Adriana Herrera: 0:02

Welcome to Unbound, the podcast that explores the intersection of pop culture and the steamy world of romance literature. Join us as we celebrate the voices and stories often left in the shadows and unravel the threads of joy, passion and heartache that keep us all coming back to the page and the screen. I'm Madera Herrera and I write romance novels.

Nikki Payne: 0:24

And I'm Nikki Payne and I write romance novels. And I'm Nikki Payne and I write ridiculous romance novels. Welcome to Unbound, a podcast where we dive deep into the unexplored terrains of romance subgenres through a BIPOC lens, unearthing histories and intertwining them with the broader cultural context of our time. As per usual, everything starts with a TikTok Dear Lord. What now? Okay, so I'm on the Croc app and a Black woman reader is posting was posting about how she loves to read white books and that she just wants escapism. She doesn't want struggle, she doesn't want struggle love. And of course, of course, she was dragged for filth and everyone hopped on this and stitched her and was like this is, this is what you're thinking. This is why it's wrong, but I want to unpack that. I want to unpack that today. I think there's a lot of work.

Adriana Herrera: 1:22

There is a lot of unpacking to do there. On that statement of the implication that reading a book, that it's going to be a reading experience where there is a lot of trauma and there's just not the lighthearted fun that a person would expect when they are reading a romance novel, that's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot to go into. So I think, and I think, we can manage, I think we have the tools to do the unpacking, and it is something that I've been thinking a lot about this summer, in particular after attending Book Bonanza. And just like as a little explanation for those who don't know what Book Bonanza is, book Bonanza is a very big reader and author event that has been hosted by Colleen Hoover, who we all know who she is, and Colleen has been hosting this event for many years.

Adriana Herrera: 2:33

I think this was like the eighth year. It's been going on for a long time and this was my first year going. It was the first year that I was invited, and so it was an interesting experience to me, for me and for a lot of the other authors of color that I spoke with, which stood out to us, that a large swath of the readership that were there who were people of color, were by and large interested in books by white authors. To be fair, the readership that was there was about 1,700 readers. The majority of them were white, but there was quite a good portion of them who were people of color and by and large their focus was on white authors. So it was very noticeable to us.

Adriana Herrera: 3:36

When you say us, you mean the other authors of color, the other authors of color, something that we discussed, that we observed and like even even yesterday I was texting with another black author and she she was asking me like are you thinking of going next year? And part of what I said it's like I'm not sure because I don't know if that is our readership, which is sad to say, because there was a good portion of that readership that were people of color. There was a good portion of that readership that were people of color, and especially I mean like. But going back to your, to the TikTok that we were initially discussing, like especially because this idea that our books are not as desirable for escapist read because naturally we would have heavy topics, it's something that is really interesting to me, because a lot of the readers that I spoke with at Book Bonanza in particular and this is not like pointing out Book Bonanza, this also like I felt like this experience was similar to me, for example, in a Polycon which I went to last year, and a lot of them told me that what they mostly read is dark romance, mafia romance or like dark fantasy, which inherently is a subgenre that delves in a lot of heavy topics Pretty heavy, there's a lot of graphic topics Pretty heavy.

Adriana Herrera: 5:04

There's a lot of graphic violence in these books. There's a lot of trauma that is experienced, sometimes on the page, by the female protagonists in a lot of these books. I mean generally I'm talking about het books, but there's dark and fantasy that are queer books as well. But thinking about the idea that you're reaching for books by white authors because you want that escapism, you don't want that heavy topic, you don't want that struggle, love and then this popularity of dark romance, which the ones I've read and I don't read a lot of them a lot of them are relationships with a lot of contention because a lot of the times the hero begins as the villain.

Regina Black: 5:56

Yeah.

Adriana Herrera: 5:58

Which begs the question is it the heaviness of the topics or the reader's discomfort with confronting violence? Or is it that there's a discomfort in having to read anything related to race in their romance, which I think is the unpacking that we would be doing today?

Nikki Payne: 6:26

Oh well, you all guessed it listening. We're talking about a hot topic that's been simmering in the book community the politics of reading books by people of color. Okay, picture this You're reading a delightful romance novel. Birds are chirping in the air, Someone is singing. In the background there's a dog barking. The characters are opening a charming Christmas tree farm. That sounds innocent, right, but guess what? Even those seemingly non-political stories are rife with politics, the politics that reinforce the rightness of the world as it is Like. Everything's good, everything's fine.

Adriana Herrera: 7:10

And the politics that imply that for BIPOC authors and characters to be palatable, we have to strip away the layer of our experiences that others us, the layer of our experiences that others us, that for us to be a fun read we have to remove our otherness. So for us to be an escapist read, we have to take away, not perhaps violence that has been done to us, but the reason for that violence.

Nikki Payne: 7:40

There we go. You know, when I think of escapist reads me personally, I think of, like time travel or sci-fi, or historicals People think about hey, the historical has nothing to do with me, these are people in another time, in a different place. And I know, adriana, that you write historicals. Why do you think women read them?

Adriana Herrera: 7:59

I mean it's kind of like a forked question because I think right now the popularity of historicals is in decline.

Adriana Herrera: 8:09

I think people are going to different types of genres, but I think in general, why historicals have always been popular?

Adriana Herrera: 8:17

A, I think it's because they've been super white and I think it has been for a long time a very safe bet of a read in which you will get a lot of fluff, you will get nice carriages, you will get you know that ballroom, those, you know that like very masculine hero, and then you will have this you know plucky heroine who is like standing up for herself but all within a container that is very safely like not touching upon the more like problematic pieces of that society. So I think that's one of the reasons why it's been popular and I think and there are authors who have like from the go, have been like a lot more like stridently feminist in historical, and I think historical right now is some of the most feminist romance that is being put out, because it is really leaning into like a woman that is really trying to undo the patriarchy Like, if you talk, for example, to like an author like Sarah McClain. Like Sarah McClain, knockout, yeah, knockout.

Nikki Payne: 9:35

Yes, Red Knockout Fantastic.

Adriana Herrera: 9:37

That entire series is amazing. But Sarah goes in with that hero really truly representing the patriarchy and she goes in trying to undo it, and so it's a very different. I think that is why it's kind of an easier read for women who like a historical that is very feminist, because you can't the urgency for those women to claim their rights, to fight for their position in the world feels, I think, a little safer, because it's not making us confront, perhaps, the fights and the struggles that are present for us now and that we perhaps don't feel prepared to go after, and those fights and struggles are oftentimes full of much more nuance and it's a little hard to actually wrap your hand around, and so oftentimes these historicals are seen as not political.

Nikki Payne: 10:41

But what really chafes me about labeling books by people of color as political is that. One of the things that bothers me is I think we're indirectly affirming that those books written by the majority culture and about the majority culture are somehow neutral. It just gives this like cloak of invisibility on those stories, but again, guess what that's wrong. Invisibility on those stories, but again, guess what that's wrong. Every book, no matter the genre or author, they carry out a set of beliefs and values that shape our understanding of the world. Every book, small or large, is coming to you with a point of view, and I think that's one of the things that I want to scream to the rooftops. Is that, like that perceived safety of neutrality, of non-politicalness, is a facade. Everyone's telling you something, everyone's whispering to you.

Adriana Herrera: 11:33

I mean, because the idea that you want to maintain a world that's free of anything that alludes to systemic oppression is really an endorsement of the status quo, which benefits some and harms a lot of others, and so that to me is like part of and again, I think there's a shorthand in romance of sub genres that I think we can. There's a shorthand in romance of sub genres that I think we can people consider like a fluffy, easy read, and I think what that translates to is books that are very present in some of these, you know, really popular dark romances. Like not to say that you shouldn't read dark romance. I think people should read whatever they want, but it's.

Adriana Herrera: 12:35

I think, that we need to be a little bit more introspective in why it is that we are OK with reading books that have graphic violence on the page, some of it, a lot of it being perpetrated against women, and yet we cannot tolerate a small town romance that delves, perhaps, with a white politician who is a racist. Come on, like. We can't tolerate that, like. Why? Why? Why is that so? When we are talking about small town romance, what is that shorthand for? What do you envision, nikki, when you think of a small town romance?

Nikki Payne: 13:21

I think of Gilmore Girls, I think of Stars Hollow quaint cities no people of color.

Adriana Herrera: 14:08

There's a bakery. There's a struggling mom who's very rich but hates to be rich. Like any town in America that delves that. Usually you have things about community solidarity, people coming behind you know the struggling diner trying to build a new school house for the children. It's wholesome, it's feel-good stuff that like just confirms to the reader that, like any town in america is just like a great place to live, full of great people the the Hallmark theory.

Adriana Herrera: 14:22

Yes, yes, yes, the Hallmark theory. And even when it has even a little bit of angst, of heaviness, perhaps it's a person that's coming back to confront the demons of their past. There's some childhood trauma that they have to grapple with. They've reconnected with that first love that after some kind of horrible incident they were torn from. So all of that is what you get. It's like the salt of the earth, right, when we say salt of the earth, the thing that is the same for everybody. Anybody could find something to connect to, something to root for in a small town romance, caveat, when you think about the people in it, they're all white, and so what does it look like when the protagonists are black or brown, though? When they are people of color, the themes are the same. But the demons of the past, unfortunately, could come in the shape of microaggressions Come on. Could come in the shape of a race crime. Could come in the shape of a villain that wants to gentrify a neighborhood yeah, a neighborhood. And so then that becomes an uncomfortable read, because our experiences are not the standard, because the way that we've trained ourselves and in a lot of ways publishing has trained us is to believe that the standard, the baseline for what the human experience is. It's something that has nothing to do with the ways that people of color and their identities intersect. Yep, so I mean.

Adriana Herrera: 16:20

A great example of this for me is After Hours on Milagro Street, which I think that by Angelina Lopez, which I think is probably one of the best contemporary series to have come out in the last 10 years. I honestly it is phenomenal. And so it is a small town romance. It's set in Freedom, kansas. I did not know a lot about Kansas before I read that book, to be honest, because I am from the Dominican Republic and I have only lived in New York State since I've been in this country, and so I didn't know a lot about it.

Adriana Herrera: 16:53

But the protagonist is a Mexican-American woman who is from this town, who comes home and begin to grapple with again some childhood trauma. She's been estranged from her family, who are all Mexican, who have been there for generations, and she's there to kind of untangle a mystery and to save this building that her grandmother has had a bar type of like neighborhood watering hole for many years. And this romance is phenomenal. It is sexy, it is juicy, juicy. This heroine is outstanding. The hero is like seven feet tall and so swoony.

Adriana Herrera: 17:34

And she and angelina, on top of delivering us a phenomenal I mean truly outstanding romance, also delves into the history of Mexican-Americans in Kansas, which I had no idea. That Mexican-Americans built the railway in the Midwest, I didn't know that and she talks about the way that those Mexican-Americans were treated, the things that the city government did to discriminate, to keep them out, and how they've gentrified the neighborhoods that had been historically Mexican American in that town. Really, the villain is white supremacy in this book, and to me that book should have been one of the I mean honestly one of the most popular books of last year, and yet it wasn't. I think it's because she was touching too many pain points for the average reader, who's just does not have the proficiency to read that kind of book, like a book delving with those types of issues.

Nikki Payne: 18:48

And that's actually the danger. That's the danger you touched on it right on the nose of classifying these stories, written by an amazing story like that, as an issue book, because what it does is diminish their universality and dismiss the incredibly rich narrative that enriches the small town. It actually makes the story of the small town better. Right, and the idea of books that are about social justice and race and exploring the human experience and all of its complexity as somehow too political or not interesting. You actually miss an incredible richness of experience Because, just like After Hours and Milagro Street, they're about love, they're about heartbreak, family, identity, and these are things that resonate with readers of all backgrounds.

Adriana Herrera: 19:39

Yeah, and I mean, I think it's learning is, to me, is developing or developing the ability to read, read something and not be centered, and I think that's really hard for readers who have not had to do that for their whole lives.

Nikki Payne: 20:00

For us, I need a reggae air horn. Like that is such a key moment, like that is a skill to read something and not be centered Wow.

Adriana Herrera: 20:14

Yeah, and I think that is partly what is so hard for a lot of readers and that's what it makes it political for them, because I think there's just a long history in American culture and American society of teaching us that being political is somehow being un-American, and what it means by that is that if you support the status quo, you're patriotic, and if you don't, if you say, actually there's, these systems are not working for a lot of people and we need to change them.

Adriana Herrera: 20:53

And that means that, like, the playing field is going to have to look a little different than that is just being, you know, on American in some way, because you're saying things are not perfect already as they are. And with books like this, which is saying I'm going to give you a look at a small town in America with Mexican Americans who love where they're from it's just that place sometimes does not love them back and how they have learned to still thrive in that environment, is not an indictment on your own whiteness, but perhaps giving you a different way to perceive what a small town could be if it's explored from a different lens.

Nikki Payne: 21:47

Exactly, this is a non-romance wreck. But one of the authors who does this so well, small town, small Southern town, detective SA Crosby. His detectives are reluctant heroes. They're great. It's absolutely out of the kind of hero's journey. It's very Americana, right, but these are Black heroes in the South who are pushing against a system, a system that is oftentimes against Black folk but against the poor as well, or against other types of individuals, right that that particular detective can represent. And I'm saying this because, reading those small-town stories, it completely enchanted those spaces for me all over again. Right, it filled those with spaces that are not all about trauma. They're about mystery and about cover-ups and right out of John Grisham gripping novels of political intrigue.

Adriana Herrera: 22:50

I co-sign that recommendation. I have not written his latest, but his last two have been one of my favorite books of the year. When I've read them he is a phenomenal. And again it's just like is a phenomenal. And again it's just like. Ruby Lang, who is one of my favorite authors and she I did a piece a few years ago about just like diversity and romance, and she said something. I talked to a few authors and she said something to me that I have thought about almost every day since she said it to me and that that for the reader who is not used to reading outside their experience, when they read diverse romance, they are not just reading the world. They're not just reading the world building within the novel, but we as authors are world building for them and making their world bigger.

Adriana Herrera: 23:46

I love that and I think about that all the time because, even as I was saying before, I didn't know a lot about the Midwest and my perception of the Midwest was a very white place.

Adriana Herrera: 23:59

And yet with Angelina's series I've learned that Mexican I mean, when I think about Mexican Americans, I think about the South, which was Mexico, but when I think about the Midwest I never think about Mexican Americans, and yet there's like they've been there for generations and generations. And so that, to me, is one of the like, the beauty of reading diversely and the work it can do in the reader, of perceiving the world around them differently, speaking of things that can resonate to readers of all backgrounds, a perfect example that is canon in romance and, for many of us, a comfort read. It's one of. I mean, it's a classic, it's a classic upon a classic, the movie is a classic, the show is a classic, the book is a classic, everything's a classic.

Adriana Herrera: 24:56

It's Pride and Prejudice. So Another reggae air horn, that a woman, a young woman, unmarried young woman of a family that is not in the best financial position to say the least that has to marry off five daughters would be rebel against a man with so much power that she would reject the idea that you can't marry for love.

Adriana Herrera: 25:51

To reject, for go say no to security because she's aiming for happiness not once but twice, if you think about her creepy cousin, about super creepy Collins with the potatoes, although that's just in the movies and then to literally play in the face of the patriarchy and not end up dead, not end up in a super unhappy, possibly violent marriage, but living in the castle at Pemberley.

Nikki Payne: 26:29

Yes, ma'am, in the crib, she got the crib.

Adriana Herrera: 26:35

So please talk to me about that. One of the things that I want to talk about is the idea that for that story to be told the story of Lizzie and Darcy to be told from the lens of a Black woman or a Brown woman, that you would have to depart from the source, from the text.

Nikki Payne: 27:04

Oh, this is so juicy. So I feel like I've read every single retelling of Pride and Prejudice. For this reason and a lot of things that people think is that when you write a story like this, in order for an Asian male lead and a Black woman to kind of make sense in Pride and Prejudice, like so many things, have to be taken away. A lot of people were when they read the book. They're like, wow, this, this is pretty close to the original and I was like, yeah, that's actually quite on purpose. Individuals, this Black woman's perspective seeing injustice in her neighborhood, seeing something gone wrong in her neighborhood, seeing an individual who imagines himself above them in her neighborhood and her having the gall to stand up to someone who has leagues and leagues, more agency and power than her to say no and to continue to say no in front of everyone than her to say no and to continue to say no in front of everyone was still a political move. And the reason why I feel like, personally, you can't really retell Jane Austen without it being in some way political. I think you do a disservice to Jane Austen to rewrite it and, you know, make the characters really innocuous and not really struggling against some societal barrier. It has to be radical. Elizabeth has to make a radical choice in order for Pride and Prejudice to be Pride and Prejudice and I think in the context of a Black woman in Southeast DC who was just evicted from her home with absolutely no agency but a lot of ideas for her to actively go up against essentially the brick wall of money and gentrification in DC, is outrageous. It's outrageous in the way that someone would read Pride and Prejudice during that time and turn the pages with their mouth agape at what Elizabeth Bennett was doing. Right, the extent to which Lisa in Pride and Protest is willing to put herself out and put her neck out and really kind of almost be kind of tarred and feathered socially for what she believes in, I think is still trying to be attentive to kind of the radicalness of that original text.

Nikki Payne: 29:32

And I do think that Jane Austen, in all of her books she was always concerned about like who had the money, who has the power? How does this person get power? Is marriage the best way? And if marriage is the best way, how does this person without power attain that power? Right? So she was always attentive to relationships, power dynamics, marriage, patriarchy. She was always on it.

Nikki Payne: 29:56

And I think right now, when we turn on pride andice, like we're eating ice cream maybe our boyfriend's broken up with us and you know and like it's background music, it's I mean, it's fluff, almost it's seen as completely innocuous. And I wonder if Jane Austen would just kind of walked in today She'd be like were you guys not aware that this was crazy at the time? So yeah, the the idea that that now has floated into the kind of everyday imaginary is kind of on purpose. You secretly you take a novel, you take a book that's in the white imaginary, right as an innocuous thing, and then you sneak that in like a Trojan horse and you tell a Black story. And there we are doing that thing of kind of opening up people's experiences.

Nikki Payne: 30:46

I had a person in a book club talk to me about having to Google a twist out and saying, oh, her hair was in some way. I just knew that she was really proud of it. But I ended up having to Google a twist out and I'm like that is the work. Do you know what I mean? That's the work, right? Open your mind and now you know that that's a style that someone can be proud of, right?

Adriana Herrera: 31:10

Yes, Exactly, and I mean I think part of what I think is important about your book and I think other retellings that I've read like.

Nikki Payne: 31:23

one of my favorite retellings is Aisha at Last which that's my favorite, that's my absolute favorite, and I wrote one Aisha, at Last, is the best.

Adriana Herrera: 31:33

To me it's phenomenal, but I think part of what I think is dangerous and I said that to you earlier it's just like the language that we use around.

Adriana Herrera: 31:43

Retellings of the implication that a Black woman or a Muslim woman would have to reimagine the story for it to be able to be told from the perspective of a Black woman or a South Asian Muslim woman implies that the universality and the things that make sense about Pride and Prejudice, with its white characters, wouldn't somehow apply to a story being told about a Black woman in DC in 2022.

Adriana Herrera: 32:22

That is just like fighting against, like capitalism and the patriarchy, and I think that, to me, is part of where like no, let's make this to the work, even in our language of like, not othering.

Adriana Herrera: 32:36

Those stories which are actually very faithful to the original text, yeah, and in the really important themes, in the places where jane austen was, as they say, putting her foot in it, are very much in in tune because, again, like the fight of a woman standing up for herself and what she believes in in the face of the patriarchy, and that hero that represents all the things that confine us, needing to see the error of his ways and needing to humble himself, because love has come, and it has come in the shape and form of someone who is putting a mirror up to him and telling him the way you've been doing it is not okay. Yeah, and now you have to change your whole entire life and give a lot of your money away and go and save my sister, because she crazy go and save my sister because she cray, because she out there for the streets exactly, and okay, you, okay, you might've been right about Wake Em, but I was right about everything else.

Nikki Payne: 33:49

Yes, what you're talking about is, like the, this kind of like ghettoization of the particular, or this sense that this experience, this Asian American experience, this Black American experience, this Asian American experience, this Black American experience, this Latinx experience, is particular and that these white experiences are universal. Right, so and like. That's the way that I think these stories that are extremely universal get put into this like multicultural issues, and it's just like a romance. My book is labeled in Amazon under multicultural issues. I guess it's an issue, but that's that ghettoization of what people can imagine. Oh, this is a very particular experience that no one can relate to, but this experience of Pride and Prejudice is universal and everyone can relate to. But this experience of pride and prejudice is universal and everyone can relate to it and that's like.

Adriana Herrera: 34:45

That's like I mean it's not cute, but it's understandable perhaps for a white reader to really need to make for themselves that like make that difference or like make those two, two, two different things, like there's pride and prejudice, and then there's the retellings by people of color, but it's not cute for us black and brown people and specifically for readers. It is vital for us to not fall into the trap of we, we won't be able to enjoy something that is for us and by us, because what we're actually saying by saying I've been, I I can't read the stories that are about people like me. I'm going to read the stories that are about worlds that don't even envision a space for me is that we're resigning ourselves to something that like, in a way, kind of like, confirms that we can't have that happiness in the real world.

Nikki Payne: 35:44

Adriana, you've touched on the question that I have for you, that I kept racking my brain and like watching all of these TikToks. Bringing it back to the beginning. This was a. This was a Black woman, right? Who said I can't. I can't read Black stories, I want white stories. This is a Black woman and, honestly, she's probably not the only Black woman who feels like she can only read Black stories. What are we eating? What food and poison are we eating, and what are we telling ourselves by saying this is the type of story that resonates and connects with me in this way. Does it? Are writers not serving black women? I mean, what do you think?

Adriana Herrera: 36:32

No, I think it's like we've, like it's that we bought into this idea that that an authentic, a true to life representation of Blackness, of a, you know, brown, latino indigenous person, is always so painful that it cannot be legitimately a romance. Like that's like part of, like that's the trap. We're delegitimizing the fact that we, that the stories that you and I are writing are possible for us, and that is tragic for us because it is. It's true that perhaps you're reading a book that has no allusions to systemic oppression, where your protagonist has no contact with racism or with any kind of violence, systemic violence but at the same time, it's kind of saying I'm going to settle for never being the main character, yeah, yeah. Or having to reimagine myself as a white woman, which cannot be us.

Nikki Payne: 38:00

Yeah, it's sad, it is sad, it's sad, it is sad, it's sad.

Nikki Payne: 38:05

I'm thinking of this novel that I read, speaking of just like what is normalization and understanding yourself and your body to be outside of the standard deviation, and how powerful it is once you are understood in your own context. A novel called Counterfeit, by Kristen Chen. And she is an American Chinese woman and she travels to China and the one thing that she marvels at is how the world fits her again, how she goes into a shoe shop and the shoes slip right on and the guardrails are right at her hand length and just like it was a world made for her. And it was this interesting. I'll remember this for a while because it is that feeling that you feel that makes you realize that you are not outside of some standard deviation as a Black woman, when you go in to buy jeans and you know that automatically it's going to have that gap in the back and you think that's how jeans fit right, until you go and get a dress made from a Ghanaian dressmaker and you're like, oh dear God, this was made for me.

Adriana Herrera: 39:26

That flap goes right up to the you know, the small my back, Like it's not just freewheeling on like by my butt.

Nikki Payne: 39:36

Exactly, exactly. But there's this moment where you're situated in, like in the clothes of your making, right In the shoes of your making, and you have to look around and say this fits me. This is where I am and I think, for some of those Black readers, they are jumping to put jeans on and they think that is the way that jeans are supposed to fit. Sorry for the offended metaphor.

Adriana Herrera: 40:09

And I mean again like why do we write these books? Because we were hungry, starving, thirsting for books that we could read. That spoke to us at that level. At that, you are jumping to put your jeans on and you feel my pain. You know how it is to go into like a pharmacy and then be confronted with nothing but head and shoulders and you're like I can't buy any of this, I can't put any of this on my hair. Or a heroine that wears a bonnet to bed, like shea butter, I don't know. So many things that are just particular, unique to us and that we deserve to read about in the romance that we read.

Nikki Payne: 41:02

In writing. Pride and Protest. I fought to keep this scene in. It was not even conducive to the plot. But there's just this one scene of Lisa putting on a yaki ponytail and talking with her sister. She's trying to decide on what ponytail to wear. She's just shifting through ponytails and Janae's like no, not that one, yes, that one. And it's like this moment where she's putting on hair in the way that people do when they're getting ready to go somewhere and like styling their hair up and adding that additional like yaki ponytail to get the vibe or whatever that they're trying to get. It was such a small like moment and in the editing process I fought for that because I said no, there is. There's a fundamental getting readiness of like putting on a slick ponytail for a Black woman. You know what I mean Making a slick ponytail and putting on that whatever poop in the back. That's an experience and I want that to be part of Lisa getting ready. Yes.

Adriana Herrera: 41:56

And I mean, and there's so many examples like in our books, of moments like that that I like I in On the Hustle, which was my last contemporary like I had, some multiple people have like highlighted this conversation that the hero, who is Dominican, and the heroine have, where he admits that he doesn't like plantains and she freaks out, she's like, can you even say that Like? Can you even say that out loud? And so many Dominican readers have been like, oh my God, I hate plantains. I don't.

Adriana Herrera: 42:27

I love plantains, mom, but it's that piece of it's such a central part of our diet, of our nutrition, of what like keeps us moving, and to not like it is almost like sacrilege. And so, again, like, we deserve to be in a book where this, where the strap, is just where we need it to be like if it's just right there, where it's accessible to us at a granular level, we deserve that. We deserve that and I think we've been taught To have to just like settle for something that only offers us like Glimpses of us of what we could be.

Nikki Payne: 43:35

Welcome to 830, a segment in the Unbound podcast where we ask every author the same questions and get wildly different answers. It's time for 830 with Regina Black. It's time for 830 with Regina Black. Regina Black is a former civil litigator, current law school administrator and lifelong romance reader who has always, always, been living under a rock, is propulsive, twisty turny, a sexy story of a Black trophy wife who just found out her politician husband is cheating.

Adriana Herrera: 44:16

They strike a deal and now she has a million reasons to stay a good wife, but that was before she met Nathan, and it has just been announced that it's been optioned for a television show. And I have to say personally personally, like from the first chapter when I was reading that book, I listened to it, I listened to it, I listened to the audio I was like this needs to be a show. So I am glad that the universe and it will now be on my television sometime, hopefully in the not too far future.

Regina Black: 44:48

Yeah, manifest the test. Yes, no, I love that because everyone says read the book. And they go oh, this is making a TV show. And this book was literally inspired by my love of those type of TV shows. So it's just this circle, it's perfect.

Nikki Payne: 45:09

Regina Black. What if I told you you're in the right place?

Adriana Herrera: 45:11

Yes, because we're going to talk about it.

Nikki Payne: 45:12

We're going to get into it. We're going to get into it. So, first of all, welcome to Unbound and thank you so much for chatting with us. And my first question is a doozy but I think you can handle it Is romance political.

Regina Black: 45:32

Yes, absolutely I think it is, and I think it's political in the fact that it's political in who we write those stories about, because these are stories that inherently send their joy, and who you decide is deserving of that happily ever after or that happily for now is very political, even though we often don't even think about it. So who gets who gets those stories about it? So who gets who gets those stories? Why do we choose those people is a reflection of our capacity for empathy. What are our values? What are important? It just says a lot about us with that, like who we decide should be centered in those types of stories, and particularly for people of color, for Black women in particular. You know, one of the things about our stories most often is that they tend to center, like our trauma and our struggle and things like that. And when you put a Black woman in this situation where you're actually centering her, you know her living instead of her struggle. That's an inherently political statement that you're making.

Adriana Herrera: 46:48

When you center her in a story like that, yes, yes, I think also part of it is also like how big your world is right, like it really, it really gives a sense of your sense of the world. I have another question for you, yeah, and that is if you can remember the first romance you read.

Regina Black: 47:22

I wish I could. I cannot, and this is why I have a reason I cannot. And this is why I have a reason because I entered. I came into romance back when Harlequin category romances were pretty much the primary contemporary romance out there and they would put out so many and I was just eating my candy, like literally go to the library. They had that little thing that stand that rotated and like all the new ones would come and I just check them all out and then I'd take them home, read them all, bring them back, check them all out, like I just gobbled them up and then I used to balance read those and then historicals, read those and then historicals. Um, and so I just read so many romances growing up that I can remember certain books, uh, that made an impression on me, but like the absolute first one I would say it's probably like fifth grade is something like around that time, so I'm gonna amend, I'm gonna imagine can you remember I?

Adriana Herrera: 48:24

I have a similar situation where I can't remember exactly like yeah, I have a. I remember a lot of different things I read, but I remember I do have one that I remember that book and reading it and being like whoa, and just because it was like I was like 12 hormones, like my body was doing. That was yes, untamed by elizabeth lowell he, it's like a viking he shows up unconscious at her.

Adriana Herrera: 48:57

No, he's, yeah, he's like some kind of big man and he shows up like unconscious and then she like rubs oils on him to like bring him out of the coma and like I have that like memory of like reading of this woman, like trying to bring this man out of a coma with oil. So, yeah, do you remember a book from like that time of your life, though that it's like imprinted?

Regina Black: 49:23

yes, yes, um, it would probably be for all the right reasons by Elaine Kaufman. Um, I read that book. So the book, the premise of that book, is there are these two brothers and there are these two sisters that grew up together. One of the sister, the mousy one, yeah, there's always a mousy one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because there's always that mousy one that's gorgeous. Yeah, is in love with the older brother who is like your alpha kind of I'm already in.

Regina Black: 49:52

I'm already in yes, and. But he does not know this and he is in love with the pretty sister who is blonde and perfect and all that kind of stuff. Well, he goes off to make his fortune and gets drunk one night and writes a letter to the sister he's in love with asking her to marry him. Only he mistakenly puts the wrong sister's name in the letter and so the wrong sister that has been in love with him all this time gets on a train or a boat, I can't remember, and of thinking she's marrying the man she loves his, the guy that got drunk his brother was actually in love with the mousy sister finds out what he did and grabs his brother and is, like you're gonna marry I am unwell. Like absolutely not. I mean, you are a liquid man.

Regina Black: 50:42

That book, like I, was like what? Like it's phenomenal. Now I haven't read it in a lot of years, but I will never forget that book and that setup and it's messy and based on the stuff I like to read and write. I think it really imprinted on me early, like yeah.

Nikki Payne: 51:06

Wow.

Regina Black: 51:07

Wow yeah, for all the right reasons by Lane Kaufman.

Adriana Herrera: 51:11

Nobody does mess. Like a good Harlequin category and the plot is tight. It's like a straight shot.

Nikki Payne: 51:20

Yes, oh my gosh, it's so good. Okay, that seemed like a book that was full of compelling tropes. The question that I have for you I mean, we've had trope conversations, but is there a romance trope that you love that doesn't actually work well like in real life?

Regina Black: 51:45

Okay, I have two. I'm not going to say enemies to lovers, because I know that's what you think I was going to say. I'm not going to say that. That's an ongoing conversation. I would say opposites attract. I just don't buy that. I think in real life even people who think they're opposites have commonalities that make their relationships work. So every time I see opposites attract, I'm like this is cute at first, but wait a while. Um right. So I don't think you'll ever see me writing a and I mean I could read an opposite attracts romance and like it, but I always kind of side eye the longevity of that because I'm like it's cute when you're attracted to somebody, but when you're mad at them it's why you break up. The other thing is love triangles. I just don't think I can realize. I'm like watch, love is blind and you'll see what happens in real life. Love triangles, um so no, that does not work in real life. No, I love those.

Adriana Herrera: 52:58

I, I concur on all, on all your points, because opposites attract is always like, yeah, but wait until that person starts embarrassing you in front of your friends, like it's cute, but like that I think, extrovert, introvert is not so much opposites attract, it's just like how you specialize is different, but yeah, yeah but it's always gonna be a source of conflict, like I have.

Regina Black: 53:22

I know people who are like spouses, like have that intro or extrovert marriage and they're happy. But if they argue about something it has to do with their differences. And so when I read a book and it's like, oh, they're the complete opposites, but they work because he gives her what she needs, her what she needs, I'm like people don't work that way. We, uh we go down like my husband has a lot of opposite qualities that I have and we do balance each other out, but it's compromise. It's not like oh, he makes me more like him. That's not what happened, right, right, what happens is you, it forces you to not dig so deep, like dig your heels in so deep where you are, but that's about it.

Adriana Herrera: 54:10

So, yeah, yeah I love it and yeah, I mean it's. It's one of those things, right, we're like we're writing the books and we're like these people in real life would they make't? Know if they make it, would they make it, will they make it, but they make it in our books, and that's what matters. You know what they do. That is what matters.

Nikki Payne: 54:31

My husband is a 6'4", very lean former athlete. We couldn't be more opposite. I have only lifted books to my face. You know what I mean only lifted books to my face. But but, uh, the narrative oftentimes of how people describe their relationships is still wrapped up in those like they'll be like married 50 years and they'll just like. Oh, those weird complete opposites like people still talk about. Yeah, you know but you also.

Regina Black: 54:59

It's like even people that say we're complete opposites. There's something, there's some commonalities and like how they view the world and the values. That is why they lasted 50 years.

Adriana Herrera: 55:10

Absolutely Agreed. Okay Now, moving into more of a pop culture-y part of the conversation. So we wanted to know what TV show or movie would you compare your novel to? And that's a loaded question in this instance, because people are going to have opinions.

Regina Black: 55:35

So I want to do the one that I think most people would compare it to, the one that mentally I compare it to. Compared to the one that mentally I compare it to, I think most people compare my book to Scandal, the show Scandal, because it has those commonalities. It's like in the DC area, it's about politics, it's about people, power brokers and things like that Interracial marriage. Interracial marriage, yeah, relationships, things like that, like multicultural type, you know, environment. So there's a title, it's right there on the label. So I absolutely think that there are a lot of similarities there. And I think part of that, when people read my book and they think of that show, is because Shonda Rhimes right now is kind of the queen of the primetime soap opera. Even though a lot of people don't call her shows soap operas, that's absolutely what they are. Um, and my book was conceived through my love of soap operas, so it's I. That doesn't surprise me whatsoever.

Regina Black: 56:45

The show that I often think about is the Good Wife, because of the themes inherent in that. There is a scene at the beginning of the Good Wife he's given a speech about his affair and they walk back into this room and she didn't say anything. She just has that look on her face and he kind of looks at her like he's like gonna talk to her and she just slaps him like, and that scene, like it's on the clip, is on YouTube. I'm like this is the energy that I wanted to bring into the beginnings, which is why you get, you know, rachel, like Handling that news with that anger that's coming out, instead of like the heartbreak, I think a lot of people would have expected yes, so yeah, I mean to that end when you talk about, like, what people expected.

Nikki Payne: 57:46

Um, we're not in charge of how people read our work, right, but what do you think has been the biggest misunderstanding of your work so far, now that it's live and in the world?

Regina Black: 57:56

that it's not a romance book. Explain um what so I love adriana space.

Nikki Payne: 58:07

It just was such a journey, like what how the you know?

Regina Black: 58:12

yeah, so I've. I've heard that a lot. A lot of people have said that about my book. Um, and I was. I was a little taken. I was taken aback because I, as someone who loves romance, I've been reading it all my life Like that came into it years and years ago.

Regina Black: 58:32

When I sat down to write this book I was like, okay, I'm going to write a romance book and it has the features that I've always associated with romance books, like the main core plot is that relationship is driving things forward. It's dual point of view. I'm not saying that romances have to be dual point of view, but dual point of view is typically kind of a big marker of romance. I always say if you look at in the film arena, rom-coms, follow both characters. You will have scenes with the man by himself and his subplot and his story, and vice versa for the woman, and so that's what we typically associate with romance on the screen. That's what I associate with it in books. That is what this is, and it has a happy ending. They end up up together.

Regina Black: 59:23

To me, it's absolutely a romance. I never thought of it as anything else. I even when it was acquired it was something I very strongly articulate to my agent, to the editor. This is a romance book, so that has always kind of taken me back and it also makes me think about, okay, what about this book makes people not align it like, not put it in that genre? I have thoughts, but yeah, it's interesting, it's interesting.

Nikki Payne: 1:00:06

For those of you who were listening and didn't hear me and Adriana's faces we just made the same face of what would make someone see this, you know, black woman having what they consider atypical experience and suddenly move it into a different category of reading.

Adriana Herrera: 1:00:26

I'm just befuddled, to be honest, like my face has been hanging out, my mouth has been hanging open now for like the last five minutes.

Adriana Herrera: 1:00:33

It's interesting to me and I think it's like, first of all, I think, because it centers a Latino man and a Black woman.

Adriana Herrera: 1:00:44

I think it's a non-traditional pairing because he's younger, she's a woman who's like her life is in turmoil, she's a little messy, and I think that, to me, is, and I think it's the timeline that we're now in in romance, where, like, a lot of what you see is like um, um, like these power dynamics were like so very strong, like a billionaire coming to kind of rescue this younger, kind of ingenue, like, if you like, that's the, but like, if you think about, I don't know, susan elizabeth phillips, like the kind of book she wrote, which is like not a messy woman but a woman in a mess, like a smart, tenacious woman who's just in a messy situation and like how she gets herself out of it and finds her strength. Like that's like a classic contemporary romance that has been popular for always, which which, usually with a bigger story, where there's subplots, it expands beyond just the romance and usually deals with other topics. I think we just have to. I think that people have. If it can't be called a rom-com, people get confused.

Regina Black: 1:02:01

Yeah, I do think the expansive nature of the story, the fact that I wrote about like their worlds, maybe part of it. I also think, you know, when I write male characters, I don't develop them as kind of wish fulfillment type men. I develop them as men that have issues just like the women do. And so I think sometimes if you're searching for a particular romance experience that I've absolutely searched for before with books, I'm not giving you that. I'm giving you more like okay, he's going through something, he's having this coming of age arc while she's going through something, and then they go through it together Titan romance and that can feel different than what somebody might be used to.

Nikki Payne: 1:02:59

That is typically missing from a lot of people of color's work is, you know, oftentimes the ability for the masses to self insert right To see themselves and put themselves in a story and have oftentimes that female main character be a bit of a blank slate.

Regina Black: 1:03:18

Yeah, yeah, it's highly specific. I think like both characters are very highly specific people and their worlds are highly specific. I have people comment on like the supporting characters being extremely specific as something that kind of threw them them, because I think there's like, oh, this person came, they're supposed to be super important, because they feel like a highly specific character and I'm like, no, I bet that was me just trying to populate the town and make it feel authentic and real. So I all of it's kind of speculating because at the end of the day, when I absolutely think of this as a romance book and the book I'm working on now, I actually would understand that criticism a little bit more, because it does veer a little way, a little bit away from that I guess a more traditional structure, but this one to me it was like from a point of view, the romance is the core story, it has a happy ending, it has all the beats.

Adriana Herrera: 1:04:27

It has all the beats of romance.

Regina Black: 1:04:29

Yeah, even the third act breakup.

Adriana Herrera: 1:04:32

Yep In this house we are third act breakup evangelists.

Regina Black: 1:04:39

I love a third act, breakup.

Nikki Payne: 1:04:42

You must read the new story, you must.

Adriana Herrera: 1:04:45

So this is a good segue to our next question, which is about core story. So one thing that, like I mean, I think a lot about in my work and Nikki and I have talked about before, is that, no matter what you're writing, there's like a core story that you go back to again and again and again and again. Um, so you already kind of touched upon that, um, when you were talking about your protagonist and how you write them. So what would be your core story if you had one?

Regina Black: 1:05:17

um, I would say it's like the way I write romance generally is always. It usually ends up being someone who is searching, who needs self-love in order to be open to invulnerable, to loving someone else, to experiencing that connection that they're missing in their life. And so every time, usually when I sit down to write, I end up developing some character who has lost their way at some point. Maybe they had a passion or you know something long ago that fulfilled them and then they lost it, and the journey we go on is them kind of coming back to themselves and learning how to love themselves. In a way that kind of just facilitates this romance, and the romance is like the vehicle that brings them back to that sense of loving themselves, which is why I tend to write older characters, like I typically write characters in their 30s and up, because that's a theme I'm just constantly drawn to.

Adriana Herrera: 1:06:29

I mean that certainly comes through for Rachel in Art of Scandal. She really is coming back to herself in every physically, emotionally, professionally, in terms of her relationships. So it is like that journey of hers, like it was I I really loved her like journey and that's that course was clear to me on that even, even even for him too yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Regina Black: 1:06:57

for him that you can kind of see it's, it's a little different because he is transitioning in my mind out of that kind of like early adult space, where you still kind of have those childish qualities and view the world through that lens, to a truly adult space which makes falling in love with this older woman kind of the perfect vehicle for that right, yes, um, and which makes it very specific to falling for her. But he also kind of he reclaims that love he had for his dad. He, he reclaims kind of those feelings that he felt like he had to walk away from or suppress, you know, and is able to kind of reclaim them but see them more clearly as an adult of reclaim them but see them more clearly as an adult.

Nikki Payne: 1:07:47

So yeah, and so like thinking about your character's transition and then like honestly, kind of switching over to like regina's arc right is there? Was there something that at the time in your writing career that you saw as a bad omen or bad sign or even a disaster, that actually ended up working quite well for you?

Regina Black: 1:08:08

Not writing for like almost a decade. I used to write all the time, wrote a bunch of books, and then I just thought when I got like I got married, I had my daughter and I just wasn't doing it. In the back of my mind I was like I'm going to come back to this, I'm going to come back to this, but there was always this can I come back to it? Have I just not been writing so long that I can't do it anymore? And this was the book that brought me back to it, which is probably why those things were so prominent in the book.

Regina Black: 1:08:45

And I think it was actually a good thing, because the stuff that I'm writing now and the voice I have now is because I got married and had my daughter and lived and had these experiences and failed and like went through these big things. So it changed the way. It gave me a vocabulary for what is love really? You know what is. What does it mean to have your heart broken? What is loss really? That I don't think was present in my earlier work when I was younger.

Adriana Herrera: 1:09:21

So earlier work when I was younger. So yes, yeah, yeah, I mean this infuses that with like a different kind of wisdom and perspective.

Regina Black: 1:09:31

Yeah, yeah, there's no way the book that I have out there, I would never have been able to write that like 10, 15 years ago.

Nikki Payne: 1:09:43

Thoughtful pause.

Adriana Herrera: 1:09:44

Yes, yeah. So our last question is what is your very tiny personal metric, or like, your most smallest personal metric for success as a writer?

Regina Black: 1:10:04

This was hard for me. I had to think about this for a while. I think maybe when someone says they read my book in one sitting or they couldn't put it down, that is. I mean, it just lights up parts of my brain when someone says that because it's just like, okay, I did, I did my job and I know that is the feeling that, you know, when I was young and I was just this voracious reader was the absolute best feeling in the world. Like I say when I was young because now I, like you know, I got too much going on to finish a book in a day, but back when all I wanted to do was read, all I did was read there was this high I used to get from like getting a book that just pulled me completely into that world and I was like I want nothing to disrupt my reading right now, like I want to stay here and for me to have written a book that does that for someone is the absolute best feeling in the world. I love that answer.

Nikki Payne: 1:11:14

Yeah, yeah, that is. That is. That really is something. I love it when, when people are producing or productive about your work afterwards, like for me, like it would bowl me over to see someone like drawing a you know what I mean, yeah, art, or doing some fiction or doing you know one act plays based on. You know what I mean. Just like whatever. Yes, doing you know one-act plays based on you know what I mean. Just like whatever. Like the whole notion of like liking something so much, remixing it and producing it, like the very thing that I did, loving Jane Austen so much, and then redoing it and then having someone produce that.

Regina Black: 1:11:55

Yeah, please write fan fiction about the Citizen's Voice's brain. I love it. Post it on AOL for it.3 like go nuts, don't? That would make my don't, don't tip me okay oh man, you have some filthy ideas yes, go for it and send it directly to me, please, please do it I, I loved your answer because it is true, like, like.

Adriana Herrera: 1:12:21

as a reader, that's like an incomparable feeling and experience when you are, when there's a book that just won't let you go, that you just can't walk away from it.

Regina Black: 1:12:32

You can't stop listening, you can't stop thinking about it until you get back to it. Yeah, yep, and just the idea of like, oh, you wrote something that someone has that experience with is just like nothing, there's no, yeah, there's nothing. So that's so special.

Nikki Payne: 1:12:51

And before we go, Regina, can you tell us a little bit about what you are noodling on right now?

Regina Black: 1:12:59

I am currently working on my second book that will be released by Grand Central. It's planned to be released in 2025. And it is called August Lane, and it is a second chance romance about a Black country singer who is a one hit wonder and lied about singing his most famous song. And lied about singing his most famous song and he gets a chance at redemption. But in order to take that chance, he has to return to his hometown small town, arkansas, where the woman who actually wrote his song currently lives, and she is not too enthused about his return. It's giving what ought to be gave. It is giving what ought to be gave.

Adriana Herrera: 1:13:50

I had to stand up straight when I read that announcement.

Regina Black: 1:13:55

Yeah, I think of it, I've started to think of it a little bit, like a star is born with Black people and with a hint of kind of like seven days in June type second chances tool timeline.

Nikki Payne: 1:14:15

Reclaiming Black Country, re-enchanting the South. You are doing it in the second book. Yes, wow, look at us. Look at our timing Okay, did we do it at us? Look at our timing Okay, did we do it. Are we actually great at things? I think.

Adriana Herrera: 1:14:31

Can we actually time manage Apparently? We can.

Nikki Payne: 1:14:34

Look at what we did. Regina, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing these answers, these fantastic answers. Thank you for being our very first.

Regina Black: 1:14:46

Yes, yay, I'm honored.

Adriana Herrera: 1:14:54

To be fair, part of what has, I think, impacted people's taste, like taste-making in terms of romance, is that for a long time, for a long time, publishing couldn't envision our stories as anything other than a struggle story. I mean, it is true when you think about YA, for example. The big, big books in YA have been books about lessons, about what life is as a Black person in America, which are very important books. But we rarely get a book which is about, like you know, a Brown girl falling in love over the summer with the two hot brothers that are next door and so like that piece of it. I think. I mean, yes, anti-blackness is also like a big piece of it and people just not reaching for our books because of all the things that we have talked about. But I think there has been a training of like the reader to expect the fun read to be the read with the white people on the cover and the lesson book to be the book with the brown people on the cover.

Adriana Herrera: 1:16:09

And I think that's something that needs to be unlearned, and perhaps publishing hasn't even hasn't done the work to reframe that piece of things.

Nikki Payne: 1:16:22

That is absolutely on the nose. I wasn't really thinking about how much of our experience with traditional books is curated and how much when we go, even right now, for a Black person who loves to read, how much extra work a Black reader or any person of color will have to do to find books that the voice is centered on them and the characters look like them and the experiences are like them at all, that it is actually an extra two or three steps, that it may be simpler to grab the book on the book talk table.

Adriana Herrera: 1:16:57

Yep, because, when it comes down to it, like pretty much everything else, romance has been a space that centers and reaffirms whiteness as a standard, and the only way to change that comes with creating consciousness around that. Like for people to realize, to have the ability to gut check and say to gut check and say I've read up 257 romances this year and not a single one has been written by a person that's Black or Brown, and the only Black or Brown characters that I've read have been ones written by white women. And having the ability to say I need to perhaps be more intentional about what I read because it's better for me, it's better for me. So yeah, like anything else in life, when you're living in a patriarchy, you have to be intentional about your feminism. When you're living in a white supremacy, you have to be intentional about deconstructing that.

Nikki Payne: 1:18:02

Yeah, yeah, I'm just literally doubling down on this. When you embrace diverse stories and recognize that politics is in all books, we become more informed and empathetic people and better actual readers and better writers. If writing is your jam, I think we should challenge ourselves to always become better at our craft and better at the things that we enjoy, like reading, and you do that actually by spreading the love and reading broadly.

Adriana Herrera: 1:18:32

Be like Jane Austen Lean into the political.

Nikki Payne: 1:18:37

Yes, yes. So if you're listening out there, tell us your diverse reading villain origin story.

Regina Black: 1:18:44

What was the?

Nikki Payne: 1:18:45

moment that you decided that you needed to read widely. And where are you on that journey? Hit us up, social media. Until next time, keep your hearts unbound.