Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters is currently $1.99 in ebook form. It’s a collection of essays, edited by columnist and librarian Jessica P. Pryde, exploring romance in a media landscape where Happily Ever After has long been overwhelmingly white.[efn_note]And cis and het and capped with a Christian wedding and kids to exclude as many people as possible. Many of these intersections are also mentioned in this book.[/efn_note]
The collection begins with “A Short History of African American Romance” by acclaimed romance author Beverly Jenkins. Rising to the challenge of following Miz Bev are Allie Parker (“Imprint”), Carole V. Bell (“I’m Rooting for Everybody Black: Black Solidarity, Black World-Building, and Black Love”), Nicole M. Jackson (“Finding Queer Black Women in Romance, Finding Bits and Pieces of Me”), Adriana Herrera (“Writing in the Gaps: Black Latinx in Romance”), Margo Hendricks (“How a Black Author Found Her Romance History”), Jasmine Guillory (“Food of Love”), Julie Moody-Freeman (“Black Cultural Studies and Black Love: Why Black Love Matters”), Kosoko Jackson (“Please, Sir, Can I Have Some More: How Breadcrumbs of Queer Characters in Entertainment Helped Me Establish My Own Sense of Self”), Piper Huguley (“In Search of the Black Historical Hottie Hero: The Sad Situation of the Black Hero in Historical Romance”), Jessica P. Pryde (“Interracial Romance and the Single Story”), Sarah Hannah Gomez (“Romance Has Broken My Dichotomous Key”), Da’Shaun Harrison (“[Black] Love Is… [Black] Love Ain’t”), and Christina C. Jones (“Black Indie Romance”).
It’s a fantastic group of Black voices, which makes it enjoyable as a nonfiction leisure read. It’s also an invitation to think about how you engage with stories, whether as the audience or a creator, knowing what it means to people to see themselves (or not) in those stories.
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