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About Travel Geek
Travel, travel, travel. I love new places, new smells, new food, new people, new stories, new experiences, and the list goes on. Fortunately, I have had a job that gives gave me the opportunity to travel around the world and live in different cities. Unfortunately, having a Niña doesn't make travel and relocation easy. But she adapts fairly well and is beginning to appreciate extraordinary life experiences. I just wish I had her ability to rapidly overcome jetlag.
About this site: this site (or some rendition of it) has been around for most of the 2000s; it was in 2007 while on a trip to New York that I was inspired to start writing about travel. Days later wend.ca/travelgeek.ca was born.
About me: I'm Canadian (a.k.a. Canuck)… was born in "Upper Canada" (Ontario), spent most of my childhood buried under snow in the Maritimes (Nova Scotia), went to school in Alberta (and got stuck there for a decade), lived in the United States… Europe… India, and recently moved to Québec. I have university degrees in History/English, Archaeology (spec: Forensic Anthropology), and part of a Cinema, Television, Stage, Radio and Multimedia (CTSRM) diploma.
I'm a swimmer. Always have been. Always will be. This means that I can be cold, wet, miserable, in pain, starving to death… and still keep going. That's what swimmers do.
Jobs I've had include working as a lifeguard, police research assistant, fitness instructor, archaeologist, geek, photographer, writer, and a berry picker. Believe me, you don't know hell until you've mucked around in mud and berries for an entire summer.
I believe in finding ways to help others be awesome. This includes helping with research and genealogy. My superpower is finding things and people (like here). Feel free to reach out to hello@wend.ca to start a conversation! Please don't suck!
Cameras and devices used:
Canon Rebel XT (modified)
Lumix FS 65
Pentax Ricoh WG-20 14MP Waterproof Digital Camera
iPad mini, which I now use as a phone.
The device graveyard:
Google Nexus 6P (2018) (Killed in Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia while kayaking.)
HTC 10 M10 (Killed in Hunt's Point, NS after acting like a diva for months.)
Google Nexus 6P (2017) (killed in Repentigny, Québec after sliding off my dashboard and landing glass first onto my Canon 5D… the gorilla glass actually survived but everything under it shattered!!)
Google Nexus 5 (stolen in Magog, Québec; it's a mystery how… but it was stolen… and we were forced to do a remote kill on the device.)
Canon SX-280HS (killed by dropping on a cement floor in Toronto, ON.)
Galaxy Note II (GPS died in Jackson, CA. Was resurrected but stopped booting in Los Angeles. For some reason LA is not kind to phones.)
Google Nexus 4 (died in Los Angeles; I'm not sure why but it suddenly stopped booting; it was later stolen by a construction guy in Calgary. I hope he enjoys the dead phone.)
Lumix LX3 (killed by too much sand, sun, snow, water, + general abuse)
MacBook Air (2013) (killed by Vancouver airport security during a secondary search)
MacBook Air (2014) (killed in Mountain View CA by a friendly dog and a large soy latte)
Google Nexus One (killed by Calgary airport x-ray machines, which I could repeatedly reproduce)
Samsung Galaxy S2 (killed by Vodafone Network in Ireland)
Pentax K-1000 (killed by sliding off Grotto Mountain in Canmore)
8 comments on "About"Add yours →
John Wright says:
Wonder if I knew your grandfather? I helped open the RCAF base at Decimomannu Sardinia in the spring of 1956.
sharlene says:
It's possible. Woody was his nickname… and he was a Brit serving in the Canadian military and would have been 34-years old in 1956. He also served in Britain, France and Germany (my mom still remembers kids from the bases). My grandfather passed away a few years ago at 92.
There's an old photo of him here (wedding): http://www.wend.ca/?p=5683
There is an old post about him that seems to have gone missing, which I'll see if I can find. It's about stories from WW2.
Deborah Dolla says:
We are cousins, Samuel Maxwell McKinnon is my great uncle. I'm the granddaughter of Cecelia Lillian McKinnon, his sister. I found your article of great interest, and have printed it for my mother. I went to Mill Village with my Grandmother in 1974, and met a number of family members at that time. I've been contacted by a number of people by way of ancestry.com, and periodically I try to figure out the connections.
Pleased to meet you, Deborah… cousin! Perhaps you've already found my father who has been studying the family history for decades…? I'll reach out to you via email because I *think* I have a photo or two of your grandmother.
Bob Mckinnon says:
When I did my DNA I discovered back in May /18 that I have a cousin in California named Kirk Davenport (descended from David and Martha Mckinnon via Cecelia. So we have the same G Grandparents. I exchanged some pictures with him.
Ileana says:
I have used an article you wrote over Edith Piaf, and need to cite you, do you mind giving me you're last name?
James Busby says:
Hi Just found your web site while researching someone else. My great-uncle Frank Thorsteinson was also in B Company of the 209th, later serving with D Company of the 10th. He was fatally wounded by gas on March 12, 1918 during a trench raid. Also wounded in that raid was RW Maynard, whom you mentioned.
One thing that may help you locate Max is to note the map reference on his E 13 Graves Registration form. SM McKinnon had a known grave at Sheet 51b, B.5.a.8.4. The soldier I was researching, also KIA on April 28, 1917, was originally buried at Sheet 51b, B.6.a.9.4. Those two map references are not far apart, and may indicate temporary burial grounds.
Hey! Thanks for this lead, James. I believe there was a temporary grave because I've managed to track down the spot… and the 4 soldiers from that one particular spot. I'm looking at all the soldiers that died on that day and this group died while crossing the barbed wire (because of a mistake); it's likely they received a field burial. The gap is it doesn't match those where were reburied… and I can't explain it. This is where I am stuck ;).
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The Love Stories of Gina Prince-Bythewood: LOVE AND BASKETBALL and BEYOND THE LIGHTS
I have the privilege of living within walking distance of one of the oldest art house theaters in the country, Harvard Square's Brattle Theater. I don't take advantage of this local treasure nearly as often as I could, but when the Brattle announced a partnership with the Roxbury International Film Festival and The Color of Film to screen a series called "In Our View," featuring films directed by African American women, you bet I put the dates down in my calendar. One date especially: this past Saturday, when the repertoire series focused on love stories.
During the first snowfall of the season, I walked into Harvard Square in my mittens and gloves and sat down in the quiet theater for an amazing double feature, the first and the most recent films by director Gina Prince-Bythewood: Love and Basketball (2000) and Beyond the Lights (2014). As an article about the series on Vanyaland points out, only 12.5% of film directors who released a feature film during 2013 and 2014 were people of color; just 1.6% were women of color. So it's pretty rare to get the chance to view two such films, back to back, and to get to marvel at the talent, beauty, and skill of some pretty amazing black women on display, not on tiny television but up on a large screen.
Even more of a treat was the feminism that played front and center right alongside of actresses Sanaa Lathan (Love & Basketball) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Lights), a feminism that played out not just in the romantic relationships at the heart of each film, but also in the larger family and social dynamics in which these two young women live.
Love and Basketball traces the "four quarters" of Monica Wright's relationship with Quincy "Q" McCall, from the day in 1981 when Monica's family moves into a well-heeled LA neighborhood next door to the McCall family to the days in 1993, right before the adult Quincy is set to marry another woman. Q's first sight of eleven-year-old Monica is as an androgynous kid who asks to join the basketball game, a game of which Q is the obvious leader. When Monica doffs her cap after Q says "yes," he and his two friends can't believe the long-haired girl who is revealed has the least chance of hanging with them on the court. Especially not Quincy, whose father is a professional basketball player and who is determined to follow in that father's footsteps. "I'm gonna be the first girl in the NBA," Monica declares; "I'm gonna be in the NBA, you're gonna be my cheerleader," Quincy counters. But Monica proves more than able to hold her own, frustrating Quincy to such a degree that he finally shoves her off the court, scraping her face roughly on the grass. Monica's mother and sister fuss about the injured Monica in the bathroom in their new home, not able to understand why she can't just act like a girl. But when they finally leave her to herself, Monica breaks into a smile. She's a ball player, and now has the scars to prove it.
The two neighboring families arrange for Quincy to take Monica to school (love those banana bicycle seats!), during which cocky Quincy asks Monica if she wants to be his girl. She agrees, they seal the deal with a kiss (5 seconds long, which Quincy counts off on his fingers), but when he insists that she has to ride behind him on his bike, their short-lived pre-teen romance descends into a punching, rolling wrestling match.
icing each other's injuries
Through the rest of middle and high school, Monica and Quincy focus on playing basketball, warily eyeing each other from across the small patch of grass that separates his bedroom window from hers. Prince-Bythewood highlights the differential treatment families and the culture at large gives to female vs. male athletes: Monica is labeled as having a "bad attitude" on the court because of her drive, and gets penalized by the refs for showing her emotions or acting the least bit aggressive on the court. The same actions make Quincy into a big man on campus. Quincy also has the girls buzzing around him like bees, while Monica never dates. Quincy's mom warns him against being taken in by a grasping girl, while Monica's bemoans her youngest daughter's tomboy ways. Would it really be that hard for her to stop slouching around in sweats and spend more time styling her hair?
But the ballplayer in each of them can't but respect the skill and determination of the other, and by the time their college plans are finalized (Quincy gets to announce at a press conference which of many schools that have been recruiting him he will choose; Monica waits and waits for a single letter offering her a place at a school with a women's basketball program), the two finally find their way romantically to the other.
Life in college isn't as easy as either of them had imagined, though, especially when Quincy's beloved father proves to have feet of the stickiest of clays, and Monica chooses to put her own ballplaying above Quincy's needs. Quincy's punitive reaction might have led to a "oh, you should have made a different choice, girl" kind of message, but instead, Prince-Bythewood takes the opposite stance. And at the film's end, guess who is playing professional ball, and who is holding the baby and cheering on at the sidelines?
Beyond the Lights ends with a similar scene: British pop star Noni Jean singing her solo heart out on a stadium stage, with new love Kaz standing in the wings, cheering her on. But Noni's journey to that triumphant moment is more emotionally fraught than was Monica's. The daughter of a black father who abandoned her white mother, Nona has been the means through which Macy Jean has tried to prove that she's not the nothing everyone said she was when she had a black child out of wedlock. Acting as her manager as well as her mom, Macy and Noni's record label have propelled the sweet-singing Noni into a sexualized pop sensation, pairing her in duets with a white working class British rapper (Kid Culprit) to worldwide acclaim. But on the very night she and Kid Culprit win a major award, she sits on the edge of her hotel balcony, daring herself to jump off.
Her mother's frightened scream brings the LA police officer guarding her door rushing in. Soft-spoken Kaz Nicol (Nate Parker) talks Noni off the ledge with the words "I see you," something Noni is not at all sure anyone else can or does. But when Noni's handlers convince him to attend a press conference during which Noni describes the incident (caught on film by paparazzi) as an "accident," Kaz is disgusted by the lies. Kaz, like Noni, has been groomed from a young age, but for a far different role: major in political science, serve as a police officer, then segue into a political career. Kaz's police officer father warns him against getting involved with the volatile pop star, but the vulnerability and sadness that he saw behind the sex and chains and purple hair keeps drawing Kaz back.
Noni's record label, though, would far prefer that she continue her "fake/real" relationship with Kid Culprit than date a cop. Noni's attempt to go her own way leads to pretty disastrous on-stage consequences; though Kid says he's not hurt by Noni's push for independence, it's obvious that he's come to rely on the way that pop culture uses the symbolic (and often actual) subjugation of female black bodies to make working class white males feel empowered. And he punishes her for it, in the ugliest of manners.
In the aftermath of this debacle, Kaz "kidnaps" Noni away from all her handlers, and the two drive to Mexico with Kaz's dog. There, they rest, have sex, tour the local markets, and basically give themselves the freedom to act like two people falling in love. Two of the most poignant scenes occur during this "happy idyll": Noni cuts out the hair weaves that hide her naturally curly hair, as if she is cutting the chain-bedecked, sexually provocative black girl trying to evoke the look of a white girl strand by strand. And at a Karaoke bar, Noni sings an a capella version of Nina Simone's heartbreaking "Blackbird," a song we earlier saw the young Noni sing during her first talent show as a child.
But when Noni's impromptu song is caught on video and goes viral, will Noni be sucked right back into the maelstrom of pop stardom, a maelstrom that leaves no room for anyone, not even Noni herself, to be seen for who she really is? Or who she wants to be? Is Noni destined to live out Simone's anthem: "So why you wanna fly, blackbird / You ain't never gonna fly"?
I couldn't help but think of the definition of feminist romance that Aya de Leon, my fellow presenter at this past October's Boston Bookfair, created: "A feminist romance is one in which the male romantic lead decides to step away from the male privilege granted him by patriarchy and get behind the goals and beliefs of the woman he loves." I can't think of two other films which embody this principle more clearly than Love and Basketball and Beyond the Lights.
Love and Basketball Trailer:
Beyond the Lights trailer:
Kissing: YouTube
Icing: Twitter
WNBA: Giphy
press conference: LA Times
Noni and Kid Culprit: Collider.com
Concert: Huffington Post
Labels: African American romance, film, race, racial stereotypes, women directors
Disability and Historical Romance: Mary Balogh's SOMEONE TO WED
Protagonists with physical and/or emotional disabilities appear far more often in the Regency romances of Mary Balogh than in the books of perhaps any other historical romance writer. By my count, of her 86 novels published to date, at least thirteen feature a main character with a physical or mental impairment of some sort; other books (Slightly Married, Simply Perfect, A Secret Affair, and probably a few others I'm forgetting) include secondary characters with disabilities of various sorts. Some back of the envelope math suggests that characters with disabilities feature in almost 20% of Balogh's books.
Some critics have found Balogh's engagement with disability issues worthy of praise. For example, Reviewer Caz on Romantic Historical Reviews writes of Balogh's Survivors' Club series, which features protagonists who have all been seriously injured (physically and/or mentally) by war, "In each case, the author has approached her characters' injuries and disabilities sensitively and un-sentimentally, showing how difficult it has been for each of them to regain anything resembling a normal life following their terrible experiences." And although scholar Ria Cheyne cautions in her article "Disability Studies Reads the Romance: Sexuality, Prejudice, and the Happily-Ever-After in the Work of Mary Balogh" that she is not "aiming to fix these novels as 'positive' representations which should be played on some hypothetical list of 'acceptable' representations of disability" (212), her discussion of Balogh's Slightly and Simply series does argue that Balogh's romances with disabled protagonists "offer significant opportunities to challenge negative stereotypes around disability" (201-202).
In contrast, Meoskop, reviewing The Arrangement (book #2 in The Survivors' Club series) on Love in the Margins, finds Balogh's depictions more than a bit lacking: "There are authors that do disability well, and then there's Mary Balogh. Her disabled characters are more Matt-in-Downton-Abbey than Harold Russell." Her review concludes with a clearly ironic recommendation: "If you love inspiring stories about disabled veterans and the wives that don't leave them, then The Arrangement will hit all your Inspirational Story buttons."
Though Meoskop doesn't spell it out, she clearly objects to the way that Balogh's portrayals of the disabled barely skirt, or fall into, the trap of "disability as inspirational" for the non-disabled reader. As Deborah Davis on the Abilities.com web site writes,
Many disability advocates have expressed disdain for being viewed as "inspirational" in popular media and reject the premise that this emotion adds any positive value to their status. This often-used description associated with able-bodied individuals' emotions in connection with accomplishments or just daily living of those with disabilities is seen by some in the community as separating, objectifying, condescending and regressive in terms of equality and inclusion.
(Check out this great post on Everyday Feminism, "7 Reasons to Stop Calling Disabled People Inspirational" for more on what has come to be called "inspirational porn").
All of the above is to tell you that I come with a lot of backstory to my reading of Balogh's latest, Someone to Wed. Its heroine, 29-year-old Wren Heyden, has been a recluse for the majority of her life, and wears a veil to cover her face whenever she goes out in public. Wren has just completed a year of mourning for her aunt and uncle, with whom she had made her home since the age of ten. Having inherited her uncle's glassworks manufactory, Wren is now wealthy—wealthy enough to buy herself what she longs for, but believes she could never win or earn: someone to wed.
For Wren is "severely, cruelly marred" by a large purple birthmark on the left side of her face, which covers her from forehead to jaw (Kindle Loc 317). Although the descriptive words in quotations are the thoughts of the novel's hero upon first seeing Wren's face, they could just as well have been Wren's. For while her birthmark is not a physically incapacitating disability, some unnamed abuse Wren experienced because of it during her earliest years has created in her a major emotional disability: "In my own person I am not marriageable," she tells Alexander Westcott, the new Earl of Riverdale, the third man she's "interviewed" for the position of spouse.
In her joint review of the book on Dear Author, reviewer Janine points to structural similarities between Someone to Wed and Balogh's 1997 novel, Indiscreet. For me, though, the more telling comparison is to Balogh's 1993 category Regency, Dancing with Clara, which also opens with a disabled heroine who wishes to marry. In the twenty four years between the publication of these two novels, how had Balogh's depiction of disability changed? Had any of the insights of Disability Studies, which call attention to the problematic ways that the disabled are often "othered" and marginalized in popular culture, filtered into popular consciousness?
19th century Bath chair
Clara of Dancing with Clara is physically disabled: "crippled," restricted to a wheeled chair, unable to walk since contracting an illness in India as a child (Loc 85). While both Clara and Wren feel that "Only my money can buy me a husband" (Dancing 273), they go about their husband searches differently. Rather than openly declaring her wish for a husband, Clara allows the gloriously handsome fortune hunter Frederick Sullivan (the villain of a previous Balogh book) to come to her. He flatters her, even tells her that he is in love with her. She knows he's lying (and so does the reader, as we are given his POV, as well as hers). But he's so handsome, and she's so lonely, Clara lets his deceptions go without challenging them, and agrees to marry him. She only tells him to stop calling her "my love" two weeks after they marry, when her own feelings start to become engaged, and his obvious overstatements make her feel as if he is spoiling the good relationship they have started to build. When Freddie gets upset by her request that he stop lying, Clara feels guilty for making him feel ashamed.
In contrast, Wren takes the active, not the passive, role in searching for a husband. It is she who invites Alexander to her home, and she who asks Alexander to marry her. Wren is a businesswoman, not a lady of leisure as Clara is, and she treats the husband search in as businesslike a manner as possible: "Perhaps we could combine forces and each acquire what we want" (263). Though the novel presents Wren's hiding her emotions as a problem she must learn to overcome, her business acumen grants her far more agency than did Clara's passive desires. Wren is also honest with Alexander from the start about what she wants, and what she hopes to gain from him. And he is honest with her about his pecuniary problems, a far different approach than taken by Freddie and Clara.
Both Clara and Wren desire a husband, in part to satisfy "needs," needs of the sexual kind:
She was lonely. Dreadfully lonely. And she had needs that were no less insistent than they could be in other women despite the fact that she had no beauty and was unable to walk. She had needs. Cravings. Sometimes she was so lonely despite Harriet's friendship and despite the existence of other good friends that she touched the frightening depths of despair. (Clara 124)
She had longings and needs and yearnings that were a churning mix of the physical and emotional. Sometimes she could not sleep at night for the ache of something nameless that hummed through her body and her mind and seemed to settle most heavily about her heart. (Wed 431)
But Clara wants Freddie Sullivan in particular, because of his beauty:
She wanted him. Mr. Frederick Sullivan, that was. She wanted all that health and strength and beauty to belong to her. Almost as if she could make them her own, she thought wryly. Almost as if she could transform herself by marrying him. (Clara 327).
Clara, longing to rid herself of her physical disability, imagines that she can "almost" annex Freddie's beauty and health by marrying. Marriage thus equates to being able-bodied, at least in some corner of Clara's mind.
In contrast, Wren is upset when she first meets Alexander Westcott to find he is "the proverbial tall, dark, handsome man of fairy tales" (Wed 448); she would have far preferred a plainer man, an older man, a man, the text implies, against whom she would not feel quite so ugly (Wed 184). Wren is used to being in charge, having a degree of power and control; the text suggests her dismay at Alexander's good looks is a fear of loss of control.
The two books are alike in one important regard: both Clara and Wren engage in satisfying sexual relationships after their marriages. This is in contrast to what Anna Mollow and Robert McRuer argue is a far more "pervasive cultural de-eroticization of people with disabilities" (Sex and Disability 4). But this depiction of the sexuality of the disabled may be as much of a factor of genre as it is a challenge to popular culture norms; sexual compatibility/fulfillment is typically one of several components that are required of any romantic couple who hopes to enjoy a romance HEA. Or in other words, it just wouldn't be a Mary Balogh romance if it excluded sex.
The two books differ as far as which of their protagonists—the disabled or the able-bodied—must learn a lesson, must change and grow, in order for the couple to achieve a HEA. On first glance, it may appear that in Dancing with Clara, it is Clara who has to change: by novel's end, she learns to walk. But the true emotional change comes within Freddie, not Clara. Freddie, a careless, even selfish, rake, a continual disappointment to his family, must learn to put others—in particular, his wife—before himself. This would be a fine, even feminist lesson—if Freddie's lesson did not center around helping Clara overcome her disability.
Freddie encourages Clara to move beyond the protective shell in which her fearful father had always placed her—to consult with a new doctor, to take exercise, to try to move from her wheeled chair. In some ways, then, even though Clara is a protagonist of the novel, she also serves as what Ria Cheyne terms a "yardstick character," a character who exists largely measure the worth of other characters. If you're nice or kind to, or protective of the yardstick character (a kitten, a child, a disabled person), you're a character the reader should admire. This is a problematic construction when the yardstick character is physically, emotionally, or mentally impaired, for the unintentional message is that disabled characters are more important for how others respond to them than important in their own right. From the start of Dancing with Clara, readers are introduced to Freddie as a fortune hunter, a bounder, a self-absorbed man. We come to care for him because he is kind to Clara, and is the impetus to her moving beyond her (falsely imposed) disability and learning to walk again.
Clara's learning to walk again not only rings that suspect "inspirational disabled person" bell; it also suggests that getting rid of one's disability might just be necessary if one is to be fully worthy of love, or is to enjoy love's benefits to the fullest. Abelism is writ large in this earlier book.
Wren, unlike Clara, is the emotional star of Someone to Wed. Alexander begins the story an upright, morally kind character, the kind of person who always puts others first, and this doesn't change very much over the course of the novel. Although he longs to marry for love, he feels it is his duty to marry for money so that he can support the estate he has just inherited. When Wren makes her forward proposal in the book's opening scene, Alexander doesn't immediately reject it; instead he proposes that the two get to know each other a bit first, to see if they could be compatible. And Alexander, the protective, help-others type of romance hero, feels drawn to Wren precisely because of the pain she has suffered in the past. So he ends up getting both to marry for money, and to marry for love, requiring little character change or growth.
In contrast, Wren's character arc includes far more change than Alexander's. Wren's physical blemish, unlike Clara's inability to walk, is not something she can change. And unlike Clara, she never dreams that she can change it, or wishes that she could even though she knows that she can't. But the story does insist that her emotional disability—the abuse she suffered as a child that convinced her never to go out in public, never to mingle in society, never to make a friend beside her aunt and uncle—must and should be overcome. Is this ableism, just writ on a smaller scale than in Clara? Or is this an insistence that viewing disability as only a social construction, and denying the embodied aspects of bodily impairment, is just as problematic? Part of me wants to cheer for Wren as she gradually overcomes her isolation, and becomes incorporated within Alexander's large, extended family. But another part feels more than a bit uncomfortable with the "healing power of love" message. . .
In the Dear Author review mentioned above, reviewer Janine points to her discomfort with what she reads to be lookism, more than (or as much as) ableism, in Someone to Wed. Though on its surface, the story insists that beauty is not skin deep, by dwelling so frequently on Wren's birthmark, and making Wren so isolated because of it, it inadvertently suggested the opposite.
In order to counteract the potential claim of lookism, the story provides a traumatic backstory to explain Wren's isolationist turn. The most problematic aspect of the book for me was this backstory, and its deeply sexist undertones. I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone, but would be curious to hear from other readers what your response was to Wren's meeting/confrontation with a key figure from her past near the book's end.
To sum it all up, then: there are clear and important positive shifts in Balogh's depiction of impairment and disability from 1993's Dancing with Clara to 2017's Someone to Wed. But if Meoskop were still alive and blogging, she'd surely have more than a few scathingly ironic critiques to make of it.
Inspiration Porn critique: Medium
Bath chair: Wikipedia
Someone to Wed
Berkely, 2017
Labels: book review, disability, historical romance
Troubling gender stereotypes: Rhoda Baxter's SMART GIRL IN TROUBLE
After reading a few too many books with alpha male heroes, I always find it a welcome break to pick up a romantic comedy written by a Brit. British romances seem far less enamored of the strong, über-manly types, often choosing to laud more huggable, even hapless heroes. Take for example Walter Hanborough, the hero of the third book in Rhoda Baxter's Smart Girls series, Smart Girl in Trouble. Walter's a doctor, but of the rumpled scientific, rather than the sharply-dressed medical, kind. He's afraid of movie violence, and of spiders, and the microbiology of underwater volcanoes is what gets his intellectual motors revving. But Walter is reeling after returning from his latest trip to find his ex-wife (the one who left him because she was tired of competing with microscopic bacteria for his attention) is not only about to remarry, she's also moving with her new husband—and with Walter's daughter, Emily—to the States.
Such a non-alpha hero requires an equally unusual—at least for genre romance—heroine, one Baxter provides in the person of Olivia, the woman who just started renting the bottom floor of Walter's London house. Olivia (or, "Og," as she is more familiarly known as by her younger brothers and best bud Tom) is as unstereotypically female as Walter is unsteroetypically male. Og can both drink all the other guys at the stag party she's throwing for soon-to-be-married Tom and take the hottest guy from the party home for a fun shag. She has no desire to marry, as her mom and stepfather urge her to do: ("We thought that you just needed time to find your own equilibrium. You know, get the partying out of your system and settle down. But you're thirty now, love. You've had your years. We would love to see you settle down" [2823]). And she certainly has no desire to procreate, not after watching her mother almost die from HELLP (a life-threatening pregnancy complication related to preeclampsia) while carrying her two younger brothers to term.
Neither Walter nor Olivia has any problem with his or her own self-image; neither worries that they are not masculine or feminine enough to suit anyone but themselves. As Olivia notes about Walter, "He was gentle and kind. A bit of a scaredy cat when it came to spiders and movie violence, but the fact that it barely touched his self-confidence was astounding. And again, attractive" (1304). Olivia usually puts guys into two categories: "huggable" (i.e., a potential friend) or "shaggable" (i.e., a guy she'd take to bed without thinking twice). She's finding Walter rather confusing, though, because unlike any other guy she's ever met, he's both.
As for Walter, he finds Olivia's "laddishness" simultaneously puzzling and intriguing:
"Why do you pretend you're not a girl?" he said suddenly.
"What?" She gave him a funny look. "I don't pretend I'm not a girl."
"But you're so... no nonsense."
"You're scared of spiders. I don't accuse you of not being a bloke."
"That's different."
"How, exactly? You do something 'girly' and that's okay. I have short hair and suddenly, I'm butch. That's balls."
"It's not just the haircut, it's the clothes and the... attitude."
She glared at him for a minute, then her lips curved into a mischievous smile, which, he suddenly realised, was very, very sexy. "I am a girl," she said, leaning closer. "I can prove it." (1161).
What could be the trouble, then, for such a smart girl as Og? Take the above-mentioned post-bachelor party tryst, add a split condom and a thrown-up birth control pill, and mix with a guy who turns into an ex almost before Olivia realized they were doing anything more than dating. And, yes, you get a very unplanned pregnancy, which, when it comes right on top of just being made redundant from her job, Olivia is not at all happy about. Especially right when a potential romance is starting to bud between Olivia and Walter—who is certainly not the fellow whose sperm met up with one of her eggs.
Though Olivia is sure she wants to have an abortion, almost everyone around her counsels waiting (except for the awful ex, of course, who practically throws money at her in his eagerness to rid himself of any entanglements). Olivia's doctor; her best mate Tom; even her best girl friend Ruchi, liberals all, tell her to think twice, give it some time, avoid making any rash decisions. And let's not even mention what Olivia's mother would say, if Olivia ever told her...
Olivia is the most surprised by Walter's reaction. And this is where the romance might have taken quite a regressive turn. For Walter is deeply hurt by the impending move of his beloved daughter Emily, and, without even thinking, jumps in to declare that he's ready to start a new family with Olivia. And Olivia's child. By another man. Because he "likes" her.
Signs of HELLP syndrome
My heart sank when I got to this point in the story, fearing that Olivia and Walter were about to turn into the protagonists of a sentimental Hallmark movie. You know the type, and just how it would play out: Olivia would refuse Walter's kind offer, but would ultimately realize how mistaken she was to reject him, and to reject her pregnancy (probably after she'd have a scare about losing the baby). She'd go on to gratefully have the child, despite any potential threats to her own health (her mother's HELLP syndrome is hereditary). Walter, of course, would be there by her side as she gave birth, claiming the infant as if it were his very own as soon as it slid from Olivia's body. And for the icing on the cake, Walter's biological child, the one he didn't realize he loved so much until his ex spirited her away, would somehow miraculously not be moving across the ocean, so Walter would get not only a new wife and a new child, but he'd get to the keep the older child, too (nah-nah, bitchy first wife, serves you right for abandoning your husband and for trying to take away a father's rights to his child!)
I should have had more faith in Rhoda Baxter. For Baxter's narrative sets up the sentimental situation only to send it spinning in entirely unexpected directions. Just for starters, Olivia is immediately on to the implicit sexism behind Walter's "kind" impulse, and is not at all wary about telling him just what she thinks of it:
"You screwed up the first time and now you're hoping that you can persuade me to keep this baby so that you can have another go. Is that it? Just THINK about how irresponsible that is. You want me to have a child that I don't want and that you have no claim on, just because you can't face the fact that you were a lousy father to your daughter." (2500)
I won't give away the other surprises in store for Walter and Olivia as they try to negotiate the bumps in their relationship that Olivia's unexpected pregnancy and Walter's reaction to it. I will say, though, that while Baxter's romance will make you chuckle, it will also make you think about just what a parent, especially a father, owes a child, and what a child owes a parent in return.
And what a woman owes herself.
Couple embracing: Huffpost/Malia Moss
Keep Calm...: The Keep Calm-O-Matic
What the HELLP?: What the Hellp
Girl in Trouble (Smart Girls #3)
indie-published, 2017
Labels: abortion, book review, contemporary romance, gender fluidity, pregnancy
Is it time to retire the phrase "sweet romance"?
Author Barbara James, in the comments section of several recent RNFF blog posts, used the phrase "sweet romance" to describe her writing. At around the same time, other romance authors on several listservs to which I subscribe were complaining about the same term—"sweet romance"—as well as its counterpart,"clean romance," as a label or category. What, exactly, does "sweet romance" say to a potential reader? And why do some authors find the term problematic?
Barbara James pointed to one specific meaning when she noted in a comment, "But the sex [in my books] is closed door, because I don't think graphic sex scenes are necessary—these are sweet romances!" By this definition, a "sweet romance" refers to any romance novel in which sex scenes are not depicted on the page.
[A brief digression here into bibliographic historiography; feel free to skip if you want to get directly into the whys & wherefores...
Who first began calling romances without sex "sweet"? I ran a Google Books phrase search for "sweet romance" between the dates 1970 and 1980, expecting to find the phrase turning up in this period, in reaction to the more graphic sensual historicals that poured out of New York publishing houses in the wake of Avon's 1972 publication of Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower. How could you have a "sweet" romance until you had a "sexy" romance with which to contrast it? Before Woodiwiss, all romances were what we today would term "sweet," so there would be no need to create such a label or category.
Google Books Advanced search was not of much help, unfortunately. It cites Ann Hampson's 1978 contemporary Harlequin romance, Sweet is the Web, includes an advertisement at the back for another series, Harlequin Historicals, which uses the phrase. But as this line did not begin publishing books until 1986, this must be a later reprint copy, rather than an original 1978 copy:
HARLEQUIN HISTORICALS
The broad, bold sweep of history and the quiet times of sweet romance—powerful, sinister lords doing evil deeds, and great ladies in gem-studded silks brushing against ragged beggars and homeless waifs (193)
The search noted the phrase appears in the Library of Congress's 1978 Catalog of Copyright Entries Third Series, although whether it appears as a descriptive phrase, the name of a line of books, or as the title of an individual book or books, one can't tell, as the search doesn't show an inside view of the book.
Google also cites the 1979 Australian Parliamentary Papers, and shows a tiny snippet from the book:
But this looks more like a book title than a descriptive phrase to me.
Moving on to 1981-1985 turns up a single citation, in the 1985 New York Times obituary of bestselling author Taylor Caldwell: "Not sweet romance but melodrama was her stock in trade, laced increasingly with her own conservative political opinions."
In fact, the term as used to refer to romances without sex only starts to show up on Google Books' radar in the 1990s, in guides to writers interested in writing romances, and in the works of librarians and scholars:
Wayne Barton and Kristen Ramsdell's What Do I Read Next? (1993)
A Poetics of Criticism (1994)
Eve Paludan's The Writers' Pink Pages (1995)
David H. Bourcherding's Romance Writer's Sourcebook: Where to Sell Your Manuscripts (1996)
Kristen Ramsdell's Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre (1999)
Kay Mussell and Johanna Tuñón's North American Romance Writers (1999)
That the term doesn't appear very often before 1990 may be due to the fact that Google's Book search includes fewer books from before the Internet age. I'd be curious to know if anyone has pre-1990 romance novels that refer to themselves as "sweet romances," or which include the phrase "sweet romance" in their sell copy.
End of bibliographic/historiographic digression :-)]
Why do some authors get annoyed by the phrase "sweet romance"? The ones on the listservs I read had two main objections.
First, those who write romantic mysteries, or gothic romances, or other darker books with romance plotlines but which also did not include sex scenes, object that the term misrepresents what they are writing. Their novels may not include sex on the page, but books with haunted mansions, gruesome murders, and psychopath villains should by no means be termed sweet. To label them as such is to misrepresent their contents to potential readers.
Second, feminist-inclined readers object to the term because, taking a page from Deconstructionist literary criticism, they understand that the phrase serves as one half of a binary opposition. The other side of the opposition—"not sweet" romance, or "sexy" romance, (or, if we use the companion phrase, "clean romance," its opposite, "dirty" romance)—is not just other, but lesser. Because of the positive connotations that go along with the word "sweet, "sweet romance" becomes the positive term in the binary, while its opposite is held up as a negative: something to be avoided, shunned, or denigrated. Sweet romances do not feature sex; romances that do feature sex are therefore not sweet. The label "sweet romance" thus implies that sex is bad, shameful, a decidedly unfeminist position.
Why, then, do we not simply call romances that do not include sex scenes "no-sex romances" or "romances without sex"? I think in part because the term "sweet romance" carries some additional connotations, connotations that are about more than just sex.
I hear hints of these connotation when Barbara James brings up the phrase again, this time in a comment in response to an RNFF blog post about how to define "feminist romance":
I write sweet romances. So my characters might be seen as anti-feminist. They are in college, but they want to graduate with their Mrs. Degree, work, and have their first children by their mid-twenties. They would rather become stay at home moms, work from home, or work part time while their children are small.
"Sweet" here does not just refer, then, to the presence or absence of sex. "Sweet" is a political position packaged as a personal choice. It links not having sex (or not showing it on the page) with other personal choices: for a young woman to want to marry (a man); for her to want to have children by a certain age; for her to be the parent who remains at home with young children, rather than her husband. It never questions why certain women should want such things, or what role public policies and institutions might have played in shaping private, "personal" decisions.
Why can't a sweet romance feature a 40 year old heroine? A heroine who falls for another woman? A heroine who never wants to have children? Any of these storylines could be written without explicit sex scenes, couldn't they?
I'm guessing it is because "sweet" carries with it a whole lot of other meanings than just the sexual one.
What would you say to retiring the term "sweet romance" and replacing it with "romance without sex"? Or, in the case of the sweet romance in which "sweet" means just a little bit more, how about "traditional values romance"? Or "socially conservative romance"?
Binary opposition: Slide Share
Labels: categories, category romance, clean romance, conservative romance, labels, socially conservative romance, sweet romance, traditional romance, traditional values romance
Escaping Escapist Romance? Tasha L. Harrison's THE TRUTH OF THINGS
Heterosexual genre romance is filled with heroes whose professions are all about public service. From firefighters to Navy SEALs, CIA agents to cops on the beat, male characters who their lives on the line for the greater good rank high in the standings of readers' favorite romance heroes.
But what happens when the society in which you live considers the police something to be shunned, rather than celebrated? Where dating a cop is tantamount to fraternizing with the enemy? These are questions that Tasha L. Harrison's The Truth of Things made me consider.
On her way home from an evening with friends, photojournalist and wedding photographer Ava Marie Greene tries to shrug off catcalls from the small-time drug dealers who hang out on the corner in her northside Camden New Jersey neighborhood, "a few blocks from the reach of gentrification" (Kindle Loc 86). But the call-outs escalate until Emiliano, another dealer with whom Ava is friendly, intervenes. Before Ava can de-escalate the confrontation, Emil and another dealer are brawling, and the police are on their way.
Officers on patrol in Camden, NJ
For Ava, the sound of sirens and the flash of blue lights don't offer the same reassurance that they would to a white person in a suburban neighborhood: "I wish I could say that I was relieved to see her [the cop], but to me, it felt like another gang had rolled up. One that was just as unpredictable as the boys with their bellies on the sidewalk" (131). Ava's suspicion proves warranted; the cop treats her with as much aggression as she does the fighting men, shoving Ava to the ground and breaking one of her expensive camera lenses. The cop, Stevenson, "looked like she could be a Latina or maybe mixed. Not that it mattered. All cops were one color. Blue" (193).
But the aggressive cop is soon joined by another, an African-American man who dials down the antagonism, even apologizes for his fellow officer's behavior. And insists on walking Ava home. But in Camden, even such an apparently chivalrous offer can be dangerous to accept. The officer tries to get his flirt on with Ava, but she shuts him down: "Well, kind sir. Thank you for escorting me to my front door after a lovely evening of street and police harassment" (224).
Ava is expecting that to be the last of Levi Raymond. Yet after she runs into him again at the Camden police station, where she's gone to file a complaint against the officer who damaged her property, Officer Raymond proves he's a bit more persistent than Ava had originally realized. Going out for a "I'm sorry" cup of coffee would not be the same as dating a cop, would it?
When Ava begins to tutor Emil in photography, though, the thought of her impending not-date is sitting pretty uncomfortably: "A girl who just offered to mentor a drug dealer, who cared about racial injustice, and the plight of the common man had no business having a casual cup of coffee with a cop" (650). But even though Ava tries to break her date, she and Levi end up talking—and then meeting, and then meeting yet again. Because the presumptuous, arrogant officer also does something no man has done for Ava in a long time—puts a smile on her face.
As Ava and Levi get to know one another, Ava discovers Levi is far from the stereotype of the cop who bleeds blue. He's kind, and honorable, and is interested in Ava's photography work; his parents are devoted lovebirds; and he spends his free time volunteering at the local Boys & girls Club. And he apologizes so easily, far easier than wary Ava. Ava, used to family letting her down (her father abandoned them when she was young, and her mother abandoned her for drugs), gradually begins to lower her defenses.
But when a police shooting rocks Camden, Ava and Levi are right in the middle of it, both professionally and personally. And when, in the face of police apathy about the shooting, Ava tweets out a video of the incident, sparking explosive public protests against the Camden police department, will Levi side with Ava and the protesters? Or with his department and fellow officers?
Many romance readers defend the genre by arguing it is a form of pleasurable escape, a way for readers to stop thinking about the problems of their lives for a few hours while they turn the pages of a book, a book in which the only real conflict is between potential lovers. After reading Harrison's romance, though, I began to wonder if even the idea of escaping into a romance novel is built on a certain assumption of privilege. What I mean is, just as white Americans, because of the history of white dominance in American society, have the privilege of not thinking about race all the time, but people of color do not, perhaps the option of escapist reading of all types is equally one reserved for the economically and racially privileged.
And perhaps romance novels that attempt to grapple with race and racism could help readers escape from their escapist romance blinders. If only for a few short hours...
"I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this."
"Yes, you can," he said. "You want to know how I know?"
"How?"
"Because you're strong. Stronger than me. You've already been through so much, Ava. You're the strongest person I know."
People were always saying that.
Ava, you've been through so much. You're so strong.
For the first time, I allowed myself to say the one thing that was always on the tip of my tongue when people said that. "I wish I didn't have to be." (3889)
Camden police on patrol: New York Times
Police and protestors: Sean Rayford/Getty Images via NPR
Tasha L. Harrison
The Truth of Things
Dirtyscribbler Press, 2017
Labels: African American romance, police brutality, policing, racism
The origins of the bodice-ripper cover: Playboy Press?
Over the past month, I've been slowly reading through John Markert's Romance Publishing: The History of an Industry, 1940s to the Present (published in 2016 by McFarlane & Co.). Market is a sociologist, not a literary critic, and thus his book focuses not on analyzing literary texts or trends, but instead on "the structure of the romance publishing industry, and, in particular, the key role of decision makers within the industry who decide what novels to select or reject" (5).
And who decide what cover images will adorn those selected novels.
For me, the most fascinating fact in the early chapters of Markert's book is his discussion of the role Playboy Press played in the packaging of what publishers and writers were beginning to call "bodice-rippers" in the romance market of the 1970s. Though the trend for publishing historical romances "spicer and more sensual than any of the romance subgenres being published at the time" began with Avon, and their 1972 paperback original The Flame and The Flower, the number of sexy historicals being published began to climb at a rapid pace only after Playboy Press entered the market in 1976.
In his interviews with Mary Ann Stuart, editorial director for Playboy Press in the 1970s, Markert heard that Stuart had proposed the idea of publishing sexy historicals to Playboy management in 1975. But management was worried about producing a product aimed at women because "the company had always thought of itself as primarily in the entertainment business for men" (51). But with the success of Barbara Bonham's Proud Passion (the book sold more than half a million copies by the end of 1976, the year of its publication), the higher-ups at Playboy were convinced. And unlike Avon, which debuted only seven new historical romance authors between 1972 and 1979, Playboy Press issued five historical romance titles per month.
Before their venture into the romance market, Playboy Press had distributed books primarily through mail-order. But to reach the romance market, the Press signed a distribution agreement with Pocket Books, which imposed a five title limit per month. After the termination of that contract, Playboy Press upped their publishing schedule again, this time to ten books per month. And by the time Playboy Press was sold to Berkely-Jove in 1982, the monthly production had been upped again, this time to fifteen sensual historicals each month.
The original 1972 cover
As Markert notes, the cover of Avon's early sensual historicals did not look much different from those of other, "tamer" romance books being published in the 1970s. Playboy's Mary Ann Stuart felt they needed to package their books differently, Markert reports:
...it was essential that the cover tell the reader what to expect from the book's content. The cover illustrations were particularly important to Playboy because, unlike Avon, it did not have a developed group of writers whose names the readers would recognize; moreover, Playboy could not spend much on advertising to promote the number of new authors it was releasing to meet its monthly production schedule. (53-54).
And thus Playboy's art director (a man, I'm guessing, although Markert's book doesn't specify) searched for artists who could convey to readers the "startling sensuality [of] the content's passion" (56). Said art director contracted with a "group of expatriate artists living in Spain" (men, again, one can't but wonder?) to illustrate all covers for the Playboy Press romance line.
The far sexier TFTF 1980 cover
These new, provocative covers did more than just power Playboy Press romances to the top of the lucrative romance market. They also taught a generation of romance readers to equate the "startlingly sensuous" covers with the type of romance that, for the first time, depicted sex not from (or not just from) the male point of view, but from the female's (however problematic those depictions may have been). For with the success of the Playboy romances, other publishers who eagerly jumped into the historical "bodice-ripper" market in the late 1970s and early 1980s followed Playboy's lead, adorning their own new books with similarly "sensual" covers, and repackaging and republishing older books in newer, sexier garb.
Markert notes in an aside that the "ample bosoms swelled with lust" of the heroines featured on the covers of Playboy Press romances might be "a reflection, perhaps, of Playboy's obsession with large-breasted women" (54). Perhaps? It seems to me that the cover concept for the entire market of "bodice-rippers" owes both its genesis, and its proliferation, to the norms of sex and beauty promulgated by a company who "thought of itself as primarily in the entertainment business for men" (51).
Pretty ironic, isn't it, that women are the ones who were laughed and sneered at for snatching up the tawdry-covered bodice-rippers when it was Playboy Press, and other publishers who imitated them, who created those covers with the assumptions about the male gaze in mind?
If you're interested in reading some of the actual Playboy Press romances, check out these two lists on Goodreads:
Romance by Playboy Press, part 1
Just reading the book descriptions is an education in itself.
And here are a just a few of the hundreds of Playboy Press historical romance book covers:
Labels: bodice-ripper, book covers, Playboy press
What's Modern About Modern Christian Romance? Tammy L. Gray's MY HOPE NEXT DOOR
I've been gradually reading my way through this year's list of Romance Writers of America's RITA award winners, given to the best romances published in 2016. The only one I'd read before was Courtney Milan's novella, Her Every Wish, which I'd featured on the blog back in April of 2016 (see review here). So I was curious to see if any of the other winners would feature similarly explicit (or even implicit) references to feminist themes, or if Milan's book was the exception that would prove the rule that the most popular romances tend to be more conservative than progressive in regards to gender issues.
My biggest RITA-reading surprise so far has been the winner of the "Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements" category: Tammy L. Gray's My Hope Next Door. I'm no expert on religious romances, but the ones I have read have almost always been on the deeply conservative end of the gender politics spectrum. But Gray, who bills her novels as "modern Christian romances with true-to-life characters and culturally relevant plotlines," strikes a markedly different—and at times, even feminist—note from more traditional Evangelical romance authors.
Even Christian youth speaker and YouTuber Katie Gregoire,
"no feminist," finds typical Christian romance problematic...
Former town wild child Katie Stone is returning to Fairfield, Georgia, to help support her parents as they struggle with her mother's diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Several years earlier, Katie had fled Fairfield, and everyone in it—her parents; her two best friends; and her ex, Cooper Myles, "two hundred pounds of stubbornness [who] had controlled her for most of their two-year relationship" (page 3)—chasing an elusive sense of peace. A peace she'd never been able to find, until she stepped into a church next to the women's shelter she'd been staying in four months earlier. Unlike most of the protagonists of the Christian romances I've read, Katie's turn to God comes before the start of the novel, rather than serves as the novel's climactic scene. The resulting novel, then proves to be less about Katie's coming to religion, and more about how she comes to terms with the harm she'd done to the people in her past, and the harm those people had in turn inflicted on her.
Somewhat predictably, Gray pairs Katie romantically with the town good boy, Asher Powell, the son of Fairfield's pastor. But Asher's not the flatly-constructed cardboard good boy common to the religious romances I've read. In high school, Katie had found "it revolting, [Asher's] kindness, the way he watched her with eyes that promised understanding" (17). But at twenty-six, Asher's faith in his religion is at an all-time low. Ten months earlier, he was forced to resign from his position as the church's media director in the wake of the painfully public revelation that his relationship with his girlfriend was not as chaste as their religion demanded. "Asher had given his life to that church. Half of the people in it had known him since he was a baby. Yet one lapse in judgment, and they crucified him" (10). Ten months after leaving to keep parishioners from calling for the resignation of his pastor father, Asher still can't get over his bitterness at the betrayal of his larger church family, even though his own parents have supported him throughout the ordeal.
Wild child Katie, reformed, trying to make amends; good boy Asher, fallen, trying to make sense of abandonment and betrayal. Is it any wonder that when Katie returns to her parents' home, to her mother's disappointment, judgment, and guilt, to her father's tight-lipped sobriety, and discovers that Asher has purchased the property next door, the two find themselves gradually drawn to each other? At first in wary attraction, later in neighborly companionship, and finally into something deeper.
But what they need to navigate through their slowly developing relationship isn't religion, at least not directly. They need to learn from their religious journeys, and to teach one another the lessons they've learned, then apply those lessons to their lives and their relationships in the everyday world. Katie needs not only to make amends to the people she's hurt, and to forgive them for hurting her, but to extend that forgiveness to herself. And to accept help from others in her community when it is offered, and needed, rather than protecting her vulnerability at all costs. Asher, who has grown up invested in the importance of such community, models for Katie what that kind of caring can be. As he tells her early in their relationship, after she laughs at the idea that his father, the pastor, has flaws just like any other human being, "There are no perfect people, Katie. Just some who try harder than others to do the right thing" (76). Being willing to try, rather than to run away in fear, is what Katie must finally do in order to make things right with the people she loves.
But Katie is not the only one with lessons to learn. Good boy Asher also needs to change, growth which becomes easier to understand and accept once he becomes involved with Katie. Asher needs not only to rediscover the ability to forgive, but also to accept his own weaknesses, and to be honest about his own feelings. Honesty isn't something that, as a pastor's son, he believes he's entitled to: "That was the church way, right? Put on the smile, the mask; tell everyone you're fine when really you're dying inside" (99). But after his estrangement from the church, Asher "didn't want to be that person anymore" (99). And Katie's directness, her bold honesty, provides Asher with a model for how to move beyond playing the role of the happy good boy, to understand that he, like his father, is flawed, is not perfect. And her acceptance of his weaknesses "gives him permission to be flawed," permission he hasn't until now believed he could have (120). Only after accepting his own flaws, as Katie accepts hers, can he move beyond the bitterness of betrayal, to become once again someone "who tries harder than others to do the right thing" (76).
I've rarely found such fully-developed characters in the religious or spiritual romances I've read. And not only the protagonists; Gray's secondary characters—Katie's friends Laila and Chad, and Asher's and Katie's parents— are all rendered with equal nuance and respect. I even felt sympathy for Katie's controlling ex, Cooper, and Asher's fearful ex, Jillian, characters who in other religious romances might easily be cast as flatly evil others.
Most importantly, though, in feminist terms, is that Katie and Asher's relationship ends up working not just because they share religious beliefs, but because they share a respect for one another, and are willing to be there for each other. Not just during the easy times, but the hard ones, too. As Asher tells Katie at book's end:
"If you want us to work, you have to include me, even in the parts that aren't so pretty. I've been in a relationship with walls, and masks, and false smiles. I called it love, but it wasn't. What we have—real, honest truth, painful or not—that's love" (300).
Respect, honesty, shared burdens as well as joys—sounds like a recipe for a feminist heterosexual relationship to me...
Katie Gregoire: YouTube
Georgia church: Midway Congregational
My Hope Next Door
Waterfall Press, 2016
Labels: book review, Christianity, forgiveness, religion, RITA
Can You Define "Feminist Romance"?
At the Boston Book Festival last Saturday, I had the great pleasure of sharing a stage (or, rather, two chairs in the front of a conference room) with contemporary romance author Aya de León for a panel discussion of "The Hows and Whys of Feminist Romance." We had a mixed audience—some romance writers, a lot of romance readers, and some Book Festival attendees who were simply intrigued by the seeming paradox of "feminism" and "romance" appearing in the same workshop title. Given that mixed audience, we thought it would be good to start by opening our panel by defining some terms: "romance," "feminism," and "feminist romance."
For me, the first two were fairly easy to define, but the third was a bit more fraught. Not just because I'm more of an intuitive reader and reviewer ("I recognize it when I see it—or don't see it"), but also because earlier discussions I've heard and participated in made me doubt whether a subgenre labeled "Feminist Romance" is even possible (see this post on Cecilia Grant's blog for a sample of such conversations). The decision to name this blog "Romance Novels for Feminists," rather than "Feminist Romance Novels" was a deliberate one. Not just because I didn't want to give the appearance that I was the sole or ultimate arbiter of whether or not a book was feminist, but also because I wasn't sure that "Feminist Romance" could even exist as a category or subgenre. Sure, some romances can contain feminist elements and ideas, but since the romance genre focuses so tightly on romantic relationships, and often insist that those relationships are the most important aspect of their characters' lives, the very definition of "romance" seems to negate what feminism takes for granted: that other aspects of a woman's life are equally (and often more) important than with whom she falls in love.
But after looking at and thinking about different definitions of both "romance" and "feminism" with Aya, we each came up with definitions of "feminist romance." Here's a brief run-through of how we talked about definitions at the BFF:
What is a romance?
Aya and I wanted Boston Book Festival attendees to know that we were talking about mass market genre romance, not Romeo & Juliet, not literary fiction or women's fiction with romantic elements. Category romance published by Harlequin and other publishers; single-title romances from major New York and smaller independent publishers; and self-published books by authors who identify as romance writers or who tag their books as "romance" on publishing platforms.
For those who wanted a more specific definition, we pointed to the definition set forth by the Romance Writers of America. According to RWA, a romance must have two basic elements:
• A central love story. "The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel"
• An emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. "In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love."
We also pointed out that while the traditional definition of "romance" pointed to a story about one man and one woman, that definition had expanded dramatically in recent years to include queer romances as well as romances with more than two protagonists
What is feminism?
I always think of Rebecca West's famous quote when I'm asked to define feminism: "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what Feminism is: I only know that people call me a Feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute" (1913). Aya, whose romances feature sex workers, had some problems with the last part of West's quip, deservedly so.
For more specific definition, then, we turned to the Oxford English Dictionary:
Advocacy of equality of the sexes and the establishment of the political, social, and economic rights of the female sex; the movement associated with this
I personally love this definition's focus on advocacy. During our talk, I mentioned the survey I did several years ago of romance writers, asking them to define feminism, and how many of them described feminism as a belief, rather than as an act. "I'm a feminist," or "I believe in feminist principles" rather than "I advocate feminism" or "I do feminism." In contrast, the OED definition insists that feminism is an act: to advocate, to support, recommend, or speak in favor of feminist ideas, goals, and principles.
If we believe that a romance can influence its readers, can advocate on behalf of certain ideas, goals, and principles, then perhaps the idea that a subgenre we can label "feminist romance" has the possibility to exist becomes a bit easier to imagine.
What is a feminist romance?
Aya and I each presented our own thoughts about how to define "feminist romance." Aya's definition: a romance in which the male romantic lead decides to step away from the male privilege granted him by patriarchy and get behind the goals and beliefs of the woman he loves (Aya's more of a spontaneous speaker than I am, so this is paraphrase of what she said, rather than a direct quote of her words). Aya's novels to date have featured male/female pairings, although they do include queer secondary characters; we didn't have the chance to talk about how her definition might be applied/modified to speak to queer romances.
My definition was more literal. I wondered if combining the RWA definition of "romance" with the OED definition of "feminism" might yield a helpful definition, one that would move beyond just celebrating the fact that romances are primarily written by women, or pointing to a strong, outspoken, feisty female character in a romance and then labeling it as feminist. Here's what I came up with:
Two basic elements comprise every feminist romance novel:
• A central love story in which the characters and/or the author demonstrates a commitment to the political, social, and/or economic equality of the sexes. The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make their relationship work in a patriarchal society. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.
• An emotional satisfying and optimistic ending. In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with social, political, or economic, as well as emotional justice and unconditional love
How would you/do you define "feminist romance"?
What is Romance?: Better than a Story blog
What does Feminism Really Mean?: Whim Magazine
Be My Equal: Radical Buttons
Labels: Boston Book Festival, definitions, feminist romance
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Items Hawaiian school children.
Hawaiian school children.
Hawaii.
Stereoscopic views of Hawaii.
Additional title: World series.
Shelf locator: MFY Dennis Coll 90-F159
Halftone photomechanical prints
Extent: Color.
RLIN/OCLC: NYPG90-F159
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 87b8bef0-c53a-012f-af58-58d385a7bc34
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Hawaiian school children." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1850 - 1930. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-5984-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Hawaiian school children." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed July 18, 2019. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-5984-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1850 - 1930). Hawaiian school children. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-5984-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
<ref name=NYPL>{{cite web | url=http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-5984-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 | title= (still image) Hawaiian school children., (1850 - 1930) }} |author=Digital Collections, The New York Public Library |accessdate=July 18, 2019 |publisher=The New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox, and Tilden Foundation}}</ref>


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I am one of those lucky people who has been fortunate to be able to pursue my passion for wildlife and painting in order to make a living. It's often...
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