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psocopteraI don't tend to be interested in the history of romance as a genre the way I am in the history of SFF - I mean, I haven't made a point of going back and reading old Barbara Cartlands or anything. As it turns out, almost 30 years of reading the things means that I've acquired some genre history just by living through it, and reading the wikipedia article on romance novels, which I just did out of curiosity, had a bunch of "oh yeah, her" and "oh yeah, I remember that book" and "oh yeah, I remember when that started to change". So maybe the real difference is that I have never run into gatekeeping in romance ("no, look, you can't be a *real* romance fan if you haven't read Johanna Lindsey") or pushback against gatekeeping, whereas in SFF I think you're always going to come across someone arguing that it's okay to not read Heinlein even if you've managed to avoid the guy telling you you do have to.
Anyways, Indigo, Beverly Jenkins, 1996. Jenkins was the big name in Black historical romance in the 90s and 00s; this was her second book and first to make it big, I believe. Set in 1858 in Michigan, the heroine is a formerly-enslaved Black woman, now a conductor/safe house on the Underground Railroad, who meets the hero when he comes in as a wounded fellow conductor needing a safe place to heal up. I was really into this book whenever it was talking about the Underground Railroad, the political struggle for abolition, the kinds of direct action people were taking, etc. Like, I had never heard of the Abolition Riot of 1836 - a courtroom riot in Boston rescuing two women arrested as fugitive slaves! Dude! Or the terror of what it was like when slave catchers were operating in the area and people's neighbors would disappear - chilling parallels to ICE (and how appalling it is that we're still doing this same shit 160 years later). Unfortunately this interesting historical novel was cluttered up and derailed by the overbearing hero, a bunch of romance tropes I'm not into (heroes who don't listen, extravagent gifts, etc) and a bunch of florid 90s-romance-novel sex. Which I can't possibly claim to be surprised by in a 90s romance novel, but, I don't know, I was expecting much more of a "dashing freedom fighter comrade" trope from the premise than "by the way he's also suuuuper rich, and thinks it's cute that the heroine thinks she gets any input here". (She was awesome! I wanted her wooed by someone who respected that! Bah.) I've probably read that same damn dynamic a hundred times with white leads, though, so go Jenkins for pioneering; it's clearly right and proper for authors and characters of color to get to do all the popular tropes, including the ones I don't personally like. (For me, though, I think I might try to avoid romance novels older than, say, my children. I know Alyssa Cole has been doing some Civil War historicals recently, might be a better bet.)
Anyways, Indigo, Beverly Jenkins, 1996. Jenkins was the big name in Black historical romance in the 90s and 00s; this was her second book and first to make it big, I believe. Set in 1858 in Michigan, the heroine is a formerly-enslaved Black woman, now a conductor/safe house on the Underground Railroad, who meets the hero when he comes in as a wounded fellow conductor needing a safe place to heal up. I was really into this book whenever it was talking about the Underground Railroad, the political struggle for abolition, the kinds of direct action people were taking, etc. Like, I had never heard of the Abolition Riot of 1836 - a courtroom riot in Boston rescuing two women arrested as fugitive slaves! Dude! Or the terror of what it was like when slave catchers were operating in the area and people's neighbors would disappear - chilling parallels to ICE (and how appalling it is that we're still doing this same shit 160 years later). Unfortunately this interesting historical novel was cluttered up and derailed by the overbearing hero, a bunch of romance tropes I'm not into (heroes who don't listen, extravagent gifts, etc) and a bunch of florid 90s-romance-novel sex. Which I can't possibly claim to be surprised by in a 90s romance novel, but, I don't know, I was expecting much more of a "dashing freedom fighter comrade" trope from the premise than "by the way he's also suuuuper rich, and thinks it's cute that the heroine thinks she gets any input here". (She was awesome! I wanted her wooed by someone who respected that! Bah.) I've probably read that same damn dynamic a hundred times with white leads, though, so go Jenkins for pioneering; it's clearly right and proper for authors and characters of color to get to do all the popular tropes, including the ones I don't personally like. (For me, though, I think I might try to avoid romance novels older than, say, my children. I know Alyssa Cole has been doing some Civil War historicals recently, might be a better bet.)
