#Diversityinlove Black people are real, Vampires are not. Can you relate?
Growing up, I wasn't a fan of romance novels. I know. Sounds strange, right. But I got tired of stretching my brain to turn blue eyes brown, porcelain skin tan and long blonde hair into an afro.
So, I read three books and decided that I was done with these love books because obviously they didn't reflect my life and my reality.
What's more romantic than a war hero returning home and getting married on Christmas Eve. That's a real story, my mom and dad's to be specific. Of course, I've been told that I can't write about their love story. However, I'm inspired by them every time I sit down at the computer and open up blank document.
Then there's my sister, married to a Marine and a cop, 25 years they've been together, faced a war —like Desert Storm— and held each other through some real life loses. She also told me that I am not authorized to tell her story. Yet, when I sit down and plot my Marine romance, I think about my sister and my brother-in-law.
What pisses me off and makes me want to throw rocks at people is the lack of respect given to romances written by people of color by these so called experts. From publishers to bloggers, we get no respect.
Make no mistake, this is a business and it's about selling books. The romance novel industry is a billion dollar business, yet minority writers struggle to get their piece of the pie. It's as if some gate keeper at some big publishing house said, we're going to let two, maybe three minority authors get ahead and the rest of them can suffer!
Let me drop some knowledge on you about
minority characters:
So, I read three books and decided that I was done with these love books because obviously they didn't reflect my life and my reality.
What's more romantic than a war hero returning home and getting married on Christmas Eve. That's a real story, my mom and dad's to be specific. Of course, I've been told that I can't write about their love story. However, I'm inspired by them every time I sit down at the computer and open up blank document.
Then there's my sister, married to a Marine and a cop, 25 years they've been together, faced a war —like Desert Storm— and held each other through some real life loses. She also told me that I am not authorized to tell her story. Yet, when I sit down and plot my Marine romance, I think about my sister and my brother-in-law.
What pisses me off and makes me want to throw rocks at people is the lack of respect given to romances written by people of color by these so called experts. From publishers to bloggers, we get no respect.
Make no mistake, this is a business and it's about selling books. The romance novel industry is a billion dollar business, yet minority writers struggle to get their piece of the pie. It's as if some gate keeper at some big publishing house said, we're going to let two, maybe three minority authors get ahead and the rest of them can suffer!
Let me drop some knowledge on you about
minority characters:
- Minority heroes and heroines can have PhDs and it's not far fetched to believe that it is true.
- Black men are not scary. They're pretty sexy and they don't all look like Idris Elba.
- Neck rolling and hand tossing is not a trait of black women.
- African American is not a fucking category!
- Black people, Asian people, Hispanic people are real. Werewolves, vampires and shape-shifters are not —yet, you can't identify with minority characters?
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Cilla