The black gay romance novel emerges in the mid-1980s both as a riffing response to the kind of pop heteronorm performed by mass mediated hip hop, as well as to the consolidated white gay rights agenda, the rising homonorm that aims to exclude black man-on-man desire while claiming that its own articulation of same-sexuality is categorical, universal, and biologically ordained. Like Ocean, these black romance authors are very much aware of the range of black vernacular expressions suggesting the playful embrace of black man-on-man attraction within working class black culture. The romance novelists, however, are also aware of the difficulties of translating this vernacular attitude into mass-produced media like the popular romance genre. (676)