Some books I have loved by African-American writers

As I write this, Minneapolis is on fire and there are protests all over the country because of police brutality (murder) towards black people and white people harassing black bird-watchers just because they can.  It seems that white supremacists are fomenting riots to destroy black neighborhoods and blame them for it.

Black lives matter.

My small contribution this evening is to give a list of a few of the books by black American writers that I recommend.  Most of them are nonfiction and most of them are pretty old, because other than Regency romances (the whitest of all fiction genres as far as I know), that's what I tend to read. I've listed them in the order that I read them, for lack of a better system.  

His Eye is on the Sparrow, by Ethel Waters.  Waters was a blues singer whose career began in the 1920's.  This is not a children's book, but I read it when I was in grade school.  I was a sheltered middle-class white girl growing up in the suburbs.  I think this book may have been the first memoir I ever read, and it began my love for the genre.  Waters' description of growing up poor in Harlem was my first real glimpse of a the many worlds within this country.  I had to wait for the internet to be invented before I could actually hear her singing.

Roots, by Alex Haley.  I saw the mini-series (the original 1977 one, not the recent one, which I haven't seen) along with pretty much everyone else in the country, before I read the book.  Haley traced his ancestry back through American slavery to Africa.  Although his research has been questioned, the book is fantastic whether it's history or historical fiction.

Autobiography of Malcolm X, also by Alex Haley.  I read this when I was an exchange student  living with a Mexican family.  I loved Mexico (and the family I was living with), but I remember feeling foolish for traveling to a different country when Malcolm was showing me so much yet to see in my own.  I think it's impossible to read this book and not fall a little in love with him.  Someone recently told me about Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012.  It apparently tells a more accurate version of Malcolm's life.  It's next on my reading list.

Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown.  An autobiographical novel (I'm not clear how much is autobiography and how much is novel) about growing up in Harlem in the 1940's.  I read this when I was a camp counselor in a teen program at a camp where a lot of the kids where low-income New Yorkers.  Their lives were tough in a different way than the narrator's, but I loved being able to talk to them about this book.  

 

The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin.  I read this in college when I wanted to understand more about the civil rights movement.  Beautiful essay advocating for pluralism and explaining the need for it.

Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup.  An autobiographical slave narrative written by a man who was born in the north, kidnapped, brought south, and made into a slave.  The book was  turned into a movie a few years ago.  The movie was pretty good (at least until Brad Pitt appeared and made the whole thing seem like an over-acted high school play) but made some important changes from the book, I guess to make it palatable enough for a white audience.  Presenting 19th-century Philadelphia as a raceless utopia was just weird.  More importantly, the story Northup told in the book was much harsher than the movie captured.  For example, Northup described how he was forced to whip other slaves.  See the movie, but definitely don't skip the book.  

Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler.  Dystopian fiction, written in 1993 and set in 2020 and after.  It is scarily prescient (a presidential candidate with a slogan, "Let us help make American great again"), and unlike dystopias like The Hunger Games, it feels entirely realistic. Despite tragedy in the plot, it is ultimately a hopeful series and also just a fun read.  

Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin.  This novel is about a gay, black American living in Paris.  It's a classic that puts even the best modern novels to shame.  Beautiful sentences, symbolism that is important but not overdone . . . this book is simply a work of art for the ages.

Indigo, by Beverly Jenkins.  Historical romance set on the underground railroad.  Great characters, great romance, and honestly a relief to read an underground railroad book about black heroes and heroines instead of white saviors.

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas.  This is a young adult novel that is topical (the heroine witnesses police shoot her friend and has to decide whether to testify about what she saw) but is complex and compelling.  It also educated me about Tupac Shakur when I had not realized that there was anything worthwhile to know about him or his music.  (How wrong I was.)  

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Essays written while Obama was president.  Lyrical.  Coates' most recent book is a novel, The Water Dancer.  I'm about 10,573 on the library waitlist for it, so I'll probably buy it.

The Last Black Unicorn, by Tiffany Haddish.  Haddish is a comedian turned actor, and I love everything she's ever been in.  The Last OG is one of the greatest TV shows I have ever seen. This is her memoir of growing up in foster care and her difficult young adulthood.  It's not funny, mostly, but it is a good read. 

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead.  Just barely alternative history about a runaway slave.  A bit of magical realism, a bit of Les Miserables. 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Why I love Regency romances

It took me several attempts to get through Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, starting when I was in middle school.  Ten years later, I finally made it over the hump of the first chapters, with the endless sisters to keep track of and a very tedious ball, and arrived at the opposites attract (eventually) love story.  As I continued to the glorious ending



SPOILERS




where Elizabeth and Darcy admitted not only that they love each other but that they have listened to each other's criticisms and that doing so has changed each of them for the better  -- well, I was smitten.

Between my first attempt and my success at completing Pride and Prejudice I started reading Regency romances, all of which are descended in a direct line from Austen.  The "Regency" in Regency romances refers to England from 1811 to 1820, when George III was technically king but his son, George  IV, ruled as regent.  George  IV sometimes shows up as a character in Regency romances -- he is often called "Prinny" and is usually described as an obese womanizing alcoholic, but sometimes as clever, caring, and/or politically Machiavellian. 

Whatever role the regent plays in any of these novels is always much less important than the role of a group of aristocratic older women who run a fancy ballroom called Almacks.  Debutantes have to get their permission to waltz -- a fact (or "fact") which is mentioned in an unholy number of Regency romances.

All of the books take place within the "ton" (which is a French word pronounced sort of like "too"), a huge clique of upper class British people who spend "the season" in London every year. The prime pasttime of the season consists of mothers trying to snare impossibly handsome but emotionally distant dukes (or sometimes earls or other lesser but equally rich nobles) to marry their debutante daughters, and the attempts of the dukes to avoid being snared.  The members of the ton are always described as gossipy, boring, mean-spirited, and materialistic.  Naturally the dukes and the heroines are, however, kind, interesting, and charitable and care little for the trappings of wealth. In an alternative universe the main characters of the various novels would find and hang out with each other, but I suppose then all the conflict would be removed. 

I was initially drawn to Regency romances because when I started reading them there was almost always a power imbalance between the duke and the heroine, and I find power imbalance romances enthralling.  (That's why I write stories about naked sex slaves.)  The heroine was frequently a neglected or sometimes abused poor relation, or a "guttersnipe" (a word that appeared often) who turned out to be a long-lost daughter of another duke.  Or maybe she was a governess with a secret baby who would be fired and have to turn to prostitution if anyone found out, or a helpless runaway bride seeking refuge from a murderous fiance.  It's a good thing the duke was always there to save her. 

Those kind of imbalances fell out style and for a long time it seemed like the heroine of every Regency romance would get randomly kidnapped -- because the duke needed something to rescue her from.  I found those plots dull and stepped away from Regencies for a while.  I must not have been alone, because they became increasingly difficult to find.

And then Regency romances blossomed.  Suddenly the heroines were often older (never older than the duke, of course, but close to being "on the shelf" -- say, 25).  They were physicians, or at least the daughters of physicians who had been taught everything their fathers knew (which always included anachronisms such as an emphasis on washing hands and a disapproval of bloodletting).  Or they ran orphanages between going to balls -- always pleasant orphanages where the children were given an education and taught a trade and certainly not mistreated.  Or they paint with -- shocker! -- oils instead of watercolors and want to display their work publicly.

And now it is often the dukes who need rescuing.  With alarming regularity they have been raised in poverty, completely unaware that they have a second cousin twice removed who is nobility and whose title they suddenly inherit when the cousin dies after being predeceased by his sons.  Then the new duke needs to learn manners and how to dance, and somehow it is the physician/orphanage lady/painter who is the only person who can do that.

Some Regency romances are topical. One of my favorite series,  The Survivor's Club, by Mary Balogh, follows officers returning from the Napoleonic wars, all of whom suffer from some sort of physical disability as well as PTSD as a result of their service.  A few books deal with gay male love (although I have yet to encounter a Regency lesbian love story).  Right now I'm reading A Duke by Any Other Name, by Grace Burrowes, in which a duke has to hide from the world because he has epilepsy. 

The hotness level of Regency romances varies.  In some only a few chaste kisses are exchanged. In others, the duke teaches the heroine the joys of lovemaking and is thereby himself transformed.  All of his former sexual encounters were just something he did to get by while waiting for true love.  In that world good, or even fun, sex without love does not exist. 

The possibility of pregnancy never seems to be a concern commensurate with the potential consequences to an unmarried upper class woman of the time. The duke withdraws, or promises to marry the heroine if she gets pregnant, or sometimes discovers that he had impregnated her five  years earlier, before she disappeared without a trace.  Sometimes there is vague talk of an herbal tea that apparently prevents pregnancy more effectively than the pill.  There are no shotgun weddings, no deaths in childbirth, no harried, exhausted mothers who just want a fucking break. 

And therein lies the pleasure of reading a Regency romance.  The England of these books is its own fantasy world, as much as Narnia or Middle Earth, bound by its own rules and logic.  Unlike in a modern romances -- where I find myself yelling at the book, "No, that's not how lawsuits work!" or "She needs to go back to New York and get away from this stultifying backwoods town!" or "Don't make a move on the nanny; she's your employee and that's sexual harassment!" -- I don't know or care how upper class Londoners behaved in 1815.  I don't need to suspend my disbelief.  I can just enjoy the story.

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.