As for the sexuality issue, it’s funny, b/c I never really think about it for my stories. I love a hot sex scene, but I’m more concerned with the plot and the writing, which is why a lot of erotica and street lit frustrates me. If the writing is good, I don’t care how the sex is, I’m there.

As for IRL sexuality, I would suggest that black woman own their sexuality and be as happy with it as they can w/o worrying what others think of them. Though, I know that easier said than done. Nowanddays I look at pictures of myself from high school and college and think, “Oh why, oh why didn’t I wear more miniskirts?” Next lifetime.

I think a problem is that publishing over thinks what blacks are supposed to like and try hard to dish that up with the object of sales and getting paid. That’s what keeps their paychecks coming, after all.

I think a breakout black author would be published by a mainstream publisher with a lot of hype. I see her as writing mainstream romance–don’t know if traditional romance readers can go with black characters for their usual romance fix–especially a black hero.

I see an edgy, up to the minute, popular premise, something really fresh with appealing writing. Such as Time Traveler’s Wife, but even more readable and accessible. For her to break out of the black niche, it would have to be out of the box–not downtrodden soap opera. Definitely with a diverse cast racially. Something like that to kick her to the top and she’s able to keep producing consistently and can ease into more romantic themes too.

When I look at what black authors have crossed over, their subject matter is either drama-filled (Eric Jerome Dickey, Terry MacMillan, Kimberla Lawson Roby, et al) -or downtrodden, “Precious” type stuff (Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, etc).

I’m waiting as well for that black writer who can cross over. But how would she? Where would she be published?

I think Roslyn is right on about e-books and their tendency for more sexually raw, IR, or paranormal content isn’t what suits the average black romance reader.

I think books for specialized markets can be maintained–thus the street lit, the gospel stuff and even the sweeter conservative black woman romance–but to cross over into mainstream there needs to be an author who writes something that appeals to most of them across the board and is thus adopted as universal. Not sure what she’ll write–but it would have to be absolutely awesome.

I also think that postive role models in life or books is needed. I know that I do not want my daughter thinking that she can not have happy ever after, it does happen and it does exist. Drama filled romance is not the norm for all AA’s.

For me, the AA romance books are true to life and that’s why I love reading them.

I have to disagree, I think non-blacks do need to see positive images of blacks, to counter-balance the many negative images of us that are out there.

Also, I think the more black role models that we can point to, the better.

The romance genre does have its tropes, but I feel that they can and should be played with, morphed, and modified to fit non-WASP norms, rather than the characters of color and ethnic backgrounds stuffed into the tropes which are shaped largely by traditional white (“Anglo-Saxon”) American norms. The most glaring example of this I can think of is the The Princess and the Frog–rather than Disney culling from the rich African traditional tales, be they Afro-American, Afro-Latin, etc in origin, for a fairy tale, they take a traditional European tale and put black characters into it. Even as enjoyable as Mulan and Pocahontas were, they were “fairy tales” based on historical events rather than the writers browsing through Powhatan tales or Chinese folklore. I just feel that to take the tropes inherent to the romance genre at face value once more makes the European-American roots the “norm.” As much as street lit is deplored and though I do agree that it glorifies the thug life, I can see that black readers may flock to it because its narrative values speak directly to them, as opposed to reading a book with a boss and his lovelorn secretary, who happen to be black, but whose basic narrative value would be no different than if the characters were white.