Racism In The Romance Fiction Industry
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Racism In The Romance Fiction Industry
Racism in the romance fiction industry is a recognized issue that has received scholarly attention since the 1980s. Romance novels featuring protagonists of color were not published before 1969 in the United States and did not become part of the mainstream romance fiction industry before 1980. Romance novels featuring Black protagonists were marketed differently and, as of 2021, have been frequently shelved in segregated sections. Black novelists have felt unwelcome in industry organizations and industry awards are not regularly accorded to their work. History of multicultural romance fiction The romance fiction industry is a major fiction genre; in the US in 2020 it represented nearly 20 percent of fiction sales. Editors and other decision makers in the romance fiction industry, as in the publishing industry in general, have historically been "overwhelmingly" white, and as of 2019 the industry was still much whiter than the US population. Brit Bennett wrote in 2017, "The ave ...
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Romance Novel
A romance novel or romantic novel generally refers to a type of genre fiction novel which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Precursors include authors of literary fiction, such as Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë. There are many subgenres of the romance novel, including fantasy, gothic, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, and science fiction. Although women are the main readers of romance novels a growing number of men enjoy them as well. The Romance Writers of America cite 16% of men read romance novels. "Many people today don’t realize that romance is more than a love story. Romance can be a complex plotline with a setting from the past in a remote, faraway place. Instead of focusing on a love story, it idealizes values and principles that seem lost in today’s world of technology and instant gratification. However, roma ...
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BuzzFeed News
''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, it has won the George Polk Award, The Sidney Award, National Magazine Award, the National Press Foundation award, and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. History ''BuzzFeed News'' began as a division of BuzzFeed in December 2011 with the appointment of Ben Smith as editor-in-chief. In 2013, Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Schoofs of ProPublica was hired as head of investigative reporting. By 2016, ''BuzzFeed News'' had 20 investigative journalists. The British division of ''BuzzFeed News'' is headed by Janine Gibson, formerly of ''The Guardian''. Notable coverage includes a 2012 partnership with the BBC on match-fixing in professional tennis, and inequities in the U.S. H-2 guest worker program, reporting of which won a National Ma ...
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Courtney Milan
Courtney Milan, a pseudonym for Heidi Bond, is a bestselling American author of historical and contemporary romance novels. After releasing her first few books under a traditional publishing contract, Milan has self-published more recent works. Prior to her writing career, Bond was a law clerk for Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court and for Judge Alex Kozinski. As the Me Too movement gained steam, Bond alleged that Kozinski had sexually harassed her. Kozinski soon resigned his lifetime appointment, and Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts ordered a review of how the federal judiciary handled sexual harassment reports. Milan served on the board of directors of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) for four years, spearheading efforts to make the organization more diverse and inclusive. In late 2019, the RWA board voted to suspend Milan for calling another author's book racist. The board reinstated her days later, noting irregularities with the process. ...
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American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ...
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Street Lit
With more than half the world's population living in cities, urban fiction has become a truly global field. Recent comprehensive studies of urban fiction showcase the worldwide reach of the genre and include ''Writing Beirut: Mappings of the City in the Modern Arabic Novel'' (2015) by Samira Aghacy, ''Indigenous Cities: Urban Indian Fiction and the Histories of Relocation'' (2017) by Laura M. Furlan, ''Postcolonial Indian City-Literature: Policy, Politics and Evolution'' (2022) by Dibyakusum Ray, and ''Sensing the Sinophone: Urban Memoryscapes in Contemporary Fiction'' (2022) by Astrid Møller-Olsen. American Urban Fiction Also known as street lit or street fiction, is a literary genre set in a city landscape; however, the genre is as much defined by the socio-economic realities and culture of its characters as the urban setting. The tone for urban fiction is usually dark, focusing on the underside of city living. Profanity, sex, and violence are usually explicit, with the wr ...
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Gucci Mane
Radric Delantic Davis (born February 12, 1980), known professionally as Gucci Mane, is an American rapper and record executive. He helped pioneer the hip hop subgenre of trap music alongside fellow Atlanta-based rappers T.I. and Young Jeezy, particularly in the 2000s and 2010s. In 2005, Gucci Mane debuted with ''Trap House'', followed by his second album, '' Hard to Kill'' in 2006. His third studio album ''Back to the Trap House'' was released in 2007. Following a string of critically and commercially successful mixtape releases in 2009, Gucci Mane released his fourth studio album, ''The State vs. Radric Davis'', his first gold-certified album. Following time spent in prison between 2014 and 2016, he re-emerged with several new retail projects, including ''Everybody Looking'' (2016), which was released to critical praise. His 2016 collaboration with Rae Sremmurd, titled "Black Beatles", provided Gucci Mane with his first number-one single on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 char ...
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Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry (born Emmitt Perry Jr., September 13, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, and playwright. He is the creator and performer of the Madea character, a tough elderly woman. Perry's films vary in style from orthodox filmmaking techniques to filmed productions of live stage plays. Many of his stage-play films have been subsequently adapted as feature films. Perry wrote and produced many stage plays during the 1990s and early 2000s. He also developed several television series, most notably ''Tyler Perry's House of Payne'', which ran for eight seasons on TBS (American TV channel), TBS from 2006 to 2012. In 2011, ''Forbes'' listed him as the highest-paid man in entertainment, earning US$130 million between May 2010 and May 2011. In 2012, Perry struck an exclusive multi-year partnership with Oprah Winfrey and her Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). The partnership was largely for the sake of bringing Television show#Scripted entertainment, scripted television to OWN, b ...
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Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded by Sam Walton in nearby Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law on October 31, 1969. It also owns and operates Sam's Club retail warehouses. Walmart has 10,586 stores and clubs in 24 countries, operating under 46 different names. The company operates under the name Walmart in the United States and Canada, as Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico and Central America, and as Flipkart Wholesale in India. It has wholly owned operations in Chile, Canada, and South Africa. Since August 2018, Walmart held only a minority stake in Walmart Brasil, which was renamed Grupo Big in August 2019, with 20 percent of the company's shares, and p ...
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Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats, seat of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake County in the United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, List of United States cities by population, the 41st-most populous city in the U.S., and the largest city of the Research Triangle metro area. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak, oak trees, which line the streets in the heart of the city. The city covers a land area of . The United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau counted the city's population as 474,069 in the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. The city of Raleigh is named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who established the lost Roanoke Co ...
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Kimani Press
Kimani Press was formed by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd. in December 2005, with the purchase of the Arabesque, Sepia, and New Spirit Imprints from BET Books. Arabesque was the first line of original African-American romance novels from a major publishing house, and published two single-titles each month until it ceased publication in February 2015. The Sepia imprint featured commercial women’s fiction, and New Spirit served the growing African-American inspirational marketplace with both fiction and non-fiction releases. In July 2006, Harlequin launched Kimani Romance, the only African-American series imprint in the marketplace today, with four new releases each month. In May 2017, it was announced that Harlequin was no longer acquiring titles for the Kimani Romance imprint, with the final titles due to be released in 2018. In February 2007, Kimani TRU was launched targeting a young-adult, multi-cultural audience with one new release each month. This line ceased publication in Oct ...
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Racial Trauma
Racial trauma, or race-based traumatic stress, is the cumulative effects of racism on an individual’s mental and physical health. It has been observed in numerous BIPOC communities and people of all ages, including young children. Racial trauma can be experiences vicariously or directly. It has been linked to feelings of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, as well as other physical health issues. Causes of Racial Trauma When an individual experiences racism, they can develop racial trauma. Racial trauma can be caused by racial discrimination and/or racial harassment. Racial discrimination is a term used to describe attitudes, actions, or policies that function to (1) keep physical distance between racially privileged groups and racially underprivileged groups (e.g., a White person crossing the road when they see a person of color walking in their direction at night) and/or (2) ensure that people with minoritized racial identities remain in the less privileged margins ...
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Brenda Jackson
Brenda Jackson (February 2, 1953) is an American novelist who writes contemporary multicultural romance novels. She was the first African-American author to have a novel published as part of the Silhouette Desire line, and has seen many of her novels reach ''The New York Times'' and ''USAToday'' bestsellers lists. Jackson reached a milestone in her career in October 2013 when she published her 100th novel, becoming the first African American to achieve this milestone. Biography Brenda Jackson was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She married Gerald, her high school sweetheart, in 1972 after graduating from high school. She went on to earn a degree in business administration from Jacksonville University, and to expand their family by having two sons, Gerald Jr., a Jacksonville-based filmmaker, and Brandon, who is a Political Officer in the US Foreign Service. To relieve job-related stress in the early 1990s, Jackson began reading romance novels. Although she enjoyed the n ...
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