I probably won’t be very popular. Outside of reading the “AA” fiction I’ve increasingly purchased/borrowed, I’m not really into the popular authors most online readers adore. JR Ward’s cultural approbation has angered me since I bought and promptly returned Book 1, Nora Roberts/JD Robb bores me, I don’t read paranormal romances because I can’t wrap my mind around human/vampire mating in a romance genre context (he’ll have to turn her eventually to keep her from getting old–and werewolves are better anyways! But I do love me some urban fantasy) , I’ve only read one Linda Howard book, and for that instance am practically clueless about romantic suspense outside of Allison Brennan, and that’s only because she’s from my area, tend to stick to historicals but detest most of today’s Regencies, and am generally the type of reader who stubbornly refuses to read books/authors everyone raves over unless I discovered them without any hoopla. And oh yeah, I don’t actively seek out erotica/erotic romance and am still in that skeptical crowd in reference to e-books(burnt!) That said, I am a Judith Ivory fangirl and she is the only romance author of which I am unabashedly biased towards.
That said, I finally slogged through Kalen Hughes’ Lord Sin and cleansed my palate with Laura Kinsale’s Midsummer Moon (the first Kinsale that didn’t leave me frustrated after I finished it). Could not finish the Safaa book (*shudder*) , am waiting on my library to send me the Jenkins, and the Amos is in the queue along with Rock Star. And oh yeah, the Harris review went haywire since I loved the book so much, I had to read the entire series again–and wasted a week and half of reading them instead of other books. *GGG*
June 5, 2007
Yanno…as I was flipping through my recently arrived RT issue (Jul 07) I blinked and felt this odd sensation of anger fill me when I saw the phrase “African-American” at the top of reviews in the various categories. I can’t describe it, but all of the sudden I really and truly got “it” and wondered aloud: “why does it say ‘African-American’ above the review?” My mind was just boggled over the label, a label that made it seem as though black people live on a separate planet, that people who don’t want to read about black people need to be warned about the color of the h/h’s skin. Some people may claim it’s there to help those who do want to read about a black h/h identify that the book is an “AA” romance, but that is pure crap when it’s clear that the label “African-American” does not possess the same connotation as the label “Humorous” when it is placed over a review for a mystery novel, or even when a book is labeled “Erotic”.
Why not you say? Because “African-American” is setting the book apart based on the race of the characters, whereas “erotic” sets the book apart based on its sexual content and “humorous” lets readers know that the mystery isn’t going to be a hard-boiled Sam Spade-type of book. It’s used to keep readers from being “tricked” into reading a romance featuring characters who don’t look like them, or whom they have grown accustomed to viewing as a “monolithic culture” (or psuedo-”raceless”) aka white/Caucasian (though I hate that term because the Caucasus is in Central Europe *eyeroll*). A few panelists at WisCon brought up the topic of “writing white” despite their PoC status because that was all they were exposed to and consciously, never found it strange that when they first sat down to write, they didn’t automatically view their narrative through someone of their own race/ethnicity.
I think it’s fine to express feeling uncomfortable with reading narrative through someone else’s culture because hey, sometimes I feel odd about reading street-lit because I did not grow up in that sort of environment. What I think is hypocritical and makes me angry is when people don’t own up to their resistance of feeling uncomfortable in an effort to deceive themselves into thinking they are so “accepting” (yanno, like that phrase “I don’t discriminate! When I read I don’t care if the characters are black, white or purple!”). Well newsflash–of course you don’t think about color when you’re reading because you, like most people of any race, assume the characters are white, and it is a shock to the senses, senses who have been used to viewing the world of literature through that “white” lens for centuries that when a character or characters are deliberately described as having darker skin, or coarser hair, or think on things that would never cross the mind of the average white person, it’s a given that you would instantly recoil in an effort to protect yourself from something threatening and/or uncomfortable. Natural reaction–you wouldn’t keep your hand on an iron after the first sensation of heat singed your skin. I just want people to own up to it because ubi veritas ibi libertas.
June 5, 2007
