October 06, 2005

Topic: Interracial Romance Novels

Browsing through Amazon, I happened upon the reviews of this Interracial Romance (IR) fan. It struck me as strange that someone could be so hooked on IR as a category, and then it struck me as rather strange that I don't read more IR, myself. I mean, I am the product of an IR, and my marriage is interracial. Why wouldn't I want to read about relationships that reflect my life?

Maybe because they usually don't. Reflect my life, that is. In the few IRs I have read, the thing that keeps the hero and heroine apart is usually race. Families and friends make a big deal of it; the couple gets grief, has cultural differences, etc. Aside from a few ignorant questions and comments from strangers, Hubby and I never had any IR drama. We met like any two people, fell in love, shacked up, and then got hitched. We did do a bit of learning about each other's cultures but it was open and fun.

And it's not as though we're unusual. Three of our five closest couple friends are interracial. The couple with the greatest cultural differences is actually one of the two same-race couples. Technically they're both white, but he's European, and she's American. Of the five couples, I'd say they're the one with the most cluture-clash and family drama.

In mainstream Romance novels, white chicks are always getting the Happily Ever After with the tall, dark and European man of their dreams, and there is rarely a big deal made of the language and cultural difference. But stick two American characters of different races together - people who speak the same language and are at least a little familiar with each other's cultures - and readers seem to expect drama. The IR fan I mentioned above wrote the following to the white author of an IR romance:

...you need to really leave your sheltered section of Michigan and come out to the real world of interracial romance and not this watered down acceptance that you have written.*

Michigan probably has more IR hangups than California, but the "real world" of interracial romance has - in my experience and in the experience of most people in my age group and geographic area - plenty of acceptance. Is it too much to ask to see this acceptance reflected every now and again in a story about two people from different cultures, but the same country, who are lucky enough to find love?

Topics for Another Day:
Why is it that the "Interracial Romance" category only seems to cover stories about black-white relationships, and never those supposedly mainstream stories about clueless white girls who get swept off their feet and into bed by hot-blooded Latinos, or dark, mysterious (racially mixed, English-speaking, non-Muslim) sheiks? And why don't those trash from the past Loincloth Love Stories featuring virtuous settler women and noble savages count as IR? And where the hell are all the Asians? My completely unscientific observations and disgruntled male Asian friends suggest that one of the fastest-growing types of interracial relationships is Asian woman / white man. Where the hell are they, huh?

*I haven't read the book in question, and, I don't live in Michigan so I can't make any judgments about how realistic its portrayal of IR in the upper Midwest is.

Links updated Nov. 8, 2005. Because, dayum, if you plug any ethnicity but African into the Amazon search along with the words "Harlequin Presents" you will get a long-ass list of books with that ethnicity and the word "virgin", "mistress", or "wife" in the title. Thanks to the Smart Bitches for inspiration.

Posted by sk :: 10/06/2005 :: 0 comments

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