Here's the description of this essay which appears in the introduction to the special issue:
In the second essay, “Her Bodyguard: Sandra Kitt’s The Color of Love as a foundation text for BWWM romance,” Piper Huguley positions Sandra Kitt’s novel Color of Love as an early forerunner for what we now know as the Romance BWWM subgenre in which “skin color does not matter” and in which the black heroine is loved, protected and cherished. Huguley contextualizes her close readings using discussions of interracial marriage during slavery and Jim Crow segregation as well using history on the production and publication of novels by Black women writers in the 1990s.
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Sandra Kitt’s The Color of Love (1995) was published and set into motion, unintentionally, an entirely new arm of romance publishing that permitted the ever-loyal audience of Black women readers to embrace the romance subgenre known as BWWM (Black Women and White Men), which, in turn, created a foundation for the Interracial Romance subgenre that still forms an important part of the romance industry to this day.
Here's the description of this essay which appears in the introduction to the special issue:
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