The Sorry State of Diversity in the RWA's RITA Awards: 2019 edition

Yesterday, Romance Writers of America® announced the list of finalists for its RITA Awards, which the organization bestows in recognition of excellence in publishing romance writing. So it's also time for the annual RNFF blog post with data on the state of racial diversity amongst the RITA finalists, with added info on the race/ethnicity and sexuality of the characters of the finalist books.

For the second year in a row, all RITA contest entrants were required to submit a pdf copy, rather than print copies, of their books. Entrants could also submit either an epub or a kindle mobi file as well, for the convenience of judges. As this was not a change that changed the basic demographics of the entrants pool, as the switch from all print to pdf was in 2017, it's not surprising that a similar number of self-published books were chosen as finalists this year as last (22, by my count).

Representation of queer characters is a bit down from last year, although there is one lesbian romance, as compared to no lesbian romances last year.

What about representation of race/ethnicity? What do those numbers look like?

Not good. Not good at all.


Many books, and many author bios, don't explicitly state protagonists' or authors' race. So the calculations below are based on the following:

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

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

• Similarly, for authors with whom I was familiar, and/or who had discussed their own racial backgrounds in public, I went with self-represented racial identities. I had to rely on author photographs and my best guesses for the rest. Two finalists do not include author photos on their web sites, so I classified them as white. Again, room for error (and correction) here.

Overall Statistics:

# of finalists:
  2018: 74
  2017: 78
  2016: 85

# of authors of color:
  2018: 3***
  2017: 5-6
  2016: 4-6

% of authors of color:
  2018: 4%***
  2017: 6-7.7%
  2016: 4-7%


Overall # of protagonists: 149 (73 * 2, 1 * 3 [one erotic romance features a ménage-a-trois])

# of protagonists of color
  2018: 8
  2017: 13
  2016: 5

% of protagonists of color
  2018: 5.3%
  2017: 8.3%
  2018: 2.9%


of queer protagonists:
  2018: 10 (8 in m/m romances, 2 in a lesbian romance)
  2017: 12
  2016: 8

% of queer protagonists:
  2018: 6.7%
  2017: 7.6%
  2016: 4%


Individual Sub-Genre Numbers:

Contemporary Romance Long
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 2
# of queer protagonists: 0

Contemporary Romance: Mid-Length
# of finalists: 11
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 4

Contemporary Romance: Short
# of finalists: 8
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0*
# of queer protagonists: 2

Erotic Romance:
# of finalists: 4
# of authors of color: 0
# of protagonists of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Historical Romance: Long
# of finalists: 4
# of authors of color: 0
# of characters of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Historical Romance: Short
# of finalists: 6
# of authors of color: 0
# of characters of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance
# of finalists: 5
# of authors of color: 0
# of characters of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 0

Paranormal Romance
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 0
# of characters of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Romance Novella
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 1
# of characters of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 2

Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements
# of finalists: 4
# of authors of color: 0
# of characters of color: 0
# of queer protagonists: 0

Romantic Suspense
# of finalists: 7
# of authors of color: 0
# of characters of color: 1
# of queer protagonists: 0

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


It's more than depressing that the representation of authors of color in the RITA finalist pool has decreased, despite recent efforts by the organization to better support its members of color. What else can RWA do to begin to address what is a glaringly obvious problem of bias in its judging system?

More than a year ago, RWA stated that it was in the process of polling its membership about demographic issues, but to date I don't believe that information has been made public. Does RWA have any sense of how the demographics of RWA membership compares to the demographics of the U. S. as a whole? And how its overall demographics compare to the demographics of the finalists and the judges? Compiling and sharing such information with its membership would be a good place to start.

Another intervention would be to begin asking entrants for demographic information about themselves and about the characters in the books they are submitting. Percentages could then be compared to the percentages in the finalist pool.

Or RWA could consider revamping the way the entire contest is judged, and create a process in which systemic racism could be, if not entirely eliminated, at least majorly curtailed. I'd strongly urge the Board to create a committee or working group to study the issue in the coming year.

I know more than a few authors who would be interested in serving...



US Census data on race/ethnicity (2016)
White: 61.3%
POC: 40.9%

2018 RITA Finalists by race/ethnicity
White: 97.3%
POC: 4%



* Caitlin Crews' A Baby to Bind His Bride includes this description of its hero: "amalgam of everything that was beautiful in him. His Greek mother. His Spanish father. His Brazilian grandparents on one side, his French and Persian grandparents on the other." I'm not counting this hero as a POC.

** one of these books, written by a white author, features Latinx characters, one of whom is a gang member. I have counted these characters as POC, despite some concern that this representation may be problematic. I have not yet read the book in question.

*** My original post listed 2 authors of color, not 3. I've updated the numbers accordingly, given the comments below.

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?

Seriously Gross and Anti-Feminist?

Addendum 1/8/19:
This blog post offended many of Snyder's readers and fans, who saw it as an attack on the author. 


It was not my intention to suggest that Snyder had written Tikka Chance on Me, or any line in that book, out of "petty vengeance" towards me, as Snyder felt called to explain on Twitter. I apologize to both the author and to her fans and readers.

When so many of people have such a negative reaction to something I've written, I owe it to them, and to myself, to go back and reexamine it. And now, having done that, to point out the places where I fucked up, and apologize for them. And to ask myself questions, where I'm not sure if, or how, I offended. Fucking up, still, but fucking up with some humility. I've done so in the comments below.

This was not an auspicious return to blogging. I will try to do better in the coming year.

I always appreciate criticism and comments that help me learn and grow, especially on the difficult issues of race. But no one should feel that they have to take the time and energy to educate me unless they choose to. I pledge to work harder to educate myself.




I hadn't been this passionate about something in years. Once upon a time, I'd wanted to be an anthropologist. To travel the world and study indigenous cultures—especially some of the Adivasi communities in India. I'd committed to that, even with all the partying. But then I came home. I gave up. I stopped dreaming. It was seriously gross and antifeminist to credit a man with me coming alive again, but I couldn't deny the truth. Trucker Carrigan had changed me. —Suleikha Snyder, Tikka Chance on Me


The fall and early winter of 2018 have not been a good time for me and the RNFF blog. I've still been reading romances, and have written many a review or general post in my head that has never made it down to the keyboard. But the pairing of family health issues with a mild but still unpleasant case of seasonal depression brought on by the dark, rain-filled end of the year, perimenopausal PMDD, and the sorry political state of my country made sitting down at the computer and putting words to screen feel more a crushing burden than a soul-lightening joy. Hence the blog silence for the past two months.

I don't know if I've managed to shake off the doldrums completely yet, but after I read the above passage in Suleikah Snyder's latest novella, Tikka Chance on Me, I felt the urge for the first time in a while to try to grapple with the often contested intersections of genre and gender. Is it "seriously gross and antifeminist" for Snyder's character, American desi Pinky Grover, to credit Trucker Carrigan, unlikely guy she's been lusting after, for her "coming alive again"?

After high school, Pinky left her small Indiana hometown for Chicago, easily balancing both of the city's intellectual and amorous opportunities by working toward a BA, and then a PhD, at the University of Chicago while simultaneously exploring her sexuality with many a glorious and wild partner. But two years ago, she'd dropped both to return to Eastville after her mother was diagnosed with Stage One breast cancer. Though her mom is well on the road to recovery, Pinky at the start of this story finds herself listless, unmotivated, not at all eager to return to her more expansive life in the big city. Until, that is, she begins a torrid affair with Trucker Carrigan, "six feet three inches of pure unadulterated trouble. I knew it, he knew it, everybody in town knew it. He'd been born bad and grown up worse" (Kindle Loc 34).

Though he, like Pinky, left town after high school, Trucker, too, has washed back up again in Eastville.  Now a leading member of the Eastville Eagles Motorcycle "Club," Trucker is deeply involved in the gang's less than legal activities. Though Trucker is working-class Irish to Pinky's middle-class Punjabi, he has a curious taste for Indian food, and brings his club members to Pinky's family's restaurant, the Taj Mahal, the only Indian restaurant within fifty miles, often enough that the Eagles have their own table there. For months, Pinky's been eyeing Trucker, and Trucker's been eyeing her right back, but neither has done anything about it.

Until a chance encounter at a local Wal-mart leads to some unexpected insights into each other's characters. Followed by a hotter-than-hot bout of sex in the cab of Trucker's pickup. Followed by another bout of physically and emotionally intense sex in a motel room.

Followed by Pinky's insightful realization that Trucker may not be quite who he appears to be...

It is at this point in the story, after the hot banging and the realization that any relationship between them has a clear end date, that Pinky has the insight quoted at the start of this post. Though Pinky goes on to tell the reader "I didn't think it was arrogant to say that I'd changed him, too," does she truly believe that it is "gross and unfeminist" to "credit a man with making [her] come alive again"? Or is she speaking to an implied feminist critic, negatively judging her for giving such credit to a member of the opposite sex?

The famous second-wage feminist adage asserts that "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." But does the inverse also apply? Is a woman with a man, a woman who allows a man to influence her, make her come alive, just a fish with a bicycle, an oddity, a freak? Is she "gross"? "Unfeminist"?

Suleikha Snyder and RNFF have a difficult history. In the early days of the blog, I wrote and published a review of her 2014 Bollywood romance, Bollywood and the Beast. While I intended that review to be positive, I was also worried about proving my bona fides as a literary critic, feeling I had to validate the existence of the blog and my authority to write about romance. That need to show off my knowledge led me to use postcolonial literary theory in a problematic, and racist, manner. Said comment had a negative impact on Snyder. I later discovered that Snyder had written a blog post about the racism she and other romance writers of color experience, and linked to my blog as an example of one of many moments of racist silencing and criticism of romance writers of color.

Given this history, I can't help but think that one iteration of the feminist critic to whom the imaginary Pinky in Snyder's latest story might be speaking is me.

But I'm not inclined to adopt the role of this implied feminist critic, a critic who would call a woman  "gross" and "unfeminist" when she recognizes and acknowledges that she is being pulled out of an emotional funk by her emerging feelings for a man. In fact, the comment makes me want to jump up and down in frustration, and point to the gap between Millennials who say they believe in gender equality (55-66%, depending on the race of the respondent) and the far lower percentage who actually identify as feminist (13-20%). As Cathy Cohen, the University of Chicago political science professor who conducted the genFORW>RD study from which these figures were drawn, notes, "the media has narrated a pretty rigid understanding of feminism" (Marketplace interview), an understanding that has somehow detached "feminism" from its central raison d'être of gaining rights and equality for women, and made Millenials wary of adopting the name for their own.

Source: genFORW>RD

Fifty+ years after the rise of second-wave feminism, it seems that many a woman has forgotten, or never been taught, about the historical context in which second-wave feminism first arose. It rose at a very particular moment in time—as a reaction against post-WWII culture, with its widespread idealization of a non-working mother and a wage-earning father. In fact Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), which first gave voice to second-wave feminism, argues that American media in the 1930s featured far more positive depictions of working women than did the media of the 1950s. Friedan pointed to the limitations of the 1950's belief that a woman's only path to fulfillment was through being a housewife and a mother. Her book's conclusion advises women to stop viewing housework as a career; to stop expecting motherhood and marriage to fulfill all their needs; and to search for meaningful work that draws on their intellectual, as well as their emotional, abilities. It never urges heterosexual women to throw out their boyfriends and husbands with the bicycles and fish, to cut all heterosexual relationships out of their lives. It doesn't call married women, or women in heterosexual relationships, gross or accuse such women of not toeing the proper feminist line. Later more radical iterations of feminism might espouse a feminist separatism, urging women to cut men from their lives, but such ideologies were always in the feminist minority.

If any woman without a man is like every fish without a bicycle, doesn't that make all heterosexual romance, built upon the assumption that the two (or more) people involved in a developing romantic relationship exert a positive influence on one another, inherently anti-feminist? Doesn't that make any real-life heterosexual woman anti-feminist?

Snyder's own novel argues against Pinky's momentary negative self-labeling. For while she may be in a temporary funk at novel's start, she's clearly not a woman who views marriage, motherhood, and housework (or working in her parents' restaurant) as the only fulfilling career option available to her. Nor does she expect her relationship with Trucker to fulfill all her needs. And near the story's end, she's back in Chicago, once again pursuing her intellectual interests—initially on her own, without Trucker.

But not for long...

Earlier in the story, Pinky actually provides the best answer to those who would falsely pit feminism against heterosexual romance. Trucker says to her: "I could do this all night. Hold you in my arms. But you're not here for that, are you? You're here to be fucked by the bad boy." Pinky thinks to herself, "The words were a low growl against my jaw. And I wasn't sure who he was mad at. Me or himself." And then challenges his assumption: "Why can't it be both? Can't you hold me and fuck me?" (352)

You can work towards gender equality and be in a heterosexual romantic relationship. Both and, not either/or.

And you can call yourself a feminist, too.


Photo credits:
Fish without a bicycle shirt: Feminist apparel

The Promise and Limitations of Hope: Courtney Milan's AFTER THE WEDDING

Where there's life, there's hope.
The darkest hours are just before the dawn.
Look on the bright side.
Every cloud has a silver lining.



I'm a person who tends to bristle rather than take comfort when someone offers an time-worn aphorism as a way to deal with a difficult or painful situation. A cup half-empty, rather than a cup half-fill kind of girl, that's me. Be realistic, don't hope for the impossible, and you'll be far better off than deluding yourself with overly easy platitudes.

I would have thought, then, that a romance about two people with irrepressible hope as the cornerstone of their characters would not have held much appeal. Yet such is the skill of Courtney Milan that she makes such characters not just understandable, but immensely sympathetic and appealing, even to one prone to undervaluing the Hufflepuffs of the world.

Readers of Once Upon a Marquess, the first book in Milan's Victorian Worth Saga series (2015), might recall Camilla Worth, the heroine of After the Wedding, as the missing sister of the Worth family, siblings whose fortunes and prospects dwindled after their father, an earl, was declared a traitor. At twelve, Camilla accepted the offer of a uncle to come and live with him, leaving her family behind in poverty for the chance to return to a life of privilege, complete with "gowns, lemon tarts, and a come out" (Kindle Loc 636). But the kindly uncle proved not to be so kindly, shunting the overly talkative girl off to some cousins, who shunted her off in turn to another relative, and then on to someone whom she barely even knew. Now, at twenty, Camilla feels herself fortunate to be employed as a maidservant for a rector, who only offered to take her in because he feared for her mortal soul after she dismissed from another household for kissing a footman. That the godly rector gets a full-day's work from Camilla but only pays her half-wages of course has nothing to do with his offer to help her reform her soul.

In spite of eight years of rejection, though, Camilla can't keep herself from hoping for something better, something more: someone to choose her, to love her. Rector Miles wants Camilla to feel her sinfulness, to feel debased and downtrodden; then she'd be easier to control. But somehow, in spite of everything, Camilla knows "she was the kind of person who, when dragged into hell, would hatch a plan to win the devil over with a well-cultivated garden of flame and sulfur. It wouldn't matter if it was impossible. She would still try. She just would" (1199).

Adrian Hunter's life hasn't been a bed of roses, either, although his family and financial situations are far more secure than Camilla's. His mother was the daughter of a duke, but was disowned when she married an abolitionist of African descent and moved to the United States. Adrian lost three of his four elder brothers to the American Civil War; as the youngest, he was sent to England to stay with an uncle, to keep him far from the conflict. Though that uncle was his mother's favorite sibling, he's also an English cleric; while Bishop Denmore is unerringly kind to his nephew in private, he will not acknowledge him as a relative in public, fearing for his reputation. Instead, Adrian must pretend to be his page, and then, when he grows older, his part-time amanuensis. Even goodhearted Adrian chafes at the pretense, but his promise to his mother that he'd do all in his power to change his uncle's mind, and "bring him round to the cause" leads him to swallow his pride and bear it (333). As does his uncle's continued promises that one day, some day, when the time is right, he'll openly acknowledge Adrian as his nephew. Adrian's brother warns him and warns him against placing too much hope in Denmore, but for Adrian, hope is intrinsic to his very essence.

At the start of the novel, Camilla finds herself foisted upon Adrian, yet another person in a long string of people who don't want her. Bishop Denmore has promised Adrian that if he does him one more favor—hiring himself on valet to Denmore's rival bishop, in order to ferret out proof of some mysterious malfeasance Denmore suspects the man has been up to—he'll publicly acknowledge him as his nephew. It's a promise that the ever-hopeful Adrian cannot refuse.

But the rival bishop, fearing discovery, manipulates maidservant Camilla and Adrian-as-valet into an apparently compromising position, then insists they marry—at pistol-point. Adrian knows enough about English law to realize that a marriage between two non-consenting adults is not valid, and would rather say "I do" now and ask for an annulment later. For her part, Camilla almost wishes the marriage would stick; Mr. Hunter is kind, and handsome, and defended her when everyone was hurling false accusations against her. And she likes him. In fact, it would take very little more to make affectionate, susceptible Camilla tumble into love with her putative husband.

Milan confronts issues not just of racial privilege, but also of gender privilege, as Adrian, as a confident male, treats Camilla with almost as much oblivious condescension as his white uncle treated him as a biracial man. That Adrian is, at least initially, oblivious of the parallels between his male privilege and Bishop Denmore's racial privilege suggests the ways in which being oppressed for one aspect of one's identity does not necessarily translate to understanding when you are unconscious of the privileges a different aspect of your identity grants you.

Hope is what keeps both Camilla and Adrian going in the face of multiple adversities, multiple oppressions, and what draws others to them. But over the course of the novel, both Camilla and Adrian gradually learn not just the promise, but the limitations, of hope. Sometimes, your hopes aren't ever going to be realized; sometimes your trust in others will not be warranted. And at some point, if you are to maintain your dignity, your self-respect, even your sanity, you need to insist upon your own worth, and stop listening to the siren song of "one day." Because those offering it truly believe their own promises, as Adrian finally realizes about his uncle:

He sincerely believed he had done everything for Adrian, because in his mind, Adrian deserved nothing and anything more than that exceeded his allotment. Likewise, he didn't notice anything Adrian had done for him. He expected everything, and anything less than that was too little. (4300)


Ironically, though, refusing to hope in vain may be the most difficult, yet most liberating, act of hope one can imagine:

"She deserved more. He deserved more. And just because the thing she wanted was impossible... That didn't mean she needed to give up hope." (3839)


Photo credits:
Platitudes: Prototypr
Anti-Slavery Act: Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 tumbl
I Promise: I promise one day tumblr

Courtney Milan

After the Wedding (the Worth Saga #2)

Indie published, 2018

When An Artist's Abusive Behavior Call Your Love of Their Art into Question

Composer Richard Wagner's magnificent operas, set against his deeply anti-semitic tract Jewishness in Music. The racism of the early cartoons of Dr. Seuss, or in the first-edition depictions of the Oompa-Loompas in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The myriad works of literature by lauded male writers, and the misogyny that runs like a bloody thread through their personal lives.

How can we love an artist's work, when we discover that the creator of that art held political or social views that we find to be morally repugnant? Or acted in a morally reprehensible way? Many shrug and say "It was different back then." But this already questionable position is even more difficult to take when the morally reprehensible actions have been done by an artist of our own times, our contemporary, rather than someone from the distant past.

Such are the questions confronting the male/male romance corners of Romancelandia after last week's tumultuous cascade of accusations and revelations about widely-praised queer romance author Santino Hassell. Over the past year, the pseudonymous Hassell has accused others of harassing him by trying to discover and reveal his IRL (in real life) identity, an identity that he claimed he kept hidden to protect himself from homophobia in his native Texas. But as accusations of Hassell's self-misrepresentation on a GoodReads thread, screen-shotted Twitter evidence to support such claims, and heartbreaking #metoo stories about Hassell's abuse of members of the queer community proliferated, reaching a groundswell late last week, two of his publishers, Riptide and Dreamspinner Press, abruptly announced that they had dropped him from their lists. Because the "author known as Santino Hassell" misrepresented himself to the publisher, which is cause for cancellation in the majority of author contracts. [If you want a more detailed timeline of the events leading to this, see these three posts from The Salt Mines].


What do we do when we hear that an author whose books we love has treated others with far less humanity than the characters in those books do? Has lied about who he is? Has catfished queer fans to mine their personal lives for story ideas, then used said stories not just without attribution, but without permission, in his novels? Who manipulated others to attack those who tried to call him out for his despicable behavior?

Many are taking down their reviews of all of Hassell's books on Amazon, GoodReads, and other social media sharing sites. Many are returning his books for refunds, or spending the $5 credit offered by Riptide to any reader who has ever purchased one of his books from their house on a book by a queer author other than SH. And many who supported Hassell's Patreon account after hearing him movingly write about of his cancer, his struggles as a single father, his bullied children—all claims which have turned out to be false—have yanked their financial support.

As a blogger, I am struggling with how to respond to this horrible cascade of accusation and abuse. I have a family member who was a long-time victim of a narcissist, one who sounds painfully similar to the person described by many who describe SH and his abuse. Being manipulated by such a  person is painful, embarrassing, and deeply shaming. All those harmed by SH's more direct abuse, you never deserved to be treated that way.

I have no desire to help advance the career of, or indirectly provide financial support to, an aggressively narcissistic abuser.


RNFF has reviewed several of Hassell's previous books. Should those reviews be taken down? Or should each be prefaced by and/or replaced with by a link to this post and a brief explanation, so readers can explore the issues and decide for themselves whether they feel comfortable reading a book by an author they would in all likelihood in real life shun?

Many other blogs, including Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words,  From Top to Bottom Reviews, Vir Reviews, and Just Love have done the first. My gut instinct, though, is leading me toward the second. Because erasing evidence of abusive behavior makes us forget, not remember. Because history matters. Because readers, including myself, need to be reminded that a detestable  person can write an aesthetically and politically good book.


I'd like to hear from RNFF's readers before I make the final call.

Escaping Escapist Romance? Tasha L. Harrison's THE TRUTH OF THINGS

Heterosexual genre romance is filled with heroes whose professions are all about public service. From firefighters to Navy SEALs, CIA agents to cops on the beat, male characters who their lives on the line for the greater good rank high in the standings of readers' favorite romance heroes.

But what happens when the society in which you live considers the police something to be shunned, rather than celebrated? Where dating a cop is tantamount to fraternizing with the enemy? These are questions that Tasha L. Harrison's The Truth of Things made me consider.

On her way home from an evening with friends, photojournalist and wedding photographer Ava Marie Greene tries to shrug off catcalls from the small-time drug dealers who hang out on the corner in her northside Camden New Jersey neighborhood, "a few blocks from the reach of gentrification" (Kindle Loc 86). But the call-outs escalate until Emiliano, another dealer with whom Ava is friendly, intervenes. Before Ava can de-escalate the confrontation, Emil and another dealer are brawling, and the police are on their way.

Officers on patrol in Camden, NJ

For Ava, the sound of sirens and the flash of blue lights don't offer the same reassurance that they would to a white person in a suburban neighborhood: "I wish I could say that I was relieved to see her [the cop], but to me, it felt like another gang had rolled up. One that was just as unpredictable as the boys with their bellies on the sidewalk" (131). Ava's suspicion proves warranted; the cop treats her with as much aggression as she does the fighting men, shoving Ava to the ground and breaking one of her expensive camera lenses. The cop, Stevenson, "looked like she could be a Latina or maybe mixed. Not that it mattered. All cops were one color. Blue" (193).

But the aggressive cop is soon joined by another, an African-American man who dials down the antagonism, even apologizes for his fellow officer's behavior. And insists on walking Ava home. But in Camden, even such an apparently chivalrous offer can be dangerous to accept. The officer tries to get his flirt on with Ava, but she shuts him down: "Well, kind sir. Thank you for escorting me to my front door after a lovely evening of street and police harassment" (224).

Ava is expecting that to be the last of Levi Raymond. Yet after she runs into him again at the Camden police station, where she's gone to file a complaint against the officer who damaged her property, Officer Raymond proves he's a bit more persistent than Ava had originally realized. Going out for a "I'm sorry" cup of coffee would not be the same as dating a cop, would it?

When Ava begins to tutor Emil in photography, though, the thought of her impending not-date is sitting pretty uncomfortably: "A girl who just offered to mentor a drug dealer, who cared about racial injustice, and the plight of the common man had no business having a casual cup of coffee with a cop" (650). But even though Ava tries to break her date, she and Levi end up talking—and then meeting, and then meeting yet again. Because the presumptuous, arrogant officer also does something no man has done for Ava in a long time—puts a smile on her face.

As Ava and Levi get to know one another, Ava discovers Levi is far from the stereotype of the cop who bleeds blue. He's kind, and honorable, and is interested in Ava's photography work; his parents are devoted lovebirds; and he spends his free time volunteering at the local Boys & girls Club. And he apologizes so easily, far easier than wary Ava. Ava, used to family letting her down (her father abandoned them when she was young, and her mother abandoned her for drugs), gradually begins to lower her defenses.

But when a police shooting rocks Camden, Ava and Levi are right in the middle of it, both professionally and personally. And when, in the face of police apathy about the shooting, Ava tweets out a video of the incident, sparking explosive public protests against the Camden police department, will Levi side with Ava and the protesters? Or with his department and fellow officers?


Many romance readers defend the genre by arguing it is a form of pleasurable escape, a way for readers to stop thinking about the problems of their lives for a few hours while they turn the pages of a book, a book in which the only real conflict is between potential lovers. After reading Harrison's romance, though, I began to wonder if even the idea of escaping into a romance novel is built on a certain assumption of privilege. What I mean is, just as white Americans, because of the history of white dominance in American society, have the privilege of not thinking about race all the time, but people of color do not, perhaps the option of escapist reading of all types is equally one reserved for the economically and racially privileged.

And perhaps romance novels that attempt to grapple with race and racism could help readers escape from their escapist romance blinders. If only for a few short hours...

    "I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this."
     "Yes, you can," he said. "You want to know how I know?"
     "How?"
     "Because you're strong. Stronger than me. You've already been through so much, Ava. You're the strongest person I know."
     People were always saying that.
     Ava, you've been through so much. You're so strong.
     For the first time, I allowed myself to say the one thing that was always on the tip of my tongue when people said that. "I wish I didn't have to be." (3889)



Photo credits:
Camden police on patrol: New York Times
Police and protestors: Sean Rayford/Getty Images via NPR

Tasha L. Harrison

The Truth of Things

Dirtyscribbler Press, 2017

New York Times disses romance authors

Hey, all, many of you have probably heard about the so-called "book review" of the fall's upcoming romance books, penned by famed literary editor Robert Gottleib, that appeared in Wednesday's issue of the New York Times. If you haven't read the piece, you should check it out, here.

Why the paper thought a man known for editing literary fiction was the best choice for such a piece is more than a bit puzzling. What isn't puzzling is the frustration, disappointment, and outrage felt by romance authors and readers alike by the patriarchal, condescending tone of Gottlieb's piece. Several of those people have written strong blog pieces in reaction: check out Ron Hogan's piece at Medium, "All the Dumb Things You Can Say About Romance Novels, All in One Convenient Place," and Olivia Waite's "Robert Gottlieb is Obviously Smitten" from the Seattle Book Review. And the many, many smart, informed comments people have posted online in the comments section of the article, as well as on the Book Review's Facebook page, are heartening. I hope RWA will send the Times a letter protesting this latest example of shaming the industry, its writers, and its readers.

If you're frustrated, disappointed, and/or outraged by the Times' piece, please let the Times' book review editor know, either by posting a comment in response to the Gottlieb piece online, adding a comment to the Times' Facebook page, or sending an old fashioned snail mail letter to the editor:

Via email: books@nytimes
Via snail mail: The Editor, The New York Times Book Review, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018.

This is the comment I posted on the Book Review's Facebook page:

Wow, sexism, classism, racism, urban bias, ignorance, and misinformation, and even more sexism, all in one book review/roundup. Way to insult so many people at once, NYT.

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

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

Bread for all, and Roses, too: Courtney Milan's HER EVERY WISH

Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes,
Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses.

As we come marching, marching, un-numbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread,
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses, too.

Bread and Roses strikers

As I was reading Courtney Milan's latest novella, I could not help but think of the Lawrence, Massachusetts "Bread and Roses" strike of 1912. In response to a new Massachusetts law limiting the number of hours women and children could work (from 54 to a mere 52!), textile mill owners in Lawrence cut the wages of their workforce. Expecting such a move, leaders in the Industrial Workers of the World union organized a strike of primarily female immigrant millworkers, workers whom several other unions claimed could not be organized.  The strikers demanded not that their wage be returned to its former level, but that it be raised by 15%. Because working women deserved not only the lowest wage that would allow their survival, but a wage that would allow them "small art and love and beauty," too.

Milan's novella is set hundreds of miles away from Lawrence, in London, England. And it takes place 46 years earlier than Lawrence's Bread and Roses strike, in 1866. Yet its heroine, Daisy Whitlaw, has the same thirst for the small beauties of life as did Lawrence's textile workers. Daisy (whom readers of book 1 in the "Worth Saga," Once Upon a Marquess, will remember as the working class best friend of that book's heroine), a woman who cannot stop reaching for her dreams, no matter how many times her hands are slapped away, opens the story by entering a contest offering fifty pounds to the person who presents the best plan for a new business. Ten semifinalists have been selected based on their written proposals (wise Daisy entered under the name "D. Whitlaw"), and now each must give a public presentation to the members of the parish. Unlike the other finalists (all men), whose proposals include the same old ideas for new stores and businesses, Daisy's proposal is a novel one: Daisy's Emporium, "a small shop of carefully selected goods. Durable, beautiful, and inexpensive. Designed for—" For women, Daisy had planned to say. But the hostility of the crowd, angered that a woman has dared enter the contest, makes it almost impossible for her to deliver her intended speech (Kindle Loc 121).

In spite of the difficulties of her presentation, Daisy is chosen as one of the five finalists invited to prepare a more detailed proposal. The man in charge of the program suggests that her invitation has little to do with her proposal's merit, however:



"We'll see you all next Saturday. And it looks like we have our entertainment in order. After all, we've just lined up the jester." He gave Daisy an exaggerated waggle of his eyebrows and let out a great, braying laugh, one that explained precisely why she'd been chosen. (163).

Daisy, though, can't help but hope that her proposal might have a slim chance of winning, even in the face of such sexist condescension. And so when Crash, her former lover, an impudent, self-confident flirt of a man whose ancestry is so mixed that people who barely know him feel entitled to come up and ask him, "What are you?" offers to serve as audience while she rehearses her speech—"You need to practice in front of someone you hate. Someone who makes your stomach curdle. Someone who will ask questions while you want to smash his face in," (i.e., himself)—Daisy finds herself accepting.

A 1868 velocipede race in France

And finds herself not practicing her speech, but being thrust upon a velocipede, learning self-confidence by learning to ride this newfangled wheeled contraption. And learning a lot more about Crash in the process, a man with whom she had once thought herself in love. A man so arrogant and self-assured that she'd thought nothing could wound him—especially not herself.

Though Crash and Daisy appear to be polar opposites, Milan shows that their common experiences of facing discrimination—sexist discrimination for Daisy, racist discrimination for Crash, and classist discrimination for them both—the two have far more in common than they, or we, ever thought. And that both deserve more, far more, than society tells them they should want.

Not just bread, but roses, too.


Photo credits:
Bread and Roses strikers: New England Historical Society
Emporium: Haute Design
Velocipede race: The Online Bicycle Museum

Courtney Milan

Her Every Wish

The Worth Saga, #1.5

self-published

Rewriting the Passing Narrative: Beverly Jenkins' FORBIDDEN and Shannon Gibney's SEE NO COLOR

“Passing is a deception that enables a person to adopt certain roles or identities from which he would be barred by prevailing social standards in the absence of his misleading conduct. The classic racial passer in the United States has been the “white Negro”: the individual whose physical appearance allows him to present himself as “white” but whose “black” lineage  (typically only a very partial black lineage) makes him a Negro according to dominant racial rules." —Randall Kennedy, "Racial Passing"**

Racial passing, that is, a person with black ancestry "pretending" to be white, was a common theme in myriad American novels in the period from 1880 to 1925, by both black and white authors. The very concept of passing relies on a rule not found in any other country besides the United States, suggests literary critic Juda Bennet*: the "one drop rule," which argues that having no more than one-drop of "Negro" blood makes a person a "Negro." Black and white exist as absolute opposites, an essentialist binary in which white = power and black = lack of power. The one-drop rule protected white society against the challenge people who had both black and white ancestry presented to the strict "you are either white, or you are black" binary. To acknowledge people who had both black and white ancestry as something other than either black or white would be to challenge the absoluteness of the binary, a binary whites used to justify their oppressive treatment of blacks. The idea of biracial identity did not exist in post-Emancipation America, Bennet argues, and did not come into widespread use until long into the 20th century.

From Clotel, or, The President's Daughter, A Narrative of
Slave Life in America by William Wells Brown (1853).
The biracial daughter of Thomas Jefferson, Clotel ultimate
commits suicide by jumping off a bridge

I could not help but think about Jada Bennet's analysis of earlier passing narratives as I read two recently released novels with biracial characters. Especially about one of the most common tropes that Bennet found in this body of literature: the death, by novel's end, of the protagonist who passes. Such characters (primarily women, deemed "tragic mulattoes") raised disturbing questions about just how permeable the strict lines between black and white actually were. If a person with "black" blood could pass as white, what did it actually mean, then, to be white? To be black? If some black people could look white on the outside, might they be no different from white people on the inside? Bringing up such possibilities through the creation of characters who pass proved incredibly disturbing; by killing off characters who pass, Bennet argues, such narratives evade, at least temporarily, these disturbing questions.

Both Beverly Jenkins' historical romance Forbidden and Shannon Gibney's YA contemporary, See No Color, reimagine the traditional passing narrative. Jenkins' novel, set in 1870 Denver, features a male, rather than a female, protagonist who passes. Rhine Fontaine grew up on his father's Georgia plantation. But he enjoyed few of the privileges of being the son of the owner, for his mother was not Fontaine's white wife, but an enslaved black woman. Rhine first realized that his light skin and green eyes signaled "white" to others when he was ten; though he was supposed to be acting as his white brother Andrew's slave servant, he and Andrew sat down together and ate in restaurant for whites. Though their father whipped them both for their transgression, neither forgot the experience, and after the war, Rhine left for the west, "headed to his own future; one he planned to live out as White" (Kindle Loc 73).

William A. G. Brown, African-
American owner of Virginia City's
Boston Saloon, from 1866-1875.
His story inspired Jenkins's Rhine.

After five years in Virginia City, Nevada, Rhine has carved out a prosperous, respectable life. He owns his own saloon; he's on the city council; and he's engaged to marry the white daughter of a fellow councilor. Unlike the protagonists of many an older passing narrative, he does not distance himself "his" race: he opens his saloon to black and white alike (although whites won't come, since there are blacks there); he advocates politically on behalf of rights for the town's Coloured population; and he lends money and invests in business in the black community. Nor is he psychologically traumatized by his passing. To himself, he acknowledges that "By passing, he'd gained a lot in terms of wealth and prestige, but he'd lost a lot as well" (1128), but his examples of loss—having to listen to racist jokes, and to be looked at oddly when he protests against them, and not being able to attend all-black celebrations and social functions—do not torment him.

It's only after he rescues young cook Eddy Carmichael from a con artist in the desert, and finds himself unexpectedly attracted to the beautiful black woman, does Rhine consider telling others beside his brother and his best friend about his biracial background. Jenkins doesn't dwell on Rhine's decision; in fact, it is first mentioned only in passing (no pun intended) during a conversation he has with Eddy about honesty: "He thought about the lie he'd been living though he'd be changing that soon" (2975). And though Eddy worries after she hears the truth that if Rhine tells others that his former white friends and colleagues will "undoubtedly denounce him and maybe even threaten his life," no actual violence occurs. Rhine even takes pains to secure his future financially, so that his white debtors cannot default by claiming that a white man cannot owe money to a black one. Thus, Rhine's passing does not result in tragedy and death; Jenkins rewrites the passing narrative, constructing the rejection of passing as a gift of romantic love.

See No Color, Shannon Gibney's contemporary YA, considers a very different kind of passing: the passing a child of color is often forced to do after being adopted by a white family. What's most important to sixteen-year-old Alex Kirtridge is not the color of her skin, but her determination to follow in her father's footsteps and succeed as a baseball player. So it's more than a bit of a shock when her younger white sister, who's always been a bit of an oddball, brings up the subject of race in the middle of a cozy family dinner:

"What do you all make of Alex being the only black person in our family? I mean, I've been thinking about it, and I know I'm not the only one. Sometimes I see people staring at us int he grocery store like they can't figure us out, and I feel weird, and I know it must be like ten times weirder for Alex. But it's like this secret, you know? Like no one is supposed to actually admit that she's black, or maybe more that she's not white. But it's impossible because she's just right there with us and its like 'How can't you see this?'" (29)

Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's home run record,
an important touchstone for Alex

Alex isn't stupid. She knows about the history of racial discrimination professional baseball players in America had to face. And she knows that the few black girls in her Wisconsin high school taunt her for being uppity, for thinking she's white when she's not. But it's only after Reggie, a black player on an opposing baseball team, asks her out, and shows her an African American culture far different than the one she imbibed via the media and her white family, that Alex really starts to think about what it means to be biracial. What it means to "be the only black person" in an all-white family.

Alex's family has not encouraged her to think about her blackness. And when she begins to think about it despite their hopes that she'll ignore it, they actively discourage her. Brother Jason, a year younger than Alex, tells her, "Alex, this isn't about anyone feeling better. It's about reality. I've never seen you as black and neither has Mom or Dad or Kit, okay?" (72) And her father sits her down for a special heart-to-heart: "I just want you to know that your mother and I, we will always see you as just you, as Alex. There's nothing black—or particularly . . . racial—about you to us because you're our little girl and always will be" (58).

But Alex is starting to see the assumptions that lie behind her parents and her brother's "unseeing": "Something about the way he said 'black' made me cringe a little. Like it was the worst thing a person could be. I remembered his tone when he used the word "mixed" to describe me, however, and in contrast, it was almost prideful" (58). Asking Alex to "see no color" is to ask her to agree to the tacit assumption that being white is normal, being black is inferior. Alex's parents are asking Alex to "pass" so they will not have to confront their own deeply denied racism. And to ignore their racism is to ignore the deep shame Alex herself often feels at not being "black enough," at so often feeling like an outsider to the black culture of which so many people assume she's a part.

Discovering that the people you love are asking you to collude in their own racism is a disturbing wake-up call. But it is one that many transracial adoptees face, Gibney's novel asserts. In large part because many white families continue to "see no color."

Many students and adults I've talked with about race over the years argue, like Alex's father, that they "see no color" when they look at other people. Those who say this say it with pride, believing that it shows how unprejudiced they are. But Gibney's novel suggests that despite the positive intentions behind such refusals to differentiate people by the color of their skin, "seeing no color" is ultimately a refusal to recognize the very real ways that racism, particularly racism against people of African ancestry in the United States, continues to negatively impact their lives.

Photo credits:

William A. G. Brown: Tahoe Daily Tribune

Hank Aaron: CNN

"I'm Adopted": Survivors Blog Here

*Bennett, Juda. The Passing Figure: Racial Confusion in Modern American Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.

**Kennedy, Randall. “Racial Passing.” Ohio State Law Journal. Vol. 62:1145, 2001.

Beverly Jenkins

Forbidden

Avon, 2015

Shannon Gibney

See No Color

Carolrhoda LAB

2015