The nature of slavery broke families apart, and instilled great emotional yearnings. Darlene Clark Hine connects the importance of today’s African American romances to the cultural legacy of slavery and Reconstruction. Do the romances you read connect to your genealogy in any way? Do you prefer ancestral settings? Do you feel that romances have the ability to heal or to [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, 1990s, 2000s, abuse, acceptance, accomplishment, African American romance, Beverly Jenkins, Brenda Jackson, class, Darlene Clark Hine, dignity, family, heroines, idealism, legal history, love, marriage, opportunity, profession, Reconstruction, slave narratives, slavery, Their Eyes Were Watching God, violence, vulnerability, women, Zora Neale Hurston
I solidified my love for books secretly reading my mother’s historical romance novels at 11 years of age. Nothing is unusual about this experience except that I was a young African American girl exploring love and romance through the eyes of Catherine Cookson, Jude Deveraux, and Johanna Lindsey. These novels would indelibly mark popular representations of love and romance as [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1800s, 1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, African American romance, Catherine Cookson, chastity, Chicago, class, Conseula Francis, crime, dime novels, Gwen Osborne, Harlem Renaissance, Johanna Lindsey, Jude Deveraux, Kim Gallon, lower class, Lyla Durant, magazines, Margaret Walker, marriage, middle class, Montana, newspapers, Pittsburgh Courier, poets, politics, pulp fiction, Rod Herrick, romance, serialization, sexuality, short stories, stereotypes, The Dark Knight, values
At an international conference on popular romance fiction, a member of the logistical team that was hosting us took me aside to ask about the topic of the gathering. “Love?” he smiled, a little bemused. “You know, I came here from Iran—and no one knows more about love than the Persians.” As we chatted, he told me more, breaking periodically [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1600s, Arbella, band members, baristas, business women, Cavafy, City Hall, class, Coffee Prince, cross-dressing, Elif Shafek, Ella Rubenstein, Eric Selinger, Farsi, Flower Boy Band, France, Greece, gumiho, Hafez, housewives, I Do I Do, Ibn 'Arabi, Iran, Islam, Italy, John Wintrhop, Kurds, love, Martin Stokes, mayors, Middle East, multicultural, My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, My Lovely Sam-Soon, paranormal romance, poetry, privacy, Puritans, religion, romantic dramas, Ronald Reagan, Rumi, Sappho, Shams of Tabriz, Shiraz, soap operas, Song of the Open Road, South Korea, television, The Republic of Love, Turkey, Turks, Walt Whitman
Korean television dramas (K-dramas) rarely present a straightforward romance. They are often driven by convoluted courtships where likeable couples spend the series overcoming obstacles in order to eventually embark on an uplifting relationship. In My Lovely Samsoon, for example, the romance slowly develops between a “chubby,” down-on-her luck baker with an old-fashioned name (“Samsoon” has the ring of “Gertrude” or [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with adultery, Baker King Kim Tak Goo, bakers, Boys over Flowers, careers, child out of wedlock, childhood sweethearts, class, Crystal S. Anderson, dysfunctional romance, emotional abuse, K-dramas, Kim Tak Goo, Ma Joon, morality, mothers, My Lovely Sam-Soon, names, parents, physical abuse, redemption, revenge, Samsoon, Secret Garden, Seo In Sook, The Duo, tycoons, Yoo Kyung
The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, the statue he created and with which (or whom) he fell in love, has been resurrected often. While metamorphosis is a common motif in myths, this version recurs in romantic tales because falling in love is cast as a transformative experience. Not all retellings are entirely celebratory. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion critiques the idea [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with Beauty and the Geek, body image, class, Cockney, Edwina Bollash, England, Galatea, George Bernard Shaw, Greek myths, Hollywood, Judith Ivory, Julie Ann Long, linguists, London, lower class, metamorphasis, Mick Tremore, My Fair Lady, myths, Ovid, Pretty Woman, Pygmalion, rat-catchers, self-improvement, The Proposition, To Love a Thief, Victorian
“Fifty-two pages of real life stories, designed for the more adult readers of comics!” When comic book super-duo Joe Simon and Jack Kirby published Young Romance #1 in late 1947, they hoped to capitalize on a market for older female readers: the girls and young women who had outgrown comics starring funny animals, Disney characters, and Archie’s lighthearted teen high [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1940s, Archie, Bob Scott, Brenda Starr, Chuck, class, comics, confession, courship, factory workers, fallen woman, going steady, high school, I was a Pick-Up!, Jack Kirby, Jeanne Gardner, Jenny Porter, Joe Simon, June Collins, lower class, marriage, Mary Worth, middle class, Misguided Heart, parents, petting, rags v riches, reputation, Rick Carlson, Stanley Budko, students, Summer Song, teenagers, temptation, Toni Branson, True Story, warnings, Young Romance, youth
