Shelf Love: Romance Novel Discourse

Dr. Maria DeBlassie joins me to discuss three contemporary romance novels that explore everyday, practical magic with Black heroines: Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon, A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha L. Harrison, and Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert. Maria shares her experience as a practitioner of Brujeria, and explains how everyone can manifest some everyday magic.

Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• Scarily Ever After Recommended Reading
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Co-Host on this episode: Dr. Maria DeBlassie

Twitter | Instagram | Website | Maria on episode 041 of Shelf Love: The Kiss Quotient

Check out (what's basically) part 1 of this conversation: 066. African Diaspora Conjuring Practices in Popular Culture

Books Discussed:

Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon

A Taste of Her Own Medicine by Tasha L. Harrison

Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Dr. Margarita Guillory, associate professor of religion at BU, shares her knowledge about the history of African diaspora conjuring practices, how they are and have been portrayed in popular culture, and how Black millennials and younger generations are practicing witchcraft digitally. Dr. Maria DeBlassie co-hosts. This conversation lays the groundwork for next episode, in which Maria and I build on what we learned from Margarita to discuss Black witches in contemporary romance.

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Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• Scarily Ever After Recommended Reading
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Guest: Dr. Margarita Guillory

CV | BU faculty page | The Atlantic article on Black Millennials, Dr. Guillory quoted

Co-Host on this episode: Dr. Maria DeBlassie

Twitter | Instagram | Website | Maria on episode 041 of Shelf Love: The Kiss Quotient

Notes:

• The Atlantic Article: The Witches of Baltimore Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft in digital covens.
• Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition First Edition by Yvonne P. Chireau
• Hoodoo in America by Zora Neale Hurston
• Dr. Anthony Pinn - Terror in Triumph
• James Cone, founder of Black Liberation Theology
• Black womanist scholars: Katie Cannon and Emily Townes, Stephanie Mitchem
• Azealia Banks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SOXS9f5UDg
• Princess Nokia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUcAPCxrSQs
• BbyMutha: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bbymutha-muthaland/
• American Horror Story - The Coven
• Marie Laveau: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Laveau

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Dr. Eric Selinger is back to discuss Glitterland by Alexis Hall and how it's basically a big old allegory for the romance genre. Eric and I speak authoritatively about books we've never read, and how Glitterland addresses mental health stigma.

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Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Guest: Eric Selinger

DePaul website | Twitter | Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction

Eric also lent his expertise to the Modern Romance Canon episode and spoke about the three waves of romance research in episode 063.

Notes:

Books we reference (and either have or have not read):

• Eva Illouz - Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• "Elizabeth Lane, reading this as a Christian romance novel": Unfortunately the original links are dead but this is Eric's post writing about his reaction.
• How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read
• Laura Vivanco - For Love and Money - Chapter 3 is about "Metafiction"
• CS Lewis - Surprised By Joy, which is about his becoming a Christian
• JRR Tolkein - On FairyStories.

Episode referenced:

• Congruence - 051. The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham with Hannah Hearts Romance

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

John Jacobson, freelance editor at Carina Press, joins me to trouble the binaries as we unpack a problematic favorite trope: women in pants in historical romance novels.

Show Notes:

Guest: John Jacobson

Twitter | Check out Best Laid Plaids by Ella Stainton | The Immortal City by May Peterson

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Notes:

• Johanna Lindsey - Gentle Rogue
• Amanda Bynes in She's The Man (2005 film)
• Judith Butler
• Virginia Henley - Seduced
• Susan Faludi's book: Backlash
• Disclosure (Netflix Documentary)
• Hélène Cixous
• Mallory Jagodzinski - On Bustles and Breeches: Cross Dressing Romance Novel Heroines and the Performance of Gender Ideology.
• "You and I are humans, and there is something complicated between us": Untamed and queering the heterosexual historical romance by Jodi McAlister in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies

Recent projects as editor:

• Ella Stainton - Best Laid Plaids
• The Immortal City by May Peterson

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Romance scholar Eric Selinger explores different questions that have been asked about popular romance (not enough), how romance research has come in waves (three, to be precise), and asks "how can I make this romance more interesting?" (you always can).

Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Guest: Eric Selinger

DePaul website | Twitter | Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction

Eric also lent his expertise to the Modern Romance Canon episode.

Notes:

• Stephanie Burt Don't Read Poetry
• Michael Moorcock SFF book by Mark Scroggins
• What is it Then Between Us: Traditions of Love in American Poetry by Eric Selinger
• Eric's Researching the Romance 2018 Talk: How can I make this more interesting? Also, My Beautiful Enemy!
• Video with Eric Selinger from the Popular Romance Project
• IASPR Digital Showcase 2020 Conference: View every presentation here!
  • Become a member! I became a member as an "independent scholar" for just $25.

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Guest Jayashree Kamble, romance scholar is back to discuss My Beautiful Enemy by Sherry Thomas. This novel is a cross between Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a passing narrative, and layers in discussion of Chinese culture and the history British imperialism. Jayashree explored the Wuxia influence and transculturalism in a paper published in March 2020 in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies.

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Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Guest: Jayashree Kamble

Humanities Commons | Twitter | Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction

Notes:

• We discuss Jayashree Kamble's article from JPRS: When Wuxia Met Romance: The Pleasures and Politics of Transculturalism in Sherry Thomas’s My Beautiful Enemy
• Characters:
  • MC 1: Ying-Hua aka Ying-Ying aka Catherine Blade.  Stepfather: Da-Ren
  • MC 2: Leighton
  • Villain: Lin aka The Centipede
• Vocabulary - as an American English speaker, I was unfamiliar with some of these pronunciations so providing a bit of a guide based on how I heard Jayashree pronounce things to help you match the spelling of these words to what you heard in the episode. I'm sure I'm missing lots of nuance here, so grain of salt and all that:
  • Wuxia - pronounced "Woo-shya"
  • Qing Dynasty China - pronounced "Ching"
  • Bao and Baoying - pronounced "bah-oh" and "bah-oh-ying"
• Video with Sherry Thomas from the Popular Romance Project
  • Also Jayashree has videos too!
  • Love Between the Covers Documentary
• IASPR Digital Showcase 2020 Conference: View every presentation here! Several of these discussions that happened just before Jayashree and I spoke are referenced in the episode.
  • Become a member! I became a member as an "independent scholar" for just $25.
• Thank you to this episode's beta listeners Madison and Kelsey. I appreciate your help!

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Dame Jodie Slaughter bares her belly in the first of the our explorations of problematic favorite tropes. We unpack the alphahole in popular romance fiction - why does Jodie love it? Why do readers love it? And why is it problematic when it recurs in the romance genre?

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Show Notes:

Guest: Jodie Slaughter

Twitter | Instagram | Check out Jodie's Books

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Notes:

• Jodie's favorite alphahole romance: On the Edge of Love by Shay Rucker
• The podcast I referred to in my outro was an interview on the New Books Network podcast with Danielle Knafo about her new book The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Here's the link to the podcast. I was sold and bought the book immediately.
  • Danielle Knafo is actually quoting Robert Stoller when she says "We take what is threatening and turn it into desire." Stoller is "known for his theories concerning the development of gender identity and the dynamics of sexual excitement." (Wikipedia)
• Twitter poll about Alphaholes
  • 509RhymeAnimal's tweet that I read in the outro

Other Shelf Love episodes you may enjoy:

• 031. White Whiskey Bargain by Jodie Slaughter with Charish Reid - That time we read Jodie's book about justice.
• 041. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang with Dr. Maria DeBlassie - That time we talked about bodice rippers and exploring fantasy.

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Jayashree Kamble, a romance scholar and Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, joins me to discuss the various ways romance can be studied. She gives a brief overview of the history of the romance genre and pop culture research, why she doesn't encounter the hierarchy of taste when teaching romance, and explains who romance scholarship is for.

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Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Guest: Jayashree Kamble

Twitter | Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction

Notes:

• Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction, an Epistemology by Jayashree Kamble
• The Romance Fiction of Mills and Boon - 1909 to 1990 by Jay Dixon
  • Don't worry, my copy is in the mail so go ahead and order it
• Paratext definition: "French literary theorist Gérard Genette's term for the framing devices authors and publishers use to contextualize works and generate interest (e.g. blurbs, subtitles, celebrity endorsements, and so forth). As Genette points out in Seuils (1987) translated as Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation (1997), although not officially part of the text, the paratext can have a significant influence over the way a text is received."
• Two foundational romance scholarship texts:
  • A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis
    • Issue 3.2 of JPRS had roundtable discussions of A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Find them here.
  • Reading the Romance by Janice Radway
    • Issue 4.2 of JPRS had roundtable discussions on Janice Radway 30 years after the publication of Reading the Romance. Find them here.
• Frankfurt School
• IASPR Digital Showcase 2020 Conference: View every presentation here! Several of these discussions that happened just before Jayashree and I spoke are referenced in the episode.
• Jen Lois and Joanna Gregson
  • They were on Smart Podcast, Trashy Books twice - this link is the latter and links to the first
  • Their research: Sneers and Leers: Romance Writers and Gendered Sexual Stigma
• "A very good romance book club in New York. It's run by Madeline Caldwell at Word Bookstore."

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Jhen (host Monogamish Podcast) joins the podcast to interview ME in this retrospective on season 1 of Shelf Love. I tell my sordid journey into romance and romance podcasting, plus, I prepare you for season 2, and give you a look under the hood of this podcast and how and why I do it.

Questions answered: why I'm no longer a member of RWA, why sometimes you just have to do the thing, and my correspondence with Jayne Ann Krentz.

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Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Guest: Jhen from Monogamish

Jhen is a host of Monogamish, a podcast about consensual non-monogamy through the lens of a Black Carribbean lens.

Jhen on Twitter | Jhen on Instagram | Listen to Monogamish

Notes:

• This is my favorite part of my 20-page paper on "Dreaming of You" by Lisa Kleypas and feminism in romance novels because it shows how much my ability to critically engage with the incongruity between my love of romance and problematic tropes has matured:
  • Andrea at 19 years old: "There are actually a number or romances that feature the opposite; however, the wealthier hero is still in the majority. There is no easy or definite answer to this question, although there is a good chance it is just a relic from the past of romance novels that has yet to be addressed."
  • That's so hand wavey!
• *Reading the Romance* by Janice Radway was originally published in 1984 and is considered a foundational piece of romance scholarship. More about RtR in future episodes where I tackle romance scholarship with guests!
• *Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women* edited by Jayne Ann Krentz (Published in 1992). I will keep digging for that letter that JAK sent be in 2006...
• Meredith Wild and Julia Kent were two indie pub authors who really opened my eyes up to what self-publishing could look like for romance authors.

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Season 2 Premiere!

Hsu-Ming Teo, a cultural historian and romance scholar, joins me to discuss her research on cultural authenticity in east asian american romance novels, among many other fascinating topics such as love as a commodity, intimacy, Australian convict romances, historical accuracy, and why impact still rules, but intent may matter more than we think. We also discuss novels by Ruby Lang, Courtney Milan, Helen Hoang, and Jeannie Lin.

Show Notes:

Shelf Love:

• Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Email: [email protected]
• 58 Romance Novellas For A Quick Hit of Hope
• Check out Shelf Love’s updated website including the transcript for this episode
• Shelf Love episodes with transcripts

Guest: Hsu-Ming Teo

Faculty webpage | Research | Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction

Books Discussed

• Clean Breaks by Ruby Lang
• Trade Me by Courtney Milan
• The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

Notes:

• JPRS article: Cultural Authenticity, The Family, and East Asian American Romance Novels by Hsu-Ming Teo

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]