Reading While Black

YouTube APIA Month Tribute: “Asians Rock: What’s Your Story?”

Asia Society YouTube Page
[Source]

ONE MAN

A Chinese monk striding down the aisle was the first shock at countess-to-be Evelyn Stanton’s wedding. To watch him dispatch three groomsmen, unarmed, and to learn that he was white and the long-lost heir to the Earldom of Warhaven, was the second. He would be her husband?

ONE MISSION

After the slaughter of his family in far-off China, Jacob Cato found sanctuary. In a Xi Lin temple he learned to be strong, but now he had a grander goal: to reclaim his English heritage and the woman he’d left behind.

ONE DESTINY

Revenge. It poisoned everything he’d learned, everything he’d done, and yet every fiber of Jacob burned for it—just as he burned for the beautiful but very English Evelyn. Long ago, the conspiracy to kill his family had stranded him, lost Jacob in the exotic East and made him unrecognizable to his countrymen…and women. He had not forgotten that past. It was to make peace that he had returned. The manner was yet to be decided.

Here are a few posts about the conference!

Slam Jam: Evening One - Seressia Glass

Write Black:
Romance Slam Jam: Celeste O. Norfleet, Lisa G. Riley
Romance Slam Jam: Swagalicious
Romance Slam Jam: Keynote Luncheon/Speech
Romance Slam Jam: Author Beverly Jenkins talks about conference
Romance Slam Jam: Day Two

Black Authors Network
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

OMG! Beverly Jenkins has a pirate romance in the works?! Publish now!

Hopefully, there is more to come!

A recent article in the WSJ narrarated the journalist’s experience at Duke University, one of the many campuses across America where Senator Barack Obama garners an unprecedented amount of support (70% to Senator Clinton’s 30%) that crosses the lines of color, gender and class. “But after classes — and after the occasional Obama rally — most black and white students on college campuses go their separate ways, living in separate dormitories, joining separate fraternities and sororities and attending separate parties.”

Voting for Obama is an easier choice, a student interviewed said:

“When you’re actually trying to change your behavior, you are putting more on the line compared to voting in the privacy of the booth,” he says. “There are millions and millions of people voting for Obama. In no way are you sticking your neck out.”

I was struck by this article because it rather reminds me of the clash that occurs when the topic of racism and segregation in the publishing industry–the romance genre in particular–is raised. Everyone is whipped in a lather, and the trite phrases: “I don’t see color,” “I have friends/lovers/relatives of all different races,” or the doozy: “I just want a good book” are trotted out, despite evidence to the contrary. For a brief moment in the discussion, everyone is on the same page, patting their backs over having raised awareness of the situation and for their perceived tolerance and love for diversity.

Then along comes the “I shouldn’t be forced to read black romance novels” battle-cry, which signifies righteous anger against attempts to make one feel “guilty” (definition: “Responsible for a dishonest act“). The tide turns and suddenly, the participants trot out any variation of the “Author X writes minority characters and is successful” argument. As though ugh, it is your fault you’re not as successful as Author X, stop trying to pin the “blame” on me. The conversation generally dissipates by then, hackles raised and nostrils flaring, the haves pitting on the side against the have-nots. Then it withers away and a lot of folks feel the last sentiment is justified and go back to ignoring the issue.

And this has happened um…how many times? With the same non-result? Yeah…insanity (definition: “extreme folly; senselessness; foolhardiness.”).

The romance genre closes ranks when outsiders sneer at it and it is ignored by the mainstream, yet within, a group is marginalized and ignored. [x]

And dare I even go as far to wonder why sexuality trumps race within the genre? Very interesting how readers and writers will fight tooth and nail against anything regarding non-vanilla types of sexuality as abhorrent, yet crickets chirp when the lack of color (and even non-WASPs)–and no, those fetishized and offensive “savage Indian” romances, billionaire shiekhs, and Greek tycoons don’t count–is questioned. Or a more realistic scenario: no one even questions the “whiteness” of the genre.

I can go to bat with the best of them. If you were a frequent visitor to AAR, you’d see that 99% of my 500+ posts are just about books and reading, so I can never be accused of failing to put my “race” aside to discuss my enjoyment of the romance genre. But I do however, feel obligated to be conscientious about the dynamics that are in play within this stratified society.

One can say that the online romance community makes up a small percentage of the general romance reading public and has no effect on buzz, but the presence of a review quote from Dear Author (a site but two years old!) on the cover of Meljean Brook’s upcoming novel tells otherwise. If this online community possesses readers who delve deeper than sighing over cover models and gobbling romances indiscriminately, readers who are on the cutting-edge of the genre, why is this issue, a powerful issue, deemed out of our hands?

Via the POC in SciFi Carnival No. 9:

I had the line “It’s Nikki Wood’s fucking coat” long before I had a song or a vidder or a title.

Spike wears the long black duster from his first appearance on Buffy, but we only find out its history in S5’s “Fool for Love.” Spike relates his history to Buffy (in, it’s strongly implied, somewhat unreliable terms) and the viewers see how he came to adopt his Johnny Rotten persona in a series of flashbacks.
…Two of Spike’s physical identifiers — the scar through one eyebrow and the coat he wears — are souvenirs of the Slayers he’s fought and killed: the Chinese Slayer slashes his face during their final battle and he steals the coat off the body of a black Slayer in the ’70s subways of New York after he kills her. Spike responds, ultimately, to rejection by a woman by the murder of other women and by stealing their identifiers–their identities, their stories–for his own.

…Even in “Fool for Love,” it’s clear that Spike misunderstands the Slayers he’s fought as he misunderstands Buffy: he thinks that the Slayers’ lives and thoughts center on him, that they are as obsessed with his Romantic conflation of sex and death as he is. He argues that they died because they didn’t want to live enough; he argues that Slayers are as in love with death as he is….His denial that Nikki’s maternal feelings were as important as her role as Slayer once again erases her personhood–and it’s notable that the only personal aspect of Nikki Wood we ever see is another relational role defining her, that of mother.

Robin strips his mother’s coat off Spike before beginning the fight, but Spike wins and reclaims Nikki’s coat as his own, as a symbol of his defeat of Robin and of his triumph over his own unpleasant memories…the return of the coat by the head of the Italian office of Wolfram & Hart as an acknowledgement that wearing the coat represents the evil Spike’s done: but most of the time I just feel like the show is fucking taunting me, holding justice just out of my reach. And this is the problem, this is where I can’t speak in the detached academic tone anymore, this is not where the understanding of the character breaks down but where the understanding of the text does. Because ultimately the text argues what Spike does: that it’s Spike’s story that counts.

And Spike goes out of the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer like he came in: wearing Nikki Wood’s fucking coat.

He might as well be wearing her flayed skin.

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