Years of reading about mostly white, blue-eyed characters gave me the impression that the writers and book industry gatekeepers didn’t care enough about people like me (a young Black woman) or my mom (a grown Black woman) to write and publish romances that included and spoke to us.Įvery now and then, I did discover a few novels that centered the romantic lives of Black girls and women ’90s cult classics like Omar Tyree’s Flyy Girls and Sister Soulah’s The Coldest Winter Ever were passed around like hotcakes at my school. Well, my issue wasn’t with the genre itself, more so with the lack of diversity in most of the stories. I continued reading these novels well into my teenage years but still wasn’t completely sold on the genre. Talking about romance books with my mom sparked some of the realest conversations we’ve ever had.
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