Black Love Matters

December 13, 2021
Book Riot columnist Pryde collects 14 essays on the myriad forms that Black romance takes in this moving and original anthology. Pryde spotlights in her introduction the “fraught road to publication” Black romance stories have faced: “There is something utterly transformative about being exposed to Black love—whether in a book, on a screen, or in real life.” The essays that follow discuss romance in many forms: in “A Short History of African American Romance,” Beverly Jenkins studies Black romance writers post-Reconstruction, while in “Finding Queer Black Women in Romance. Finding Bits and Pieces of Me,” Nicole M. Jackson recounts her quest to find celebratory Black queer love on screen: “Far too many of the stories I’ve found were unhappy, and not in the Kill Your Gays™ way, but in the Forever Alone kind of way.” Julie E. Moody-Freeman, meanwhile, describes developing a college course on Black love in “Black Cultural Studies and Black Love,” and Pryde surveys the genre tropes surrounding interracial romance in “Interracial Romance and the Single Story.” The collection’s strength is in its thoughtfulness and wealth of perspectives. The result is as unique as it is heartfelt. Agent: Tara Gelsomino, One Track Literary Agency.

Starred review from December 15, 2021
An anthology that collects a refreshingly wide variety of perspectives on Black love. In her first book, Pryde, a librarian, contributing editor to Book Riot, and co-host of the When in Romance podcast, sets out to discuss often overlooked narratives regarding the joyfulness of Black love. "For more than 400 years," she writes in the introduction, "people of African descent have been treated abysmally in many nations of the world....Yet, whether free or enslaved, Black people throughout history have been able to find romantic love--regardless of their ability to marry--both inside and outside their own communities." Over the course of a dozen essays, the contributors confront the absence of faces and stories like theirs. As they show, telling the truth about Black love is fraught with obstacles, and misconceptions about interest in Black experiences abound. "According to Pew Research," writes Pryde, "the person most likely to read a book in the United States is a college-educated Black woman." However, essayists highlight their experiences with publishers who tell them their work won't sell. Others lay bare the tradition of the White-centered nature of most romance novels--and novels in general. In "Romance Has Broken My Dichotomous Key," Sarah Hannah Gomez writes, "I'm biracial, black/white, Chicana, adopted, Jewish. That's a lot of things, and I didn't see myself in a lot of books growing up." A theme of persistence emerges: Black writers must tell these stories no matter what, whether it involves self-publishing a book or designing a college course on Black love. The refreshing intersectionality of the book is reflected in such essays as "Finding Queer Black Women in Romance," "Writing in the Gaps: Black Latinx in Romance," and "Interracial Romance and the Single Story." The text also includes a list of relevant, recommended books, movies, and TV shows. Readers will come away with a robust education in Black love and literature.

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