Changing Story Lines In Romance Novels
Growing up in Minnesota, Helen Hoang suffered from social anxiety and struggled to make friends. She found refuge in romance novels, which allowed her to experience i ntense feelings, always with the promise of a happy ending. “It was like I found a pure, undiluted drug,” she said.
Later, as a mother of two in her 30s, Ms. Hoang realized she was on the autism spectrum, a condition making it difficult for her to hold conversations and meet people. She again turned to romance. But this time, she wrote the story herself.
So far, romance fans have swooned over Ms. Hoang’s debut novel, “The Kiss Quotient,” a multicultural love story centered on an autistic woman who has trouble navigating the nuances of dating and courtship. Readers have flooded the website Goodreads with more than 7,000 positive ratings, and the book, published in June, is already in its fourth printing.
The novel’s success is all the more astonishing given the striking lack of diversity in the romance genre. Romance novels released by big publishing houses tend to center on white characters, and rarely feature gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people in leading roles, or heroines with disabilities.
The landscape is slowly starting to change, as more diverse writers break into the genre, and publishers take chances on love stories that reflect a broader range of experiences. Forever Yours publishes Karelia Stetz-Waters, who writes romances about lesbian couples. Uzma Jalaluddin’s debut novel, “Ayesha at Last,” takes place in a Muslim community in Canada.
“Readers want books that reflect the world they live in, and they won’t settle for a book about a small town where every single person is white,” said Leah Koch, co- owner of the Ripped Bodice, a bookstore in Culver City, California.
Ms. Koch and her sister Bea found that of the 3,752 romance novels released by 20 major imprints in America in 2017, only about 6 percent were written by nonwhite authors.
Publishers say it’s a challenge to diversify because most submissions still come from white authors. The genre’s largest group, the Romance Writers of America, with about 10,000 members, found in a survey that nearly 86 percent of its members are white. The group has faced scrutiny over its Rita Award, which has never gone to an African-American writer in the 36-year history of the prize. Black authors have accounted for less than 1 percent of finalists.
“It was eye- opening,” Dee Davis, the group’s president, said of the survey results. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Many minority writers say they face more hurdles than their white peers when it comes to signing with an agent, finding a publisher, getting reviews and convincing bookstores to carry their novels. Beverly Jenkins, an African-American romance novelist who began publishing historical romances in the 1990s, said that plenty of diverse romance was being written, but too little of it was being acquired by major houses. “There are hundreds of women of color who are writing romance,” she said. “The issue is getting them published so they’re seen.”
Some writers have turned to smaller presses, digital- only outlets or self-publishing.
Alyssa Cole, who has published romances set during the Civil War with African- American protagonists, said, “Part of the problem is some publishers say, O. K., we need more diversity, we’ll just have our white authors write more diversely.”
More diverse characters and writers find a home.