Romance and Suspense Novels

By: Valinda Littlefield

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Romance and Suspense Novels

One of the most intriguing developments in recent years in literature has been the explosion of black women's writing in the genres of romance and suspense. Since Terry McMillan's 1992 publication, Waiting to Exhale, the sheer number of publications in these popular genres and the apparently insatiable demands of an ever-growing readership did not go unnoticed by the publishing industry. These books deserve analysis, even though they have long been relegated to the margins of publishing and dismissed as simplistic escapism for the masses of working poor and lovelorn women looking for relief from boredom, hardship, and the pain of everyday life.

A fresh perspective on this body of writing, especially the segment of the market written by black women for black women, opens the doors to deeper insight into the process of identity formation, community development, and political consciousness. A judicious reading of these works can increase our comprehension of the area in which the social construction of race, gender, class, and region intersects. A reading of approximately three hundred books suggests the existence of a collection of critical themes that provide coherence and thus make possible a theoretical framework for preliminary exploration into the inner lives of contemporary African American women and the personal workings of their culture, community, and consciousness.

Memory and History

While many of the heroes and heroines in romance novels are, as expected, models of perfect physical beauty and pulsating sexuality, their writers explore diverse topics and make palpable connections between the past, present, and future. Authors normally develop intricate plots with multiple characters. When not specifically set in an historical moment or context, the writers often resort to the frequent technique of flashbacks, memories, myths, dreams, and fears to evoke background settings and intrigue. The past, therefore, is often a shadowy character to lend weight and reality to the fictional events in the novels.

Beverly Jenkins, the author of eight romance novels, used historical moments to provide the background of a story. In Jenkins's Night Song, the hero, Sergeant Chase Jefferson, is a member of the infamous Buffalo Soldiers' Tenth Cavalry and the heroine, Cara Lee, is a Kansas schoolteacher. Combining a sensual and romantic story with African American historical information, Jenkins offered readers a glimpse of the aftermath of slavery and Reconstruction.

Chase and Cara, members of the “Great Exodus” of over forty thousand blacks fleeing violence in the South in the late 1870s, struggle to carve out a place in America's Midwest. In addition, Chase illustrates the contribution of Buffalo Soldiers to the United States military. Jenkins discusses their role in patrolling the lands from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande. She details the racial discrimination they endured; how, unlike white soldiers, they were given the worst patrol assignments, the most worn-out equipment, and the toughest punishment. Meanwhile, Cara, a graduate of Oberlin College, represents the budding black middle class. Through Cara, a teacher, Jenkins demonstrates the role of a black leadership class whose responsibility it was to prepare the masses for responsible citizenship.

These romance novels often engaged issues of class and the struggle to achieve the so-called American dream. The heroine, poor but noble, comes from indeterminate origins—with perhaps the father unknown, the mother dead or unavailable. The hero is good, wealthy, and accomplished, but the hoarder of mysteries. Often, the description of the heroine and the hero are just the opposite. In any event, movement between classes is a prominent theme. While the heroes and heroines vary in description—their racial backgrounds are either pure African or mixed blood—the issue of color complicates class and race.

Rochelle Alers's Secrets Never Told is an example of a romance novel in which the author repeatedly used flashbacks and memories to deal with race, class, and color. Self-employed, Morgana Johnson-Wells, mother of two grown children and married to one of Washington, DC's most powerful attorneys, finds out the same day her mother dies that her husband of twenty-plus years is having an affair. Escaping to Salvation, Georgia, to handle her mother's business matters, Morgana discovers her mother's journals. The journals reveal a glimpse of family secrets, betrayal, and the inner strength that enabled Morgana's female relatives to survive. Morgana learns that her dark- skinned “father,” in his efforts at social mobility, schemed to win her very light-skinned mother from Morgana's maternal grandfather in a game of cards. Moreover, her uncle, brother of her mother's husband, is actually her biological father. Dealing with past and present marriages, infidelity, and forgiveness, Alers's characters are believable and memorable. During Morgana's journey, she learns about her family, but, most important, she faces her own identity.

Yet another theme of these novels was the construction of gender roles. In traditional romance novels, authors exhibit a distinct understanding and acceptance of patriarchal hierarchy. Men are strong and dominant, while women are nurturing, loving, and submissive. However, in the black romance or suspense genre, these ostensible normative views were transgressed with impunity. The women are feminine to be sure, but the heroines are also resourceful, intelligent, willful, and opinionated. They are submissive only in the sex scenes, and not even in all of them. The women's sexual favor is not easily won, nor is it immediately forthcoming, a suggestion of strong independence. The characters' dress sizes range from a four to a twenty, revealing a realistic and positive attitude toward body image. They often have a cause to which they are passionately committed and a view of the world that requires fortitude and agency. They are brave, daring, courageous, and resilient. Resolving these conflicting gender identities helps to create the sexual tension that keeps the readers' attention from the first page to the last.

The author Brenda Jackson is a master at constructing such black heroines. In A Family Reunion, Jackson's opinionated heroines plan and host the Bennett family reunion. In this novel, issues of color, illegitimacy, adoption, betrayal, and family secrets prevail, but most central are the manipulative, resourceful, strong dominating women who are the novel's protagonists.

Contemporary Issues

Romance novels took their themes from a rich and complex amalgamation of contemporary social issues, grievances, and problems that plagued the larger black community. These ranged from drug abuse and AIDS in the black community to spousal abuse and all other forms of cultural mayhem. Such complex themes addressed the practical matter of survival, both of the community and the individual. In Francis Ray's Trouble Don't Last Always spousal and child abuse is addressed by way of the fictional Crawford family. Leaving behind an angry and abusive husband of many years, Lilly Crawford files for divorce. She slips out of her small East Texas hometown with little more than the clothes on her back. Lilly unexpectedly finds employment with Adam Wakefield, a wealthy neurosurgeon, who has been blinded during a carjacking. Her estranged deacon husband contests the divorce, and Ray spins a story of second chances and of awoman who must confront her violent husband before individual transformation can take place. The sensitive subject of spousal abuse and its effect on an entire family—Lilly's mother-in-law, stepson, and stepdaughter, as well as her estranged husband—reveals hidden truths, lies, and emotions that paralyze. The result is the readers' understanding of Lilly's behavior and fears as well as the role of family and community in concealing and often nurturing such abuse.

While these novels address contemporary issues of race, class, and gender, they also force scholars to recognize the complex relationship between the author and the reader. This relationship is a dual one. First, the author has to deliver the sexual titillation to appeal to the reader's desires and dreams. She has to understand what might be lacking in black women's lives and what are their deepest innermost yearnings. Readers expect authors to articulate the desires and goals that they individually might not feel free to express. The author, therefore, has to provide the language, metaphors, and analogies that connect the fictional world to real everyday culture, words, and expressions. Second, the relationship between author and readers operates in the public world of book clubs, book signings, magazine articles, profiles of authors, and cyberspace.

Examining these genres is one way to investigate the somewhat conservative middle-class aspirations and presumptions that underlie these texts and how they come to define or reinforce what is valued by ourselves and our communities. Furthermore, these romance and suspense novels provide a window through which to glimpse both the writers' and readers' flaws, hopes, conflicts, and dreams, allowing for a better understanding of both past and present constructions of race, gender, class, and region.

See also Fiction.

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