On Romance

Reading was one of my first hobbies: I learned how to read out of spite. I watched my older siblings with thinly veiled envy at the skill they possessed that I did not. The first thing I reached for was a book of fairytales. From that point forward, I read anything I could get my hands on, no matter how challenging it seemed.

I always sort of laugh about the fact that my first foray into the romance genre* was at a indeterminable age when I attempted to read a harlequin romance book that belonged to my mother. I watched her thumb through the titles while we were in line at the grocery store before she plucked one out of the line up. She read them in those spare quiet moments when she wasn’t working or we weren’t bothering her. My mother encouraged my love of reading, and I thought the key to reading was in one of those books. Upon discovering me with the book, she plucked it out of my hands and told me that I was too young to read those. 

My next encounter with the romance genre was as a teen. I let my eyes crossover the sparse shelves at the bookstore, hurriedly reading titles and synopses before a well-meaning adult could usher me back to the equally small young adult section. I was never brave enough to buy one of the romance books, instead sticking to the more age-appropriate section. I just enjoyed reading the synopses and making up my own versions of the stories. By then, I was heavily into reading fanfiction and had encountered all the popular tropes. It wasn’t hard to plot them out. Then, I was gifted an e-reader, and became aware of Gena Showalter’s Lords of the Underworld series. That led to a tunnel-visioned obsession that got me through the first four books.

My true introduction to romance happened post-college. Saying romance cured my post-college depression may be an exaggeration, but it is a genuine step towards the truth. It was 2016, and I had just gotten my liberal arts degree after an undergrad spent diving into classic texts and the history of mathematics and science. I felt like I had spent years encountering every dead white man deemed important by history, and it was an experience that left me intellectually wrung out. 

I had to rediscover myself, my hobbies, and build a life post-college. It was a trying time—not a point in my life I regard with any particular fondness. That changed the day my best friend decided to take me to a romance themed bookstore that had opened months before our respective graduations.

We planned a full day around it, to walk around that part of Culver City, grab food and browse the other shops. The portion of the day I remember best was the feeling of almost childish wonder as we stepped into that bookstore. I was not sure that I wanted to purchase anything before getting there, but left with several books that day. There was so much variety compared to the titles I had seen as a teen. I devoured those books with a voracious appetite that reminded me of my childhood. 

I read romance after romance until I started to have a taste for more books. I was able to branch off once more into my former favorite genres, such as fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, and novels in translation. Eventually, that evolved to me circling around to nonfiction and science texts. My appetite grew because I had learned what satiation was by way of happily-ever-afters. In the near decade since that day, I return to romance often. It is a palate cleanser when I read something that hurts, or a shock to my system when I am getting into a slump.

It is not a faultless genre—that is a concept that does not exist. Romance does have its problems with reinforcing harmful systems and stereotypes. Some of these problems are systemic as well—I bore witness to much of the turmoil in the Romance Writers of America(RWA)’s latter years and its subsequent downfall. That being said, I can find things I love about romance when I look to pillars of the genre, such as Vivian Stephens, who is a large part of why romance is as prolific as it is today, as well as Beverly Jenkins and the generations of Black writers she has inspired.

At its best, the genre of romance can affirm that Happily Ever After exists in variations for everyone, regardless of race, sexuality, physical ability, or socioeconomic standing. No matter who you are– or what in the case of monster romance– you will find a lasting love that is true to you and where you are in life.

What’s to hate about that? 

rODI Brown

*Refers to the adult genre