The roots of English language romance are generally traced to Samuel
Richardson’s 1740 novel, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded and the works of
Jane Austen.
The African-American branches of the romance family tree move from
there to the first known full-length novel written by an African-
American, Clotel or The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave
Life in the United States by William Wells Brown. Published in
England in 1853, the novel is based on rumors about Thomas
Jefferson’s relationships with his slave, Sally Hemings. Speculation
on the exact nature of the Hemings-Jefferson relationship has
continued for nearly two centuries. (In 1979, Barbara Chase-Riboud
released her own controversial version of the story, Sally Hemings,
edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at Viking. The author also
published a sequel, The President’s Daughter.)
Six years after publication of Brown’s book, Our Nig, or Sketches
from the Life of a Free Black in a Two-Story White House, North by
Harriet E. Wilson was released. It is the first novel published in
the United States and predates Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life
of a Slave Girl (1861), and Frances E.W. Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892).
Our Nig was republished in 1983, largely as a result of efforts by
Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University.
The novel, which is believed to be autobiographical, deals with race
and gender issues in the slave system and exposes Northern hypocrisy
on the slave question. Wilson tells the story of Maggie Smith “alone
and inexperienced . . . as she merged into womanhood, unprotected,
uncherished and uncared for . . . ”
During the first half of the twentieth century, two novelists whose
works have greatly influenced the development of the range of African-
American women’s fiction — including romance – are Pauline Hopkins
and Zora Neale Hurston.
READING, `RITING AND REJECTION
Harlequin Romances were born in 1949 in the midst of the post-World
War II era. In the years that followed, the line’s covers and themes
kept pace with the lives and loves of white America. As the romance
genre evolved in this country, African-American women were more like
to be readers than writers of mainstream romances publications.
Aspiring African-American authors were told Blacks “don’t read, can’t
write, don’t buy books.” Furthermore, they were told that their
stories held no appeal for white Americans. In an unguarded moment,
one book editor quipped “Nobody wants to read about grits and greens.”
But Black writers continued churning out stories about male-female
relationships. Their stories were published. The historical romances
of Frank Yerby – while denounced by critics for their style and by
Blacks for their disregard of racial themes – were best sellers.
Three novels had African-American central characters Speak Now: A
Modern Novel (1969), The Dahomean: An Historical Novel (1971), and
its sequel, A Darkness in Ingraham’s Crest, (1979). At the time of
his death in Spain in 1991, Yerby’s 33 novels had sold more than 50
million copies. Foxes of Yarrow and several others were made into
motion pictures. Many of his readers had no idea Yerby was Black.
McFadden/Sterling publications, best known for its True Confessions
magazines, published a line of pulp magazines aimed at Black
consumers. Bronze Thrills, Black Romance and Jive — along with True
Confessions – published early short stories by current romance
novelists Donna Hill, Francis Ray, Louré Bussey and Sinclair LeBeau.
Nathasha Brooks-Harris, True Confessions editor who bought many of
these early stories, will release her first romance, Panache under
the Genesis Press imprint early next year.
“When we started out, we took slings and arrows from not only the
majority, but from the minority,” recalls author Beverly
Jenkins. “Folks on both sides of the aisle questioned our sanity,
our talent and our audacity for wanting to write romances.”
In 1980, journalist Elsie B. Washington, writing under the pseudonym
of Rosalind Welles, published Entwined Destinies. It is believed to
be the first known romance featuring African-American characters
written by an African American author. (There have been earlier
romances featuring white characters penned by African-American
authors, but in order to sell within in the romance genre, the
writers preferred to remain racially anonymous.) Entwined Destinies
was published under the Dell Candlelight imprint under the guidance
of editor Vivian Stephens.
VIVIAN STEPHENS
Vivian Stephens has an interesting history within the genre. One of
only a few African-American editors in the publishing field, Stephens
bought the first works of several romance authors whose names now
regularly appear on The New York Times bestseller’s list. As an
editor with Dell Candlelight, she published Entwined Destinies.
Later, during her tenure with Harlequin, she has been credited with
modernizing and “Americanizing” the romance genre. Stephens put into
place the concepts for the Harlequin American Romance, Harlequin
Intrigue and Harlequin American Premier Editions. With author
Rochelle Alers, she began Women Writers of Color. In 1980, Stephens
founded Romance Writers of America in her native Houston with authors
Rita Clay Estrada, Rita Gallagher, Parris Afton Bonds, Sondra
Stanford and Peggy Cleaves.
ROMANCE IN THE EIGHTIES
In the early 1990s Los Angeles’ Holloway House Group published
Heartline Romances which featured African-American characters. The
line was discontinued when the company’s bottom line indicated there
was “no market” for such romances. Holloway House’s brief entree into
the romance genre is paradoxical. The publisher is best known for its
so-called “ghetto literature” which includes pulp fiction novels by
Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim’s Pimp: The Story of My Life. Holloway
House also publishes a line of adult men’s entertainment magazines
which includes Players, a periodical aimed at Black men. Indeed, most
of the romances were written by many of the same men who wrote for
the company’s periodicals and fiction imprints.
Years later, Maryland writer Leticia Peoples became increasingly
frustrated by her inability to find a publisher for her romances. She
founded Odyssey Books to publish African-American romances. The short-
lived company published works by many African-American romance
novelists currently publishing in the genre, including Rochelle
Alers, Donna Hill, Francis Ray, Mildred Riley and Crystal Wilson-
Harris.
Harlequin, the publisher whose name is synonymous with romance,
released Sandra Kitt’s Adam and Eva in 1985. It was the line’s first
romance by and about African-Americans. Kitt also has the
distinction of being the first author for the Arabesque line. She has
since carved out a niche writing interracial romance for Signet.
However, during her tenure with Harlequin, Kitt’s romances generally
featured white characters.
The works of only a few African-Americans have been published by
Harlequin and its various imprints, and the publisher estimates
that “five or six” of the publisher’s 1,200 authors are Black. They
include Eva Rutland, Maggie Ferguson and Gwen Pemberton. (Pemberton’s
Wooing Wanda, a romance with white characters, won an RWA Golden
Heart award in 1996.)
In August of 1992, Silhouette released Unforgivable, by Chassie West,
writing as Joyce McGill. The romantic suspense novel was the line’s
first romance by an African-American author to feature Black
characters. In her introductory letter in Unforgivable, Leslie
Wainger, Silhouette’s senior editor and editorial consultant wrote:
“…Over the years, one question has been asked of me many times.
Sometimes the letter writer identifies herself as black, sometimes as
a woman of color, sometimes as an African-American. But always the
question is the same: Why aren’t you publishing books about women
like me, black women meeting and falling in love with black men?
Always my correspondent tells me that she enjoys our books anyway – a
compliment I am happy to receive on behalf of all our talented
authors – but that just one book about a black couple would make her
happy, make her feel that she belongs fully to the fellowship of
readers spanning the globe . . . ”
Gwen Osborne aka Word Diva
