Textual Deviancy and Cultural Syncretism: Romantic Fiction as a Subversive Strain in Black Women's Writing

Unfortunately, one of the author's names is misspelled in Wasafiri. Kari Dako is given as "Kari Darko."

An updated version of this essay, also titled "Textual Deviancy and Cultural Syncretism: Romantic Fiction as a Subversive Strain in Black Women’s Writing" was published in Matatu 21-22.1: 155-164. I have provided a link to this version too.

I've not compared them line by line, but they seem very similar. The apparent difference in length is probably due to the pagination (Wasafiri has smaller print, with two columns of writing per page).

In both versions Bryce and Dako show how the conventions of romance are rejected (with one exception being Ti Marie by Valerie Belgrave), but that either way,

romantic myths, founded on notions of chaste and desirable white femininity and powerful dominant masculinity, with their barely suppressed sub-text of black sensuality and otherness, are a part of the complex process of the construction of identity in the fiction of black woman writers. (from the 1993 version, page 11)

In the 2000 version this has been changed slightly:

romantic myths founded on notions of chaste and desirable white femininity and powerful dominant masculinity, with their barely suppressed subtext on black sensuality and othemess, are a part of the complex process of constructing identity in the fiction of black women writers. (158)