This article focuses on Black Young Adult (YA) romance and the need for accurate representation that has become apparent across all genres, including both popular romance and young adult literature. Utilizing the works of author Elise Bryant, Black Feminist Thought, and the Black Radical Imagination, this work interrogates Blackness and Black girlhood to advance the concept that diverse stories matter and that more consideration should be given for literature that humanizes and normalizes the Black experience.
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While both young adult literature and popular romance literature have typically been primarily white-centric, I argue for the potential of Black YA romance to disrupt this “white gaze” and “standard” ways of knowing. Using Elise Bryant’s lighthearted and joyful YA romance novels Happily Ever Afters, One True Loves, and Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling in relation to Black Feminist Thought, I demonstrate how these Black YA romances showcase stages of Black girls’ self-love and acceptance within societies that try to dictate what Blackness should and should not be, normalize Black families as loving, and embody the Black Radical Imagination. In doing so, I argue that Bryant’s YA romance novels provide an important and generative reclamation of Black Joy.
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In Happily Ever Afters, Tessa’s core identity is centralized on her being a fiction writer, and specifically romance fiction. Tessa is a lover of all types of stories, yet she never sees herself—as a Black girl—in the stories. She turns to making her own narratives and initially writes fanfiction before delving into her own original romance tales.
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As Bryant’s novels demonstrate, the portraiture of the Black family is essential within each story and goes beyond just showing a stable, happy family unit. The teens in these stories deal with acceptance of themselves, sibling miscommunications, mental health issues, disabilities, and parental disconnects. However, they do so in a way that continually normalizes Black families and regular, loving families—families that disagree and still love each other, families that are filled with annoying yet lovable, out-of-touch parents, and families that care about the wholeness of each individual member. The families depicted are not perfect, but they are constantly working toward happiness and stability. These snapshots of the characters existing within their family structure, exemplify the foundations of Black Feminist Thought. BFT in action works across these stories as an upset to the stereotypical images of Black families that are rooted in racism and classism; BFT is used to make the images appear normal.
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Bryant’s portrayal of Lenore reflects the burden that Black children often feel to carry on and extend the legacy of the previous generation. This is especially important when considering Black teens in educational and professional settings. Black kids often have to seem perfect, elite, or above scrutiny, which is a perception that is grounded in racism and anti-blackness.
Here's the abstract:
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