity (2016)

White: 61.3%
POC:  40.9%

RITA Finalists by race/ethnicity:

White: 92.3%
POC:     7.7%



* Update 3/27/18: Author HelenKay Dimon wrote to let me know that the protagonist of The Fixer is biracial (white/Japanese parents). I've updated the overall figures, and changed the numbers in the Romantic Suspense category, accordingly.

Liz Jacobs' ABROAD: Book 1

Any reader of contemporary American gay and male/male romance will soon understand that acceptance of queerness varies markedly across the United States. Some areas of the country, and some subcultures within other sections of the country, openly champion gay rights. Romances with settings in the first group may occasionally depict their characters on the receiving end of negative words or actions against their queer identities or actions, but such narratives more often suggest that such words or actions are aberrations from the norm, rather than the norm itself. Romances set in the second group, though, still feature characters who struggle with social, cultural, and/or religious beliefs that insist that their sexual identities exist only beyond the pale. But even characters in romances set in the second group eventually meet with one, or many, who espouse more positive views towards queer identity. If you are growing up in 21st century America, positive models of queer identity are no longer as difficult to find as they were fifty years ago.

But what if you are from a different country? A country in which queerness is not acceptable in any segment of its cultures? Can a man who grew up in a society in which his identity is accepted ever be able to understand one who was raised in a country where queerness is outside the realm of accepted reality?

The logo of RUSA LGBT, a "network
for Russian-speaking LGBTQ
individuals, their friends, supporters,
and loved ones" which was formed in
2008

In Liz Jacobs' debut romance, Abroad (split into two separate books), readers meet twenty-year-old Nick (Nikolay) Melnikov on an airplane, en route from Michigan to London to study for a year abroad. Nick's family immigrated to the States from Russia when he was ten, and although he and his older sister have picked up American language and culture, their mother still holds tight to her Russian identity. Including a Russian antipathy to queerness. Nick had a girlfriend through late high school and early college, but he broke up with her before leaving for London, not liking the way being with Lena "had suffocated him, like a yoke pulled too tight" (Book 1, page 9). He'd loved her, but he'd never been sexually attracted to her, nor to any of the other girls in the States who had crushed on him.

At least, not like he is drawn to Dex, a fellow uni student he meets at a party for study abroad scholars soon after he arrives in London.  Dex may be a native Brit (born and raised in Birmingham, thank you very much, despite having a Nigerian mother and a English black father), not a fellow International student, but no matter; Nick is far too shy, far too anxious, and too far into denial about his own sexual desires to make any overtures to the grumpy but smart science nerd.

But Dex's best friend, Isabel, takes a shine to Nick, and gradually draws him into their mutual circle of friends, many of who embrace queer identities. Claiming such an identity is not easy for Nick, even as it becomes increasingly clear that Dex is as attracted to Nick as Nick is to him. As Nick explains during a conversation with Izzy, after she assumes (correctly, although deeply embarrassingly to Nick) that Nick is gay:

"I can't. Not with my family."
     "Would they be very angry?"
     "I don't know how to explain. It's never been an option. Not how I grew up."
     "Why?"
     "It's how they grew up, too. Back there, it was not talked about. If it was, it wasn't good." How to truly describe the insular circle of friends his parents had surrounded themselves with? Jewish intelligentsia who feared much and talked largely of high art, or science, and only sometimes politics—in hushed voices and in vetted company. Their kitchen table was always crowded with makeshift dinners and discussions of how cultural standards had fallen along with the government and taken intellectual thought with them. Queerness would never even enter into such conversation. Once, Nick remembered someone mentioning a particularly flamboyant pop star. Mom had wrinkled her nose. Distasteful. In her reality, being gay was like being a wizard. Outside her realm. (262)


Being Black in a predominantly white country, Dex can understand what it feels like to experience oppression due to his identity. Yet he still has a hard time understand how anyone, even a shy guy like Nick, can keep something so central about himself hidden for so long.

Nick's anxiety about his sexual desires, already pretty high, ratchets up to an entirely appalling level after he and Dex share a kiss:  "Nick felt himself splintering in two, a painful tearing of past and future. Before he knew and after. The truth of it laid bare and nestled inside him. He knew, now. He knew" (285).

Both Dex and Nick need some time apart before they can have an honest, and painful, conversation about why it is so difficult for Nick to accept his own sexuality, or to tell his family about it:

Queer activists, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2008

     "You told me once that you felt like you passed. Being Jewish, that is, that you didn't look it. Has being gay been like that?"
     Nick genuinely flinched. "It's been worse."
     Dex felt a dark shiver down his spine. "Why?"
     Nick took a long pull of his beer, which drew shadows across his throat. "Because I'm not supposed to exist."
     "Nick—"
     "No, really." Nick pushed on, and Dex forced himself to shut up. Nick was talking. Nick was talking. "I've never known another Russian gay person. I'm sure they exist, I mean, duh, of course they do. I know that. Now. But when I was a kid, I had never met one. I didn't know anyone. I didn't know any gay people."
     Dex was frozen.
     "I don't—I was alone. My parents never talked about anything like that, not ever. At least, not when I was a kid. And they they talked about it like it was something Americans did. Some Western thing. Not necessarily awful, just not for us. Not ours. So I couldn't be... that. I couldn't. I could be Jewish, I could be an immigrant, but I couldn't be gay." (321)


I really admired the way Jacobs shows how oppression manifests differently in different settings and cultures, as well as how difficult it can be to truly get someone else's experience of oppression even when you've experienced oppression yourself firsthand. She's also fabulous at capturing the cadence of young adult speech—the stops and starts, the repetitions, the meandering diversions and the conversational dead-ends—patterns of communicating that make it so very difficult to articulate, never mind to share, your most painful experiences and fears, even with your closest friends and lovers. Bonus points for a secondary storyline about Dex and Nick's friend Izzy, who is thrown for a loop after she discovers she's not as straight as she once thought she was, a discovery that unexpectedly leads to an estrangement between Izzy and her former best friend, lesbian Natali.

Can Dex and Nick actually pull off a romantic relationship, with Nick still keeping his sexuality a secret from his mother? And with his VISA expiring in only a few months? Will Natali's crush on Izzy lead to a shift in their relationship? Or will Izzy explore her newly discovered bisexuality in another way? I'm off to read Abroad: Book 2, eager to spend more time with these nuanced, sympathetically drawn characters.


Photo credits:
Rainbow Russian doll: RUSA LGBT
Russian queer activists: ABC

Liz Jacobs

Abroad: Book One

Brain Mill Press, 2017

The Love Stories of Gina Prince-Bythewood: LOVE AND BASKETBALL and BEYOND THE LIGHTS

I have the privilege of living within walking distance of one of the oldest art house theaters in the country, Harvard Square's Brattle Theater. I don't take advantage of this local treasure nearly as often as I could, but when the Brattle announced a partnership with the Roxbury International Film Festival and The Color of Film to screen a series called "In Our View," featuring films directed by African American women, you bet I put the dates down in my calendar. One date especially: this past Saturday, when the repertoire series focused on love stories.

During the first snowfall of the season, I walked into Harvard Square in my mittens and gloves and sat down in the quiet theater for an amazing double feature, the first and the most recent films by director Gina Prince-Bythewood: Love and Basketball (2000) and Beyond the Lights (2014). As an article about the series on Vanyaland points out, only 12.5% of film directors who released a feature film during 2013 and 2014 were people of color; just 1.6% were women of color. So it's pretty rare to get the chance to view two such films, back to back, and to get to marvel at the talent, beauty, and skill of some pretty amazing black women on display, not on tiny television but up on a large screen.

Even more of a treat was the feminism that played front and center right alongside of actresses Sanaa Lathan (Love & Basketball) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Lights), a feminism that played out not just in the romantic relationships at the heart of each film, but also in the larger family and social dynamics in which these two young women live.

Love and Basketball traces the "four quarters" of Monica Wright's relationship with Quincy "Q" McCall, from the day in 1981 when Monica's family moves into a well-heeled LA neighborhood next door to the McCall family to the days in 1993, right before the adult Quincy is set to marry another woman. Q's first sight of eleven-year-old Monica is as an androgynous kid who asks to join the basketball game, a game of which Q is the obvious leader. When Monica doffs her cap after Q says "yes," he and his two friends can't believe the long-haired girl who is revealed has the least chance of hanging with them on the court. Especially not Quincy, whose father is a professional basketball player and who is determined to follow in that father's footsteps. "I'm gonna be the first girl in the NBA," Monica declares; "I'm gonna be in the NBA, you're gonna be my cheerleader," Quincy counters. But Monica proves more than able to hold her own, frustrating Quincy to such a degree that he finally shoves her off the court, scraping her face roughly on the grass. Monica's mother and sister fuss about the injured Monica in the bathroom in their new home, not able to understand why she can't just act like a girl. But when they finally leave her to herself, Monica breaks into a smile. She's a ball player, and now has the scars to prove it.

The two neighboring families arrange for Quincy to take Monica to school (love those banana bicycle seats!), during which cocky Quincy asks Monica if she wants to be his girl. She agrees, they seal the deal with a kiss (5 seconds long, which Quincy counts off on his fingers), but when he insists that she has to ride behind him on his bike, their short-lived pre-teen romance descends into a punching, rolling wrestling match.

icing each other's injuries

Through the rest of middle and high school, Monica and Quincy focus on playing basketball, warily eyeing each other from across the small patch of grass that separates his bedroom window from hers. Prince-Bythewood highlights the differential treatment families and the culture at large gives to female vs. male athletes: Monica is labeled as having a "bad attitude" on the court because of her drive, and gets penalized by the refs for showing her emotions or acting the least bit aggressive on the court. The same actions make Quincy into a big man on campus. Quincy also has the girls buzzing around him like bees, while Monica never dates. Quincy's mom warns him against being taken in by a grasping girl, while Monica's bemoans her youngest daughter's tomboy ways. Would it really be that hard for her to stop slouching around in sweats and spend more time styling her hair?

But the ballplayer in each of them can't but respect the skill and determination of the other, and by the time their college plans are finalized (Quincy gets to announce at a press conference which of many schools that have been recruiting him he will choose; Monica waits and waits for a single letter offering her a place at a school with a women's basketball program), the two finally find their way romantically to the other.

Life in college isn't as easy as either of them had imagined, though, especially when Quincy's beloved father proves to have feet of the stickiest of clays, and Monica chooses to put her own ballplaying above Quincy's needs. Quincy's punitive reaction might have led to a "oh, you should have made a different choice, girl" kind of message, but instead, Prince-Bythewood takes the opposite stance. And at the film's end, guess who is playing professional ball, and who is holding the baby and cheering on at the sidelines?


via GIPHY

Beyond the Lights ends with a similar scene: British pop star Noni Jean singing her solo heart out on a stadium stage, with new love Kaz standing in the wings, cheering her on. But Noni's journey to that triumphant moment is more emotionally fraught than was Monica's. The daughter of a black father who abandoned her white mother, Nona has been the means through which Macy Jean has tried to prove that she's not the nothing everyone said she was when she had a black child out of wedlock. Acting as her manager as well as her mom, Macy and Noni's record label have propelled the sweet-singing Noni into a sexualized pop sensation, pairing her in duets with a white working class British rapper (Kid Culprit) to worldwide acclaim. But on the very night she and Kid Culprit win a major award, she sits on the edge of her hotel balcony, daring herself to jump off.

Her mother's frightened scream brings the LA police officer guarding her door rushing in. Soft-spoken Kaz Nicol (Nate Parker) talks Noni off the ledge with the words "I see you," something Noni is not at all sure anyone else can or does. But when Noni's handlers convince him to attend a press conference during which Noni describes the incident (caught on film by paparazzi) as an "accident," Kaz is disgusted by the lies. Kaz, like Noni, has been groomed from a young age, but for a far different role: major in political science, serve as a police officer, then segue into a political career. Kaz's police officer father warns him against getting involved with the volatile pop star, but the vulnerability and sadness that he saw behind the sex and chains and purple hair keeps drawing Kaz back.

Noni's record label, though, would far prefer that she continue her "fake/real" relationship with Kid Culprit than date a cop. Noni's attempt to go her own way leads to pretty disastrous on-stage consequences; though Kid says he's not hurt by Noni's push for independence, it's obvious that he's come to rely on the way that pop culture uses the symbolic (and often actual) subjugation of female black bodies to make working class white males feel empowered. And he punishes her for it, in the ugliest of manners.

In the aftermath of this debacle, Kaz "kidnaps" Noni away from all her handlers, and the two drive to Mexico with Kaz's dog. There, they rest, have sex, tour the local markets, and basically give themselves the freedom to act like two people falling in love. Two of the most poignant scenes occur during this "happy idyll": Noni cuts out the hair weaves that hide her naturally curly hair, as if she is cutting the chain-bedecked, sexually provocative black girl trying to evoke the look of a white girl strand by strand. And at a Karaoke bar, Noni sings an a capella version of Nina Simone's heartbreaking "Blackbird," a song we earlier saw the young Noni sing during her first talent show as a child.

But when Noni's impromptu song is caught on video and goes viral, will Noni be sucked right back into the maelstrom of pop stardom, a maelstrom that leaves no room for anyone, not even Noni herself, to be seen for who she really is? Or who she wants to be? Is Noni destined to live out Simone's anthem: "So why you wanna fly, blackbird / You ain't never gonna fly"?

I couldn't help but think of the definition of feminist romance that Aya de Leon, my fellow presenter at this past October's Boston Bookfair, created: "A feminist romance is one in which the male romantic lead decides to step away from the male privilege granted him by patriarchy and get behind the goals and beliefs of the woman he loves." I can't think of two other films which embody this principle more clearly than Love and Basketball and Beyond the Lights.

Love and Basketball Trailer:

Beyond the Lights trailer:

Photo credits:
Love and Basketball
Kissing: YouTube
Icing: Twitter
WNBA: Giphy



Beyond the Lights
press conference: LA Times
Noni and Kid Culprit: Collider.com
Concert: Huffington Post

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.

RWA's President's Thoughts on Race and the RITA award finalists

I received the following email from Leslie Kelly, President of Romance Writers of America, in response to my blog post last week about the lack of diversity in the RITA award finalists. Her email said that I might share her response, as long as I shared it in its entirety. I am posting it below, along with my response to President Kelly.

Dear Jackie:

Thank you so much for writing. I read your blog post, and you raise some interesting points.

Diversity has been a huge focus for the RWA board for the past three years. We’ve been working steadily to improve our diversity efforts, both within our membership, and in the marketplace.

I don’t know if you are aware of this, but just within the past few years, RWA has:

·         Established a standing Diversity Committee

·         Released a public apology for a hurtful survey conducted more than a decade ago

·         Filled two open Board positions—by presidential appointment and with board approval—with traditionally underrepresented members

·         Established a Diversity Incident or Complaint form online

·         Established a Spectrum Grant that will fully fund the RWA 2017 conference for diverse authors. This year, three authors were selected from the dozens of applicants.

·         Scheduled a Diversity Summit at RWA2017 with authors and industry professionals to address issues of inclusivity in the industry

·         Written and will soon distribute a thorough survey to go to our members, addressing issues of ethnicity and sexuality

Since you are an officer of an RWA chapter, I’m sure you know there are no RITA “nominees” there are only “finalists.” Having nominees would mean RWA chose books through a nomination process, when, in truth, authors enter their books in the contest. The number of books entered definitely doesn’t equal the number of books published in a year.

As for your statistical comparison, I don’t think it’s particularly illustrative. Just because the racial breakdown of the entire population is xyz does not mean that same percentages would correlate to romance novels. I wish it did, since that would mean the industry was more inclusive of authors of all races, creeds and sexuality. It’s not there yet…but we’re working on it.

That’s why RWA is doing things like standing up for our authors of color when editors from major publishers make discriminatory statements at our conference. It’s why we apologize when we’ve made a mistake, why we founded the scholarship, why we formed the committee, why we provided a safe way for members to report issues or incidents, why we scheduled the survey, and why we’re hosting the summit.

The idea of surveying our members on the races/sexual orientations of the characters they write is interesting but at this time, we are more focused on the details of our members themselves. Knowing who we are serving is the first step in making sure everyone is represented and we’re doing the very best we can for all romance authors. Please be on the lookout for the survey, coming in the next month or so, and please encourage your chapter mates to respond.

While I’m writing, I must add, there is strict policy against self-promotion on any RWA-sponsored loop. Sharing a link to a personal blog—even one regarding a post that might interest other RWA members—could be seen as violating policy. We’d appreciate it if you keep that in mind when starting future threads.

Thanks again for writing.

Sincerely—

Leslie Kelly

RWA President

Note: If you wish to share this email, that’s fine, but please do it in its entirety. Thanks!

Dear Leslie:

Thank you for reading my blog post about race and the RITA finalists, and for writing back to me with your thoughts. My apologies for posting a blog link on the loop; since the blog was not promoting my books in any way, I thought it would not be a problem. In future, I will remember that no blog links are allowed on RWA loops.

And my apologies for using the term "nominee" rather than "finalist" in my post. I see how this usage might suggest (incorrectly) that the racial imbalance in the RITA finalists was deliberate on the part of RWA as an organization, rather than a result of the membership selecting finalists. I will edit my post and make a note of the error on my part.

Thank you for sharing the list of RWA's recent efforts to promote diversity in our organization. I was aware of most of these efforts, and applaud the Board's work in this regard. 

The only initiative I wasn't aware of was the upcoming survey on RWA members' ethnicity and sexuality. I am looking forward to completing it, and will encourage NECRWA's members to complete it as well. I hope RWA will share the results with the entire membership.

The statistical comparison that I offered in my blog post was not intended to suggest that RWA itself is biased, but to point to the larger issue of the industry as a whole not being inclusive. The suggestion with which I end the post—that the romance community is behind the children's literature community in collecting data about the racial and ethnic identities of its authors—is where I hoped to make a positive suggestion for a way to move forward, and for RWA to lead the way in such efforts.

A survey of the membership is a good first step. But a survey is a one-time event, and the issue of diversity is an ongoing concern. Has the Board considered including a question about race/ethnicity on its membership form, and on its submission form for the RITA awards? Such changes would be a concrete step toward collecting "illustrative" data, data that would provide solid facts to back up RWA's efforts toward diversity. And it would also allow RWA to track changes over time, to see if its many efforts toward fostering diversity in its membership are actually bearing fruit.

It would also be relatively easy to include a question on the RITA submission form, asking about the race/ethnicity of a submitted book's characters.

Thank you again for responding with thought and care to my post. I appreciate this opportunity to engage with you and with the Board about RWA's ongoing efforts to foster diversity in our organization.

Sincerely,

Jackie Horne

Note: I will be posting your response, and mine to it, on my Romance Novels for Feminists blog. Thanks!

The white, heteronormative world of romance awards

Earlier this week, Romance Writers of America (RWA) announced their annual list of finalists for the RITA Award, which recognizes excellence in published romance writing. In 2017, the award is to be given in twelve different sub-genres, as well as an award for best first book. Out of curiosity, I checked out the Goodreads listing for each book, to see if I could tell from the book covers and descriptions how many finalists* featured protagonists of color. While book descriptions rarely specified the race or ethnicity of characters within, white characters were the norm on the covers of this year's RITA finalists. Out of the 85 distinct finalists, only 4 feature protagonists of color, with 3 of the 4 featuring POC falling for a white lover. An equally low number of books were written by authors of color: 4 (or perhaps 5 or 6; I was unsure of the race of several authors).

4 books depicted same-sex romances. 3 of those books featured white gay male characters, the fourth a lesbian couple, one white, one Indian-American.


85 Finalists
85 x 2 protagonists per book = 170 protagonists
5 protagonists of color = 2.9%

85 Finalists
4 (or perhaps 6) authors of color =  4% (or perhaps 7%)

85 Finalists
85 x 2 protagonists per book = 170 protagonists
8 non-heterosexual protagonists = 4%


US Census 2014 

White                                                                 77.5%
     Non-Hispanic White                                    62.2%
     (Hispanic White)                                          15.3%
African-American                                             13.2%
Indian and Alaska Native                                   1.2%
Asian                                                                   5.4%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander      0.2%
Two or More Races                                            2.5%



Williams Institute Demographic Study on Sexual Orientation

Americans identifying as lesbian or gay:         1.7%
Americans identifying as bisexual:                  1.8%
Americans identifying as transsexual:              0.3%



What's wrong with this picture? And what is RWA going to do about it?

The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been tracking the number of children's books written and/or illustrated by African Americans since 1985, and since 1994, similar numbers for other ethnic and racial groups. Isn't it about time someone (RWA?) starts to do the same for romance?


* I used the term "nominees" here in my original post, which is incorrect; the RWA does not nominate books for the RITA award.

The Lack of Diversity in Historical Romance

In case you haven't heard about it yet, there's a thought-provoking opinion piece over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about the dearth of people of color (POC) in historical romance. "The Diversity Thorn: Ethnic Identity, History, and Historical Romance," by new-to-romance reader and gender scholar Asha Ganesan, opens with a bold claim:

Historical Romance (HR) has a major diversity and accuracy problem. The problem stems from assumptions that have been passed down through the lineage of HR (though these assumptions are not exclusive to this genre). The assumption is that branding a story "historical romance" includes some representation of "historical accuracy." It does not.

Ganesan goes on to argue that since HR is often as much, if not more, fantasy than realism, authors cannot use the defense of "I'm being historically accurate" to justify not writing characters of color into their historical works:

If we are capable of suspending reality when it comes to our handsome rake alpha not being even slightly physically affected by his debauchery and we are willing to overlook the deus ex machina in many of our favourite books (twin-swapping? Windfall? He wasn't a commoner after all?), is it really too much to ask to make one of the MC's lover an African woman? To make his wife Asian? To have a character be a cunning Indian businessman—villain or hero?

I appreciate Ganesan's goal—to push writers to write, and publishers to publish, more HR featuring characters of color. But I think we have to go a little further than just pointing out the logical fallacy that lies behind most traditionally-published (and a lot of independently-published) HR if we want the ethnic and racial landscape of HR to change.

My thoughts here take a few twists and turns. To start, I'm going to go counterintuitive: by arguing that Ganesan's claim that all historical romance features no historical accuracy is not accurate. Some HRs use their historical settings as little more than backdrops, yes, an excuse to feature pretty ballgowns, lavish jewels, and beautiful estates. Others, though, are deeply invested in what it was like to live in a particular historical moment, how daily life at a particular place and at a specific year or period in history influenced how the people alive then thought, felt, and especially fell in love. Some HRs are almost pure fantasy, while others balance on the line between historical romance and historical fiction.

Do you think that readers tend to prefer books on one or the other end of this fantasy/accuracy spectrum? I know I do, and many readers I know do, too. I don't know this empirically, but it's my hunch that readers who prefer the "wallpaper" HRs, the books that use the past as a pretty set piece rather than as opportunity to explore human difference as well as similarity, are also the ones who prefer their romances to feature only aristocratic protagonists. And that readers who prefer the other end of the spectrum enjoy romances with characters from all different social class positions.

In large part, the fantasy of aristocratic HR is a fantasy of escaping our social class: I may live a middle or working-class life, but when I read HR with dukes and duchesses, viscounts and viscountesses, I can fantasize that I live a life of wealth and ease. Crossing class lines (earls marrying governesses, or, even far less likely, dukes wedding serving girls) is an especially potent fantasy, one that's been a part of Western culture for as long as we've been telling versions of the Cinderella story. Such romances diffuses class tensions by allowing the economically underprivileged to fantasize about joining the ranks of the privileged, if only for the short while the book we are reading lasts.

But there's a second, usually unremarked-upon fantasy that the aristocratic wallpaper HR also allows: a fantasy of living in an all white world. Because the English nobility was almost exclusively white during the periods in which HRs are most popular. By asking for story after story of dukes and marquesses and earls and their ilk, readers not only get stories of rich, powerful men, but they can also get books with all-white characters, all without having to specifically ask for this.

Readers who want to "escape" by reading HR, then, might not just wish to escape the hardships of their own working lives (a class escape). They might also harbor a wish to escape the increasingly difficult-to-ignore fact that American, and much European, life now is inescapably not all white (a race escape).

Such readers may be unconscious of this desire. Or they may not wish to express it openly, for fear of being labeled racist. But the aristocratic HR, by its very nature, caters to such a desire, whether it wishes to or not.

How much does that fantasy of an all-white world, a world without racial strife, appeal to you, consciously or unconsciously, when you read or write historical romance? I'm asking myself this question today, and urging other white readers and writers to do the same.


Illustration credits:
Two Regency white ballgowns: The Miniature Historian
Contemporary white ballgowns: This is Glamorous

GETTING INSIDE the controversies: An Interview with Serena Bell

Contemporary romance author Serena Bell is ringing in the new year by launching Getting Inside, the first book in her Seattle Grizzles series of football sports romances. The book features a heroine with the most stereotypically gendered male of jobs: she's a professional football coach (linebacker coach). RNFF talked with Bell about this untraditional choice of profession for her heroine, and other controversial aspects of her unusual sports romance.

SB: First of all I wanted to say, Jackie, thank you so much for doing this interview. I love this blog and the way you tackle identity issues head-on and fearlessly, and I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about Getting Inside's release here.

RNFF: Thanks to you, Serena, for agreeing to be interviewed, and for talking about the controversial aspects of this book. First, I'm curious to know, where did you get the idea to have a female professional football coach as a protagonist?

Dr. Jen Welter, coaching intern for the Arizona Cardinals

SB: When I first started working on this series, the NFL hadn't yet hired its first female coach, Kathryn Smith (hired by the Buffalo Bills in January 2016), but it had hired its first female coaching intern, Dr. Jen Welter. I found myself fascinated by her, and I wanted to bring some of both her triumphs and her struggles to life on the page.


RNFF: How did you balance the need to portray the difficulties faced by women entering a predominantly male profession with the need to write a hopeful story (a requirement of romance)?

SB: Writing romance is always a tricky balancing act in this regard. On one hand, readers pick up a romance for the fantasy—the pleasure of getting to spend time in a world that's simpler and less stressful than the one they live in. On the other, if you decide to write about a controversial topic (like women in men's sports), you have a responsibility not to gloss over the difficulties of the real people who are struggling to make their way in a far grittier and more nuanced world than romance. My goal was to split the difference as best I could.


RNFF: Early in the novel, your hero, Ty (a linebacker on the Grizzlies' team) uses the "women are a distraction" argument to justify (at least in his head) his opposition to heroine Iona's presence on the coaching staff:

As soon as I lay eyes on her, I get this fierce, almost painful rush. It's just the aftereffect of going toe-to-toe with her over O's job. That's what I tell myself. Not about going toe-to-toe with her in a completely different way. Actually, there's no toe-to-toe in the video siege firing through my brain. Every other conceivable position though. This is exactly why women don't belong in the PFL. Because all this shit in my head doesn't belong in the PFL. (341)

How have women in football and other male-dominated professions countered such arguments?

SB: They've countered the argument by being good at what they do, by showing over time that they're an asset, not a detriment, to any organization. And that's what Iona does for Ty. She's steady, she's present, she's effective, and in the end, that's what convinces him, far more than any verbal argument she could present. Which is why, of course, it's so critically important for us to get more women into more roles we don't expect to see them in; it's the best way to change the kind of outmoded thinking that Ty's early musings represent.

RNFF: The first turn in Iona and Ty's relationship comes after a joint radio interview, during which a broadcaster insults Iona and Ty defends her. Iona gets angry with him, telling him she doesn't need defending. But then Ty says he would have defended any coach, male or female, and Iona thinks, "I suddenly realize that I'm being a great big douchebag" (946). Can you take us through your thinking here, regarding what's sexist and what's not?

SB: In my mind, the show's host is absolutely sexist—his blindsiding Iona (which, by the way, wouldn't really happen in sports radio; I took artistic license) with an assault on the viability of female coaches is just plain wrong. Ty may be operating out of some assumptions that he needs to revisit—the idea that Iona needs his protecting—but I don't see his motives as suspect. Iona is encountering one of her own blind spots; she's so used to being armored against the men in her life that she responds defensively to Ty's desire to protect her. Knowing Ty and Iona, I suspect she will have to tell him to "back off" more than once more in their lives together, and he will get better over time at letting her fight her own battles. And vice versa. I can see her trying to fight his battles just as easily as the reverse.


RNFF: A couple of Iona's observations struck me: First, "Pro sports are this country's hardest meritocracy, with the possible exception of the armed forces. If you make it this far, you must be good enough—it's true of players, coaches, staff—male or female." Second, "the worst sexists are aging off, and the players are so young, so most of them are used to the idea of women in positions of power. And a huge number of them grew up in single-parent households run by mothers, so the notion of a woman who calls the shots doesn't faze them." I couldn't help thinking these observations were more wishful thinking than reality, especially in light of the recent ascendance of Donald Trump. Do you believe they're true? Who was your source?

SB: Both of these observations came via a journalist friend who spent a good portion of his career in locker rooms and on sports courts and fields. His point is that—exceptions aside—pro athletes are just that, pros, and their overriding goal is to win. Everything else is just a distraction, including gender (which may be the myopia of male privilege, but I still found it be an incredibly interesting observation). He said that for most pro players, if a coach can make them better, that's all they need to know.

Now, we all know that's not how it plays out systematically. There are still almost no female coaches in pro football (or in other male-only pro sports). There are still far too few black coaches and black quarterbacks in pro football. And for sure, there is still an enormous amount of intolerant language, behavior, and bullying in pro sports—on both the player side and the fan side. I chose to focus in this book on individual positive behavior, because my primary goal was to normalize the idea of women with key roles in men's pro sports. I want readers to end up cheering for Iona's strength rather than seeing her as a victim.


RNFF: Bringing up the issue of race in pro sports leads right in to another controversial aspect of your book: you are a white author, while both of your protagonists are African American. Talk about your thinking around that decision.

SB: Around seventy percent of NFL players are men of color, and from the beginning, I knew I didn't want to write a series that suggested otherwise. (As I side note, and to reiterate a point I made earlier, this doesn't mean that positions are fairly distributed by race, something that needs to change). I struggled with feeling like it wasn't my "place" to write this story, or that I'd be taking an #ownvoices opportunity away from a writer of color. But I am hopeful about the "abundance" behavior of the romance market: the more readers encounter books with thoughtful portrayals of characters of color, the more of those books the market will demand.

RNFF: Controversy #2: workplace relationships. Falling in love on the job is a common romance novel trope. But many readers have trouble if there are uneven power dynamics involved (if one party is the other's boss, for example). In your story, your heroine, Iona, is a coach, and your hero, Ty, is a linebacker who plays under her. When they first meet, Ty is instantly attracted to Iona. He knows, though, "if she's anyone who has anything remotely to do with the team, she's off limits" (137). But by novel's end, both still retain their jobs even after they have gone public with their romantic relationship. Take us through your thinking here, about why this is a HEA, rather than a potentially squicky ending.

SB: For me, it has everything to do with the real way power is distributed in a relationship. Power is complicated. It can come from physical size and strength, from someone's position in the career hierarchy, from someone's privilege within the larger society, and from a lot of other sources. The reason the ending isn't squicky for me (squickiness is, of course, 100% in the eye of the beholder) is because when I look at the way power balances out between Iona and Ty, neither of them holds an unfair amount of it.

RNFF: Controversy #3: the "balls" issue ;-)  In an RNFF post from 2014, titled "The Anatomy of Courage," I used your book Hold on Tight to discuss why using the word "balls" as an image of courage might be problematic. And early in 2017's Getting Inside, Ty observes this of a fellow player about whom he was worried: "I grin. He's got his balls reracked"(125). Tell us why you think it's important to use such language when portraying certain male protagonists.

SB: I don't think it's essential. I think another writer might make a different decision, to give Ty a totally genderless set of language around courage. That said, it seemed pretty clear to me, given the freedom—one might say abandon—with which Ty discusses his, erm, "equipment" in this book that he'd locate male courage in his balls. I wanted him to feel credible as a guy who spends his time in locker rooms, even if he's also a guy who wouldn't tolerate, in a million years, the notion of a locker room as a place where hate belongs.


RNFF: So, what's up next for this series? Will you be tackling any of the issues about race in pro football that you mention above?

SB: You'll be hearing more about the Grizzlies! Calder's book is up next, followed by two more books about some of your other favorite characters, too. And I'd love to tackle more of the issues around race—particularly equity in coaching and quarterback positions—in future books.

Thank you again, so much, for the great questions and the space to think and talk about these issues!


RNFF: Thanks, Serena, for stopping by. I'm looking forward to seeing what develops next in this series. Given the stats in the "Gender Equality in Radio" graphic above, might I say that I hope a female sports talk radio personality might feature in a future Grizzlies romance?






RNFF readers: What are your thoughts about any/all of the above controversies? Do they make you more or less likely to search out Bell's book?









Photo credits
Jen Welter: Washington Times
Gender Equality in Radio: Visual.ly
Workplace relationships: Careerbuilder.com via Brandon Gaille

Serena Bell

Getting Inside

Loveswept, 2017