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Though the killing of George Floyd in 2020 ignited a wave of racial reckoning and recriminations in mainstream publishing, in Black communities nationwide (creative, literary, and general), heightened racial concerns and frustration have long been top of mind, and Black love has long been at least a core part of the answer. (30)
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As revanchist white supremacy and racial resentment have become more publicly bold and omnipresent, the thirst - in truth, the heartfelt visceral and pressing need - for cultural experiences of Black joy and Black love as a reprieve from all that only grows stronger. (30)
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For many African American readers, the 2010s saw Black romance as an answer to a new racial reckoning, in an intimate and visceral way. The reasons for this are many. Romance is known as the literature of hope for all readers, but for Black readers navigating a world that discounts the value of Black life and denies the existence of Black humanity, Black beauty, and Black people's capacity for love, the idea of romance as hope has additional weight. (31)
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This essay explores how [...] two impulses - the confrontation of injustice and escape from it - have played out in an emphasis on Black solidarity as a conduit for Black Freedom and in the construction of extensive Black Community and even Black Worlds within the work of three leading authors of Black romance in the six years since the incidents that sparked the rise of the new civil rights struggle, the Movement for Black Lives. (34)
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How are Black romance authors channeling their concerns and anxieties about racial injustice onto the page? Is it by directly interrogating racial justice through plot lines involving social justice, or in other ways - by insulating readers from the injustices and ensconcing them in visions of what the "good life," a more just life, could look like beyond white supremacy's reach? If and when Black romance authors do engage with racial justice on the page, which ideologies of race do they convey implicitly or explicitly in the texts? [...]
Looking at the six-year period beginning in 2015, I found that some of the most consistently beloved and widely read Black romances were those authored by Alexandria House, Christina C. Jones, and Alyssa Cole - writers who engage in discussions of racial justice in a variety of ways that range from subtle/implicit to explicit. (35)
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In this essay, I use examples from [...] Alyssa Cole's How to Catch a Queen, Alexandria House's Let Me Free You, and Christina C. Jones's I Think I Might Love You - to prove insights into the multitude of ways that ideas about Black freedom and Black solidarity are bound together with representations of Black love, all intrinsic elements in the HEA within Black romance. (37-38)
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Let Me Free You [...] manages to be supremely romantic, tropey, and overtly political all at the same time. It takes place in predominantly Black spaces; interrogates the standards of Black femininity, questioning the internal social hierarchies of class, color, and desirability that still hold sway in Black communities; boldly confronts a controversial archetype of modern Black masculinity; and includes a brief but explicit discussion of the influence of white supremacy in American culture. (39)
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Black community, world-building, and debates about social equality and the legacy of white rule play an even greater role in How to Catch a Queen. Alyssa Cole's boldly, intersectionally feminist novel takes place in [...] the tiny fictional African nation of Njaza. (46)
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While Let Me Free You and How to Catch a Queen reflect the richness and depth of the ideas manifested in Black romance, they occupy the more explicit, serious side of the spectrum in terms of how ideas about a just and good life are communicated in Black romance. Christina C. Jones's I Think I Might Love You, on the other hand, demonstrates how ideas about Black solidarity are subtly manifested at the lighter side of the spectrum, within romantic comedy. Jones's novella is a great and subtle representation of solidarity, Black power, and the corrosiveness of internecine conflicts about class. (57)
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