Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happy Ever Afters

Book Riot columnist Pryde collects 14 essays on the myriad forms that Black romance takes in this moving and original anthology. Pryde spotlights in her introduction the “fraught road to publication” Black romance stories have faced: “There is something utterly transformative about being exposed to Black love—whether in a book, on a screen, or in real life.” The essays that follow discuss romance in many forms: in “A Short History of African American Romance,” Beverly Jenkins studies Black romance writers post-Reconstruction, while in “Finding Queer Black Women in Romance. Finding Bits and Pieces of Me,” Nicole M. Jackson recounts her quest to find celebratory Black queer love on screen: “Far too many of the stories I’ve found were unhappy, and not in the Kill Your Gays™ way, but in the Forever Alone kind of way.” Julie E. Moody-Freeman, meanwhile, describes developing a college course on Black love in “Black Cultural Studies and Black Love,” and Pryde surveys the genre tropes surrounding interracial romance in “Interracial Romance and the Single Story.” The collection’s strength is in its thoughtfulness and wealth of perspectives. The result is as unique as it is heartfelt. Agent: Tara Gelsomino, One Track Literary Agency. (Feb.)