Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Unbound podcast, the podcast that explores the intersection of pop culture and 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 on the screen. I'm Madre Herrera and I write romance novels with hot and horny Latina people.

Speaker 2: 0:24

And I'm Nikki Payne and I write steamy romance based on the books you're forced to read in high school Alpha holes, billionaires, basketball players, hockey players, bullies. Romance loves an asshole.

Speaker 1: 0:38

I mean, it's no secret that in the last few years, romance has gone in hard with the morally gray hero, morally graphite hero. It's darker than gray babes. It's the villain People that are unequivocally evil are romance heroes and romance heroes that we root for. So we want to know what that's all about and who gets to be that morally graphite hero.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Yeah, first of all, I love graphite. It's giving pencil, I love it. This is a good question. Who is actually allowed to be this asshole who is given the grace to stomp all over a woman's heart and put it back together again in this morally gray fashion, turns out, it's complicated.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Welcome, welcome, welcome. You're tuned in to unbound, the podcast where we take you on a wild ride to the world of pop culture and romance, sometimes with our rose-colored glasses off. I'm adriana hera.

Speaker 2: 1:55

I write romance full of people who look and sound like my people getting unapologetic happy endings and I'm your co-host, nikki payne, black jane austen fangirl author, author of Pride and Protest, a cultural anthropologist by day and belligerent wine mom by night. Thank you all for joining us. Today we're talking about all the things your man can't do, adriana.

Speaker 1: 2:17

So yeah. So what can't our BIPOC heroes do, and what can't they do in these romance streets? First thing is they can't be too flawed.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Oh, no, yeah, oh no.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Yeah, they can be flawed, but not too flawed, because then they can't be heroic.

Speaker 1: 2:39

So the perfect victim trope.

Speaker 1: 2:40

So the perfect victim trope Often male characters of color are expected to be flawless, to gain sympathy or be seen as worthy of love. Any imperfection or flaw is magnified, unlike their white, internalized and been impacted by the representation in the media. So we already have, like this, serious hindering limits to what we can do with a Black hero, but not going too hard, because if we write a hero who is ruthless, who is violent, who is aggressive, who is like lost his humanity, we are in territory that can get us in trouble with white readers and Black readers, because white readers can't tolerate a violent Black man, can't see him as heroic, and I'm not making that up. You can go to the bestseller list for dark romance and for mafia romance and you will see how many of them are Black or Latino heroes or Asian heroes. She said Google it. And if we do go down that way, then we're also going to be hit even from our own community saying why are you portraying us as criminals, as gangsters, as, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 4:14

Now double down on this. Not only can they not have this incredibly dark past, they can't even be redeemed Like. There can't even be a nice arc to say you know what? You know? Michael was this ruthless person and now he is falling in love with this person. A white hero can have a dark past. It can make terrible mistakes and still find a way to be redeemable by the end of that story. However, male heroes of color might and are often not given that same grace. Their mistakes when they steal, when they kill they're seen as inherent parts of their personality I'm a killer, I'm a thief, et cetera and they're not given opportunities for growth. They stay that way, or are seen as staying that way somehow, throughout the entire book.

Speaker 1: 5:02

Yeah, because part of it too is because white men get to be individuals, you get to be a person with a personal history that perhaps has impacted your life journey, the reason why you've made the choices that you've made, the reasons why you've ended up in this life of crime, and are reasons around that, and there's a inherent um grace given to white men and also like an implicit recognition of their humanity. Right like there's a human, there's a soul to be redeemed, there's a heart to be to beat again in that white man who is an individual. Black men are a representation of their entire race.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Come on the monolith Okay, pookie is us, okay, ray Ray and Nim is all of us, all of us, every single time, every single time, all of us.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Juan Rodriguez on the block is every Dominican person that ever lived.

Speaker 2: 6:07

He is, he is, he's every Dominican pop. Yes, I'm thinking of that SNL skit.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Right, he does an accent so well that it's honestly unnerving. You should go and Google on YouTube Poppy and SN SNL and you will have a very good time with those skits.

Speaker 1: 6:31

But anyway but like that piece of we can't be detached from the and it's something that historically like I was listening the other day to a speech by the actress, the first Black woman to win the first Academy Award, and in her speech she talks about being a credit to her race and like it's confirmed by the lady who gives her the award, who's like a white woman. So like it's like historically we have been, you know, seen as a representation of every person that has our same skin color, as opposed to white men. White people get to be individuals and have like a personal history that explains who they are. Yeah, yeah, um. And so illustrations of this in romance like there's a lot of examples, but we like it's easy to look at it like mafia romance versus urban romance urban romance.

Speaker 2: 7:37

What is? What is the difference?

Speaker 1: 7:38

adriana tell me, the only difference between mafia romance and urban romance is that mafia romance has white men as heroes who wear suits and who get to be heroes for mainstream for, like a large swath of the romance leadership. And then urban romance has Black men who perhaps wear not suits.

Speaker 2: 8:08

Not suits, but they protect their family. They do morally great things to protect the ones they love. They're the top of their crime syndicate, right? Yeah, yeah, they're always fine, they're always packing.

Speaker 1: 8:23

They're always fine, they're always packing, they're always driving fancy cars, just like the Monster.

Speaker 2: 8:28

Women's heroes.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Very fancy cars. Yes, they enjoy expensive cognac, come on. And they are generous, yeah, and they fight for what they believe in right To protect their people, to protect their territory, to protect their woman.

Speaker 2: 8:47

Yeah, absolutely, and always to protect their woman.

Speaker 1: 8:51

And so, what is the difference? And yet, um, urban, you know, quote, unquote, is, you know, a little too street to ghetto.

Speaker 2: 9:03

Oh yeah, I mean honestly, you, you, you. All you have to do is peruse the tiktoks to have to see even, you know, black readers saying like I'm not reading that, you know I'm not. Look at that cover, right, like there's this notion of like no, it's not professional, it's ghetto, it's not real, it's not, um, not like an experience that I want to glamorize, I don't want to romanticize this.

Speaker 1: 9:30

And yet, honey sis, my sister in Christ, look at what you are, look at what you are reading and so that is that's kind of like the double standard, right. And I mean I think about this all the time and I know Jay-Z is not everybody's favorite, but I am a child of the 90s so I was a Jay-Z fan before. I was a Beyonce fan, who and everybody knows my love for Beyonce. But I am 45, like Jay-Z was big deal in when I was growing up and to me Jay-Z's journey like embodies the American dream and yet, and like if you, if you think about who should get to be a dark romance hero, I don't think there's anybody that's more perfect to me than Sean Carter.

Speaker 1: 10:23

I mean quite frankly, literally from the projects to a billionaire, talented, smart, a magnate, has built an empire from his wit and, yes, he's killed a couple people, but he makes champagne. Now, come on. And he's six feet 20. Okay, he likes art, he likes art, he collects basquiat's. Okay, it's. Come on, he's married to beyonce. How is not every other romance novel that comes out, jay-z or some kind of Jay-Z-like man not a romance hero?

Speaker 1: 11:14

There was a Travis Kelsey Taylor Swift one came out for like 10 minutes so to me and like but but yet a kkk, literally like a kkk, a clansman, a clans, a man whose legacy is the ku klux klan, a terror organization that has systematically killed, violently killed, people of color, queer, queer people, jewish people for decades. Catholics, catholics, yeah. Haunted them down and murdered them for no reason. A Klansman can be a romance hero and a Sean Carter cannot.

Speaker 2: 12:03

This actually brings me to my next point about success, the unequivocally successful Sean Carter. If he were in a romance novel, there would be four to five chapters of backstory about how he became successful. Characters, heroes of color, cannot be unambiguously successful. Characters, heroes of color, cannot be unambiguously successful. Oftentimes people have this stereotype that a character of particularly a Black or Latino man has to prove they're somehow worthy of or deserve their success or happiness. So if they are the CEO, if they are incredibly wealthy, they had to have gone through this landmine of work. They had to do that poem like life for me ain't been no crystal stair, but that's like the title of the chapter Right, and which you show them working their ass off to get there, and that's. That's completely fine. They can't just be a CEO or a wealthy individual. They have to have this big, large backstory that justifies their status.

Speaker 2: 13:11

And you don't know how many books that I've cracked open where white characters who exist in these roles without any explanation. It's just Tanner and Tanner's the CEO, and take a bit literally. You open it from the beginning and Tanner's the CEO and like. Take it Like, literally. Like. You open it from the beginning and Tanner's the CEO and what Like and don't ask.

Speaker 1: 13:30

Tanner was just born in a little suit with a little briefcase.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Tanner was born in a suit and a briefcase and it's unambiguous. There's this notion of, and also, like when we're writing heroes, we have to turn these heroes into exceptional Black men, into exceptional Latino men, into exceptional men, because only the special, only the exceptional is actually worthy of that happiness and joy and worthy of the heroine, I think, that person who is entitled to unambiguous success. If you are a character of color, it has to be really, really straightforward that you are worthy of that money and that success.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Yeah, and even part of it too, and this is something that I've thought about in a few romances that I've read that are written not by Black women, that there's this implication, almost, that for a Black person to reach that level, there almost has to be a They've had to part with those harmful beliefs or harmful cultural things that were holding him, her back.

Speaker 1: 14:53

That part, you know, and that is a dangerous, dangerous narrative, because it really does imply that for us to see success, for us to be seen and taken in and absorbed as success, like we have to like leave behind the roots. Right, which is interesting and also kind of comes into part of like what, what you were saying before in terms of like, this idea that, like, you have to justify and there's no need, there's no staying for a white person to be a legacy person, right, like, affirmative action is a like, not a feature. Right, like you got in because you, you know you were like the token, the percentage they needed to include. It has nothing to do with your skill, your talent, but being legacy like your grandpappy's last name is on a couple of the buildings on the campus has no bearing on the fact of whether you deserve to be there or not.

Speaker 2: 16:03

That part.

Speaker 1: 16:04

And it's like unquestioned, like sure, my dad owns this company, but I know how to run it.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Yeah, it's a given. Yeah, because I am his son. My blood proves that I'm worthy of this. Yeah, I mean, honestly speaking, of blood. I mean you all may not know this because I write contemporary romance but I'm actually a Regency girlie.

Speaker 2: 16:32

I cut my teeth in the Regency and one of the things that I always find unspoken about how Regency heroes are incredibly wealthy and like everyone's a Duke, but we've already talked about that Everyone's a Duke, but like they're all incredibly wealthy, but how, how have they gotten their money? How have they become incredibly wealthy? If a Regency novel mentions the Caribbean or the colonies, it's always this way that we can push aside. We can, particularly in Regency.

Speaker 2: 17:10

It's great for this, it's great for escape, because all of the terrible things, all of the racism, all of the ill-begotten gains are happening off page. They're happening in this way, that's not in front of your face, which is why it's very hard for like kind of regency or gilded age stuff to take off in the United States. But it's off the page. And there are all these ways where these heroes are allowed to be unambiguously wealthy and unquestioned wealth, and it never comes up how they got money. But I can guarantee you it's off of sugar, it's off of other kind of it's cotton right, Like atrocities, like money that comes from literal atrocities and it's never alluded to.

Speaker 1: 17:58

It's like you know he went like in his little room, Springa. He went out there for a year. He came back, had all this money and nobody questions. Nobody questions why in victorian romances there are all these wealthy american heroines who have all this money, who are coming to the UK to marry men with titles who are now broke. Why? Because they no longer have slave money. They don't have free labor in the colonies. But guess who has labor in America? The dads of the heiresses.

Speaker 2: 18:43

Come on, come on, come on. And yet, like Black wealth is seen as a historical right, inconceivable, needing to be justified. When I mean Black wealth, empires have like risen and fallen in the United States. I mean hair care, you name it. There are all sorts of particularly interesting pockets in the Northeast of incredible black wealth, and yet that's going to need some untangling. You're going to have to explain yourself, sir.

Speaker 1: 19:13

And a lot of ingenuity, but also like a lot of like secondary economy money, like people that did like deal in illegal things because that was the only way that they could have some upward social mobility. And yet we like all those stories are not like anything anybody's interested.

Speaker 2: 19:36

We are very interested in glorifying the Al Capones right, so yeah, come on with the morally gray hero of color in the period piece, like you. You have me thinking now like where, where is our like? Where is our like bootlegging black hero you know well.

Speaker 1: 19:58

You have movies like harlem knights right, where um you have men who are Black men in mafia doing illicit things. But it's a comedy. They have to be defamed.

Speaker 2: 20:16

You know, not real danger. You're not really in danger, folks. Nothing to see here. You're fine, let's have a laugh.

Speaker 1: 20:22

And then you go to movies like Goodfellas, where you have brutal men. Yeah, and it's cultural. It's a cultural like, it's glamorized and it's things to aspire to and emulate, like Ray Liotta's character is someone to emulate and admire A brutal killer.

Speaker 2: 20:45

How many if you grew up in the same time I grew up. How many boys copied the like. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm forgetting now Scarface, oh, tony Montana, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they literally copied everything he said over and over all the time, like any middle school boy was just screaming out every single one of his lines. It was absolutely the glamour.

Speaker 1: 21:14

And I and I always think about Tony Montana, specifically because same I grew up in the 90s, I am a huge fan of the Godfather. Actually I love those movies, trivia. My mom was an extra in Godfather Part II but because it was filmed in the DR, it was filmed at the American Public. I'm so cute.

Speaker 1: 21:33

But I think a lot about Tony Montana, specifically because Tony Montana, had he looked, like a Tony Montana would actually look, had they actually casted a black Cuban, for example. I wonder if it would have been the cultural phenomenon that it was and specifically that wave of immigration which was like the Marielitos, which were men that were literally like Fidel Castro, opened the prisons and so, like that wave of immigrants had a lot of Black Cubans. I wonder if, if it would have been made through the lens of someone who understood that specific wave of like the Cuban diaspora and who would have cast an actual Cuban man, would it have been the success that it was? And Tony, who had, for example, I mean like a Latin man wanting to have a blonde, blue-eyed woman tracks as part of his legitimacy as a kingpin, as a bigwig. But again, tony Montana is an interesting character to me and again, this is how we get to be portrayed Like, not even by an actor who's an actual Latin person.

Speaker 2: 23:00

Yeah, so Was Tony an alcohol.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Was Tony an alcohol? Yeah, I mean toxic masculinity. Let's get into it. Well, white heroes can often display aggressive dominant traits and still be hot. Honestly, their aggressiveness is a feature, not a bug. Males of color displaying the same traits can be quickly labeled as threatening or dangerous and scary. Due to racial biases, aggression in Black men is seen as terrifying and in white men is seen as appealing. Like choke me, like you are seven feet tall, like the idea that a strange seven foot tall Black man is like stalking you.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Yeah yes yes, would it get the traction that it gets in romance if it when it's a white hero?

Speaker 2: 24:05

you know what I'm saying yeah, yeah, just imagine just chanting. You know, break my back at a, you know, at like in a urban place where someone's like playing a street street ball game.

Speaker 1: 24:17

You know, crack my back Like no, you know, I have never I have cracked my back to a seven foot tall basketball player, point guard or a you know a defense linesman in a football game. I guess hits different.

Speaker 2: 24:36

It really does. I want us to go on an imagination journey. Okay, when?

Speaker 1: 24:42

I rose with color. Glass is fine. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2: 24:45

Let's close our eyes. Now imagine a hero who buys the heroin from her father, takes her against her will maybe, locks her up in a room, maybe feeds her some you know, cream corn under the door, okay Coerces her into sex, gets off on her. Fear is a criminal, right. When he's not with her, like trying to, you know, make her come. He is killing. He makes his money from illegal things drugs, gambling, prostitution. He probably is a pimp or has prostitutes or there are women around him that just can't satisfy him anymore because he's thinking of them, tenderoni locked in his basement, okay. And he kills his adversaries ruthlessly. And I ask you, when you thought of this person in your imagination, was he a Black hero?

Speaker 1: 25:38

can he be a Black hero? Like honestly can he be? And then and again, like I want to stress that I have no, like I think dark romance satisfies a particular id. I think I understand the reasons why it's intriguing, why it it's appealing, why it's compelling, but what my question is, the whiteness of it all, is what I'm asking. And who gets to be that kind of hero? Who?

Speaker 1: 26:10

gets to be that kind of hero and I mean you see it right, like like mayans and sons of anarchy is a perfect example, because mayans I mean sons of anarchy came first but it was an a very violent motorcycle club, did every kind of crime you can imagine there were and women were treated horribly and that was the.

Speaker 1: 26:35

You know, the leader, jackson, was this gorgeous white, blonde man and that that show pretty much launched a sub-genre of of romance, the motorcycle club romance, golden era, and which continues today to be a very popular subgenre which you know has a lot of questionable heroes. Um, came from that show, from the sons of anarchy. My hands is a motorcycle club with all Latin men and it is just as ruthless, it is just as violent. It is not as popular with audiences as Sons of Anarchy was and I don't see, I mean I will say this there are Latina authors writing Marie Maravilla, jade Hernandez, santana, knox, amy Oliveira, are all writing motorcycle club syndicate romance, but they're not nearly as popular as the motorcycle club romances that are with, like all white members.

Speaker 2: 27:54

White members, who are also probably given a range and depth of emotional experience. This is another thing. This is another thing that your man can do. Okay, this is a big one.

Speaker 2: 28:05

For me, black characters can't get too multifaceted. This is a big one and this is one that I see often with Black readers and reviewers, where, when you give a character incredible amounts of emotional depth or like white characters, for example, are allowed this full range of emotions, vulnerability, anger. But male characters I'm using this honestly, mostly from the Black experience they're often pigeonholed into being perpetually stoic or even overly emotional and when they run this range of having multiple types of experiences, that is often seen as not Black enough. And I feel like there are these ways where we do this to ourselves, sometimes to protect our own culture in a way that we understand that Black culture is often siphoned off. People dip their little straw into Black culture and have these ostensibly white characters saying or doing these Black things to add comedy. So I understand the need to build walls and close ranks around what Blackness is, but oftentimes what that also does is when you are writing this character, building this character who is operating sometimes outside of those walls, then that character gets panned for this isn't Black enough, or this isn't enough, like something's not hitting black enough, or this is this isn't enough, like something's not hitting um, this character didn't ring true to me and those are also wrapped up in these um ideas of what blackness is and that's harmful. That's harmful as well.

Speaker 2: 29:43

So I mean often, oftentimes this reads as misogynoir. This is like this fancy word that is. Honestly, it is a combination of misogyny and anti-Blackness and what that does is force these Black men into one having extremely flat experiences and having extremely entangled and non-complex relationships with Black women. And I think that is one of the problems that I find myself like writing sometimes into and trying to write out of, of writing these characters who can have these kind of loving and complex relationships with people around them and can think within and without these boundaries that we have put up, and also like people outside in the mainstream have also decided this is Blackness and this is not Blackness, right? Like a Black person in a metal band, right? Or a Black person who owns a bakery and is queer, or you know like. There are all of these experiences where I think there's room and and a lack of possibility for black male heroes in a way that white here, that white heroes, have incredible amounts of possibility for us right, and I mean it's and and what um?

Speaker 1: 31:18

and, like readers, really being able to imagine us yeah beyond what we've allowed to be for so long in fiction and in the media. Right, and I and I think that's the work for us I am not suggesting that anybody, like you know, there's plenty of Black authors, indigenous authors, authors who are people of color, latinx authors that are writing these stories. But what we need is, like within our communities and also in the wider reading world, for people to be able to just like, give themselves permission to imagine us beyond what we have been. And there are, like Christina Forrest, the partner, no, the neighbor.

Speaker 2: 32:14

The neighbor favor and the partner the neighbor favor I haven't read the partner plot, but the neighbor favor is like a great cinnamon roll hero cinnamon roll hero, who she's also like, making this very interesting point about the, the rigors of black excellence and the way that it can, you know, kind of force you into this way of seeing yourself. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, the Neighborhood is a great example.

Speaker 1: 32:41

Natalie Kanya, a dish best served hot, has got everything that you want in a romance.

Speaker 1: 32:49

It's got a veteran single dad hero who's really grappling with being softer yeah, with being a man that is able to feel his feelings, and a heroine who has, like, a history like, who has to be hard because of her upbringing and so like they find softness in each other and like really complex stories.

Speaker 1: 33:15

And so I think it's that piece of readers being able to give those stories a chance and really being able to not come to our stories of like this is my expectation of what a story with, like a black Puerto Rican man and like, and like you know, a Latina heroine or whatever, should have. Yeah, yeah. And also the other piece of that I wanted, or we wanted, to kind of ponder is we can't like, yeah, like we can't like what people of color like, right, like those, yeah, like we are, like we're in this, like stereotyping and like toxic renditions of who we are and reductive renderings of who we are have put us in this really tough spot where we feel like if we talk about how much we love plantains, we're pandering. Yep, right, so, so. So then you can't write a black man who loves some himself, some watermelon in the summer you can't do it.

Speaker 2: 34:26

You literally can't do it. Everyone's gonna roll their eyes. Oh, my black guy loving watermelon.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Oh, we're doing this yes, like you can't write a. A latin man who has had a problem with cheating, and and or or like the, the mystical spiritual asian hero. Yeah, because those things in, in, in, like the under the white lens, have been made caricatures.

Speaker 2: 34:56

They are. They're cultural shorthands that everyone is, like incredibly familiar with, and so you want to make, turn your character away from that right, in a way to say, like we are not a caricature, we are not a monolith right, but what it does is like rob you of these some types of cultural experiences that feel that feel like something that this character would do. I mean, if they're sitting on a porch having a family picnic and there's no watermelon, because you know you're making a point, congratulations Right. But like was that true to that character? Making a point, congratulations right. But like was that true to that character? And how much are we moving our characters to manage and and hide away from, like the you know, terrors sometimes of the white gays and and is that still art, you know?

Speaker 1: 35:45

yeah, I mean, I think it's that piece of being able to tolerate the idea of people who are like what is a traditional black person like a black girl like do we all love Beyonce?

Speaker 1: 36:01

most of us do, yes, but we also like some of us also like Taylor Swift, and so like the piece of it is that like like one of my favorite non-traditional black girls is one named Yan, who is the sister of Nora, the heroine from Sex Life and Sensibility. And Yan is giving Solange, but Solange with the pixie cut sometimes. Solange in, but Solange with the pixie cut sometimes. Okay, solange in the elevator, she's giving Erykah Badu that Lisa Bonet, like spiritual, like my vibe, brings the boys to the yard. They want to get up in this yoni. They want to know what's happening under this caftan.

Speaker 2: 36:59

Absolutely A crocheted caftan. Absolutely, that's what she's wearing. I love that you bring up Yan, because she is, to me, this representation of she's absolutely a Black woman just by virtue of the way that she's grown up and the way that she experiences life and the lens by which she sees life. But she's also a Shakespeare scholar, she's a very bad expert on mushrooms, she's all of these really complex and complicated things. She's a tarot reader and she's building her own experience and stepping outside of the bounds of what a lot of people would imagine is the place for Black women and that's.

Speaker 2: 37:48

Those are the types of women that I like to write that are grounded in who they are and what their experience is and their lens is their lens, but are also pushing beyond what they know and pushing outside of that. Another great example of that to me is Regina Black's Rachel in the Art of Scandal, who is something that we don't see a lot is this black trophy wife that she is just bought and sold to look pretty and be great for campaigns. You know, for this progressive, for this progressive politician, and she is bought to be. You know how. You mentioned Tony Montana, montana, and you know the kind of blonde haired, blue eyed way to represent status Right and like, imagine, like putting this black woman as a representation, one of your progressive politics and your status as this type of of man. I mean, it's saying something different about what status means and I just, and I love, I love a messy, trophy wife is a black woman.

Speaker 1: 38:51

And she is messy.

Speaker 1: 38:52

It was one of the things that I really appreciated about her character, even though, because I am so used to reading about black women that have it all together and and and like, understand their situation clearly and know where they have to get to and have no opportunity to be messy, to be flawed to, to flail Right, like that. That like to flail right, like that, to me, was a great example of like this is someone that has to grow through the story and doesn't start out knowing even who she is anymore. I think Talia Hibbert writes that kind of heroine. Talia Hibbert really writes heroines that just are Black. That's the body they're in and their messiness and their insecurities and all of that stuff that comes out of just being a woman in the world is the story and the story is not. I'm Black and this is what I'm doing. I think there's just a lot of like, a lot of authors doing that kind of work and and it is important because it really is expanding what black culture can be or the black experience can be um in romance.

Speaker 2: 40:11

I mean, uh, even outside of books and media, like one of my favorite heroines is from Abbott Elementary Right. She is quintessential, she is black Right and in the way, in her experience and the way that she's grown up, and I mean even in the neighborhood that she is teaching, right, but she is also interestingly out of step in a lot of really like important cultural ways that people would imagine. This is Blackness Right and it's her out of stepness with with that that endears us to her to say, like she is supposed to think this way or love this purse, right, you know, or act in this particular way, right she?

Speaker 1: 40:56

is a nerd, she can't, she's awkward, she doesn't really dress very well, she's not smooth, she's not. She doesn't know what a Telfar bag is, she doesn't know what would be considered like black black woman in 2023. And yet she, literally. I mean she's from philly, like one of the like historically black cities in america where, like black wealth, black, the legacy of, like black excellence is like alive and you feel it. And yet she really is like a girl that just likes nerdy things. And she in the nuance even in her romance, which is honestly one of the great romances happening right now in television the best.

Speaker 2: 41:55

Wilbur in like happening right now, and he is a non-traditional Black hero right Like.

Speaker 1: 42:00

He is also kind of nerdy. He's not super suave, he's not big tall guy, he's like skinny short guy.

Speaker 2: 42:10

And he's rigid and he's exacting and he's persnickety and he's rigid and he's exacting and he's persnickety and he's a gardener. I just like everything, everything about him, right and and especially in. You know, traditionally in the United States, like black culture has been like at the avant-garde of cool, like what it means to like act and be cool. That's mostly aped from black culture, like phrases like you go, girl, which is like you know your grandma can say that now, but in the nineties that was Martin, oh my gosh Saying all these things. So like like taking that, what you see is like the avant-garde of cool and and bringing that back to two individuals right, who are out of step with that. But also, you know, I'm part of that culture as well.

Speaker 1: 43:01

I just I love it. Yeah, I love it too. I'm going to leave this as a bookmark for the two of us for later. I think we need to do an episode of A Different World and Living Single and how and what that I mean. I think Abbott Elementary is a direct descendant from that moment in time in television.

Speaker 2: 43:24

Yes From Kyle Barker, who was my first love. Yes, okay, kyle and Max. Is there a better enemies to love than them?

Speaker 1: 43:33

There's not, ma'am, I'm sorry, all right, welcome Mark, welcome Mark. Lastly, we have come, I think, to what we are calling we can no longer be delicious.

Speaker 2: 43:51

I'm mad about it. There's a ban on delicious skin and y'all, we didn't do it to ourselves. No caramel skin, no cinnamon color eyes my one of my favorite songs d'angelo, when he's describing this beautiful woman. Okay, he says her skin is caramel, with the cocoa eyes. And you got, you saw her, did you not see her? You saw her right you did this.

Speaker 1: 44:15

You saw her, d'angelo, my gosh, what a cultural juggernaut. Um, but part of it is is that we now have to ourselves because of, again, like the, the mistreatment of descriptions of our bodies in media and in fiction. We came to this place where, like you're avoiding saying that it's brown skin because brown skin is considered something that is not attractive. So we've gone to this place of like, then, we can't be described as something delicious like brown sugar, and yet in in romance, you know, white herons can still have milky skin, can still have creamy complexions, can still have that alabaster, glow, alabaster, and we can't be cinnamon anymore, we can't be cinnamon anymore, we can't be caramel, we can't be toffee, we can't be delicious, delicious brown sugar, and it is, and it's honestly a handicap to us in terms of, like, our writing, because that is part of the convention of language in romance, like, you have to use evocative language, you have to use the lush descriptions, and what is more lush than caramel?

Speaker 2: 45:40

oh, oh, come on, come on right.

Speaker 1: 45:44

Yes, cinnamon sugar thighs, like you see it just you see it just like you want to bite into it. You know what I'm saying here's?

Speaker 2: 45:54

the thing is and I'll just say this, a lot like I want to write a character that someone wants to bite into you know, I want to write a character that you you try to look for a napkin to dab the corners of your mouth like that is the, that is the heroine I'm trying to write.

Speaker 1: 46:09

That's the mission and a man that sees it thinks to himself my god, she looks like perfect, perfect cake and I want to take a bite out of her ass because it looks so delicious it is okay, even when you said that I just bit my knuckles because, yes, you want him to say I want to take a bite of that cake yes, and I think part is that we and this is part of like the, the landscape, we navigate right where we are because so much of the narrative of how our black characters, latin characters, asian characters have been, you know, like and like.

Speaker 1: 46:51

We could talk for days about like, objectification and like over sexual sexualization of black men. Right, like, like, okay, now we can't say that black men have big dicks. Baby, they have them. Why can't you say it? Why can't I see it? Okay, you can't he's a show, and we should say it, we should speak on that yeah, we should speak on that.

Speaker 2: 47:17

But also just personally, this is just a little aside romance conventions I know people want like you know, hey, let's all think about like different sizes, but I mean I don't know if this is going in, but like, look, look like I'm not writing a hero with a tiny little thing that they got to work through, you know, and that's like you know. I just I can't do it Like romance, can do it and say, you know, make it huge or get out of here.

Speaker 1: 47:49

Like you can't, I'm sorry, I mean, but because we've gotten into this place where, like you know, and the Mandingo trope is a problem OK, it is a problem, it is true and real that a lot of white people were, you know, fascinated and fetishized black men's penises, but then that means that we no longer have the ability to talk about a big dick, yeah, and so again, I think we just have to rethink where these tropes come from and where like and the harm was done. But that doesn't mean that if I have a hero who is a particular type of man and has a particular type of physical attributes, we can't say it and we can't name it.

Speaker 2: 48:39

Right.

Speaker 1: 48:39

And so I think that, like, and then you have all these you know white heroes that can have the size of a like you know, of a, of a bat, Like they can go home run.

Speaker 1: 48:52

And yet you know like we have to watch our words on how we describe the bodies of Black men because they've been objectified. But then there's a difference between objectification and appreciation. Right, and it's all. It has to do with gaze. And it has to do with gaze, language, language and how you see that character. It has to do with gaze, language, language and how you see that character. If you see that character as just like a vessel to like pleasure, a white woman, then yeah, that's a problem. But if you are seeing this as a literal, like God, he is beautiful.

Speaker 2: 49:26

That brown skin is popping, those muscles are giving that hair is just right and on point, those lips. Baby are everything and you see him as a beautiful man he is.

Speaker 1: 49:42

Go ahead and describe that dick in detail. Come on baby. Come on baby. Like I need to know how it looks.

Speaker 2: 49:52

Tell me about the veins.

Speaker 1: 50:07

I want detail things about our beauty and the men in our communities that only we can truly like appreciate in our culture and like all of it and like just give them everything they can and should have, because they are heroes. They are romance heroes. Yeah, they're hot as fuck.

Speaker 1: 50:32

They can move those hips, baby, like they were oiled from the womb, okay come on, baby and they, they're sexy, they're gorgeous and and I think they, they should be allowed to be any kind of man that that, they, they, they are in our story, in the narrative that we have in our head, and like they deserve to be the romance hero just as they are. Like we don't have to have these qualifications of what a Black man has to be or do to get to be a romance hero, just like we don't do it for white men.

Speaker 2: 51:09

Oh, I love it. I love it. I think that's all for us today. Folks, we gotta head out of here. There's some new drama on tiktok and we have to check it out.

Speaker 1: 51:19

Yes, we need to head out and, um, I'm gonna have to go and read Alexandra House's them boys series, like just right now, because that conversation about penises just like has me like thinking about them and I have to go revisit that series.

Speaker 2: 51:37

Join us in two weeks as we unfasten the laces of another pop culture phenomenon, and connect with us on Instagram at UnboundPod, and share with us a story of a BIPOC hero that you haven't seen and that you wish there was.