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.

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.

Nature vs. Nurture: P. D. Singer's A NEW MAN

Academics, activists, philosophers and others have spilled bottles and bottles of ink debating the the question of whether nature or nurture plays the definitive role how individuals end up expressing their gender and their sexuality. Do genes determine our gender? Or do cultural factors play a larger role? Is the answer different when it comes to our sexual preferences? Baby, were you born that way? Or were you acculturated that way?

It's far more rare to find such issues taken up by a romance novel. But it's precisely what P. D. Singer does in her latest male/male contemporary romance, A New Man. Offering both the emotional pleasures of the typical romance novel and the intellectual pleasures of social and medical science, Singer asks readers to consider what it means to identify as gay or straight, masculine or effeminate, asexual or sexually desiring, and how biology may influence each of these identities. Particularly when one's physical body undergoes unexpected changes.

Chemistry grad student Warren has long been attracted to his current roommate, low-key, slightly pudgy undergrad senior Chad. But Chad's dated girls for as long as Warren's lived with him, and since he and Chad really enjoy each other's company, Warren's been content to stay in Chad's friend zone. But when Chad returns from yet another frustrating date and tries to explain to Warren why his outings with girls always turn into disasters, Warren asks Chad if he's ever considered that his "right one might not be a girl?" (Kindle Loc 133). Chad, future scientist, decides he needs some data, and to Warren's shock, kisses him.

As a teenager, Chad had gotten turned on enough making out with girls, but he also noticed the boys, too, to his own discomfort. Switching from swimming to fencing helped tamp down his interest in guys, but squelching those desires seems to have also squelched the sexual attraction he'd once felt for girls, too. Now, none of his female dates is really happy to be told he's saving himself, instinctively recognizing that his reluctance to engage sexually with them has little to do with morals and everything to do with desire, or its lack. Would sex be different if he did it with a guy? With Warren?

Turns out, the answer is both "yes" and "no." Being with Warren is the best time Chad's ever had, sexually-speaking, but even as he's realizing he just might prefer guys to girls, he's still having trouble maintaining an erection, never mind reaching orgasm. Chad's never talked to a doctor about his sexual difficulties; doctors hadn't been able to do a thing to help his recurrent headaches, so why would he trust them to tackle a far more vulnerable part of his anatomy? To his surprise, Warren doesn't shy away in disgust from Chad's "deficiencies," but instead suggests that they may want to think outside the penis box:

     "You're more than your erection."
     "How am I supposed to have sex without an erection?"
     Abruptly upright, Warren twisted around to glower down at Mr. One-track. "Who said you had to have an erection?" Okay, it was standard equipment, and up until tonight he wouldn't have questioned the question, but.... He'd seen too much pain in Chad's eyes.
     "Um, every girl I've ever disappointed?"
     "If you're gay, disappointing girls in bed is a given." He grinned down at Chad, enjoying the play of unfamiliar thoughts across his face. Some ideas took a while to penetrate.
     "Uh, right." Chad pulled him back against the mattress. "But if gays like dick, you need dick."
     "You have a dick," Warren pointed out. "You also have hands, a mouth, an ass, your whole body, legs. Balls." He draped Chad's arm back over his chest and entwined their fingers against his breastbone. "Arms. I think you have everything. Including a head. Use it."
     "But—"
     "No buts. There's things we can do with two erections, things we can do with one, and things that don't require erections at all that still feel really good." With a little more imagination than usual, they could probably think of a lot of things. (652)

Warren and Chad's relationship develops apace, until it meets an unexpected bump in the form of a medical surprise (discovered in slightly improbable, but cleverly geeky fashion, in the chem lab). A medical surprise than impacts not only Chad's health, but also his hormones. Hormones that influence his behavior, particularly behaviors associated with his expression of gender. Will Chad be a "new man" once his health problems are addressed? Will the nice boy with whom Warren fell in love be replaced by a testosterone-raging alpha-guy? Will Chad still even be gay?

A New Man is a romance novel, so Chad's issues work out in a way that satisfies both the "new man" and his old lover. But not before some tumultuous conflicts between Warren and the suddenly more assertive Chad reach the boiling point. Only by doing what any couple, homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual, needs to do to keep a relationship working—talk openly and honestly about feelings, boundaries, and acceptable and unacceptable behavior—can Chad and Warren begin to incorporate this strange "new man" into their everyday lives.

Photo/Illustration credits:
GenderBread Person: It's Pronounced Metrosexual
Men talking: New Now Next

P. D. Singer

A New Man

Dreamspinner Press, 2015