Oh Interracial/Multicultural Romance how we love thee!
If I'm being honest, it's extremely hard for either one of us to read a romance book that doesn't feature at least one person of color. Women are preferred as the PoC and even better if it's two people of color( Guin loves her some AMBW and I'm a sucker for LMBW) but even when we do find what looks like a dream from the blurb there have been so many books that made me want to give up on Multi-culti and I/R altogether. Some are personal reasons. Like I think I'll pull my hair out if I pick up another book with a light skinned Bi-Racial heroine as the default beauty. When I read romance, it's partly for escape, the other half being I wanna envy a relationship between two lead characters. If I envy what two characters have, emotionally, sexually, physically and intellectually, that meant the author did an excellent job at poking at my mind. But sometimes when I pick up a book and it follows the same struggles we as black women deal with on a daily basis like colorism and fetishism or a constant reminder that a person didn't inter-racially date before their love interest, I get so bored.
I, for one know that interracially dating isn't always easy. As a woman of Afro-Cuban descent everyone always thinks it's easy when I tell them my dating history consists of mainly Latino men.
"But you're Latina, you have an 'in', you're both Latin."
True, but it isn't easy and many times I have to ask myself if certain men like "negritas" because not all Latino men do, Latina or not. Which is why I'm on the lookout for more romances that feature stories that don't make a huge focus on race, because I so don't need that in my life, I just want to read a book about a couple who argues about money, or commitment or even having kids.
Here is a list of ten authors I think do a great job at that and if anyone has suggestions, please let a sista know in the comments!
1. Kim Golden
2. Lavender Parker
3. L.Penelope
4. Pepper Pace( Note: I wouldn't say she never dismisses race. A few of her books mentioned it a lot but I still really like the stories I picked up from her, especially since she puts a lot of unlikely people together)
5. Rebekah Weatherspoon(Note: Her FIT series is a good example of not making a big deal about race. All her heroes and heroines differed from each other and once it was mentioned, it didn't have to be mentioned constantly, A huge plus for me)
6. Danielle Allen
7. Christina C. Jones(Sort of a given since all her Heroes and Heroines are AA)
8. Nana Malone (Note: Can I mention that I love the fact that a lot of her heroines are of direct African descent?Most heroines in Multicultural and Interracial are African American so whenever I read a heroine that's African, Caribbean or Afro-Latina, I'm always excited to see how their culture comes into play with the story.)
9. Michelle N.Onuorah-(Note: She writes mostly Spiritual/Christian Romance as a warning but the few books I picked up by her, her heroines were beautiful and race wasn't a big factor.)
10. Dorothy Koomson
Thanks for taking the stop here on this blog hop! Don't forget to hop around and meet new authors as well as a chance to win a crapload of prizes!
No comments:
Post a Comment