When I write it is often a plea or has a correlation to
desires I possess in my day to day life. I write the world I'd like to see as
opposed to the one I live in. Very simple method displacement. I take the
reality that bothers me and I replace it with a viable beautiful one. So of course my genre is romance. I find the
world in my sight to be painfully devoid of true romance, honest passion and
selfless love. So I write about it. I
pair up people and give them hell and let them figure out where they stand,
what they want, and what they need.
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| Love Alchemy |
A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to change the
world. So I began mapping my Sci-Fi series which will be called loosely and
subject to change Genesis 2020. I'm
giving humanity a spiritual reboot of sorts. This series features a changing of
the guards as mortals will attain immortality in some instances, some will be
the earth mothers and fathers of a new generation of humans, and many will be
there to see to it all.
One of the books that I began features a couple that I feel
like expresses the most conflicting dynamic in American culture. The male is a
white, southern, high powered movie producer.
The woman a mixed race poor artist. I met Colan and Fiona in a
dreamscape. They were hiding in a place that I seldom find myself in yet have
made the most wonderful discoveries there. I call it my space of truth. They
contacted me and wanted to tell me their story. It’s a good one, and they knew
that someone like me would understand.
When you live life as an American, especially a dark female
American from a poor southern family there are many aspects of life from your
childhood that you were never included in or invited to. Somewhere along the
way you have to either conform to low expectations or refuse the whole damn
thing. I chose the latter. To this day I
cannot place my finger on how or why because I've never really seen much that was different than what is portrayed on television, in movies, or magazines like
everyone else. I chalk it up to my mother's unending faith in me to be who I
needed to be and not settle for who others wanted me to be.
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| Classic Romance Novel Cover |
I say this because media is what it is. In my recollection
the 80s where overrun by respectability politics and racial caricatures. But
that was for everyone, white, black, red, yellow, male, female, teenagers, and
children. Everyone had a prescribed formula. It wasn't till the late 90s early
2000s that characters became deeply complex people. All accept for women and
minorities. So not even close to everyone. As a dark woman I've always taken
those images with a grain of salt as I much preferred getting lost in a book as
opposed to an unrealistic impersonation of who I was supposed to be. The irony
is that you tell yourself it’s not that bad. You actually try to accept some of
it as truth because the alternative is too much to bear, which is the evidence
of others denying you and those like you the very basic staples of humanity.
One night I was shown how bad it was. I was dreaming with
Colan. He showed me a place that he would like for
American film and cinema to get to now that he's head over heels for our lovely
Fiona. You'll get to read the fit Fiona put him in for the first book of the 9
set series called Life Goes On sometime next year. It wasn't just a breaking in
spiritual realization as much as it was an epiphany of a lifetime of strategic
and collaborative brain washing. As an
artist Fiona forced Colan to see the things she could see and to replace the
images he often associated with grace, beauty, love and valor with an image
hardly ever associated with it in mainstream media. His open eyes became mine.
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| See how gorgeous we all are: http://humanae.tumblr.com/ |
For years I thought the portrayals of dark skinned people
both men and women where as fair as possible and this instance destroyed that
thought. I told myself it would be nearly impossible to reproduce the vivid imagery
of that understanding in the written word. How can I show what I saw? The scene
was resplendent. A scene of love and courage, the beauty of it pouring from the
two souls. The scene was shot close, mostly faces of the man and the woman.
They were exchanged plateaus of love and affection. She glowed in the
scene. Her lovely brown skin showing all
the colors hidden there within. No brown is just brown, it’s a sea of shades of
yellow, red, bronze, beige, slightly bruised peaches and chocolate milk. Papaya
and carrots, beets and butternut squash.
His skin reflecting a myriad of colors as well. They stared into each
other's eyes intently with purpose and grace. Love pouring true. She was going
to leave, trying to leave because it’s what she thought he needed. The heroine,
constantly by his side and pulling him though his darkness. He's grateful, complete and fulfilled from the journey. Through shared pain and shared grace
they had found that point, that moment of divine grace within each other.
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| Up! |
At no time did the scene reposition to show her breasts. The
language used was vernacular English, no so called 'black' speak. The man and woman were on equal footing. The
lighting just so to give the ethereal nature of the connection. No body shots
at all, this was an intellectual meeting of the minds and a stunning
interaction of the soul. It was saying nothing but everything in Lost in
Translation, it was the unveiling of the art room in 50 First Dates, it was
"Thanks for the Adventure" in Up.
It was every instance of pure beautiful perfect love I've ever seen that
made me cry and yearn for a love like that which now I saw, never had
previously contained a single dark face.
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| Black Love |
When I woke the image of it blazed brightly in my mind.
Complete, perfect and beautiful and I knew in that moment that I had never seen
it. It wasn't part of my lexicon as a
lover of romance. There was not a single movie I could recall where the scene
had been built so painstakingly and so beautifully. Never for someone who was
dark. Our love is always relegated to giving in and giving up like Jason's
Lyric, or Love Jones. Sent to the seediest place, over sexualized, over
stimulated and then tainted with tragedy.
Calm acceptance in the face of insurmountable odds like Monster's Ball.
Happy endings need not apply because they are happy enough. But not only that, those moments of true
blissful acceptance and love are lost, never viewed or portrayed as something
you would die for. Our moments of triumph always involve being given the
opportunity to excel, still not quite human, but good enough in some matters of
social change and of course feats of athletic excellence. But a love story. A
true story of love between people of color that involves nothing more than a
heartfelt desire to create the most perfect moment even if all others are lost
is beyond us. Not seen, built and not given. Those stories of true love are found as standalone
testimonies of dark women learning to accept and love themselves, implying that
the rest of the world is not capable. We are too foreign, too unrecognizable as
lovable beings to hope for anything more.
 |
| Romantic Movies |
The loss I felt at that realization was one of the most
profound moments in my life. As a woman who is encased and dependent on love,
it never struck me that the reason why it always seemed like such an unsolvable
mysterious fairytale was more than just inexperience. It’s an internalized
attitude of love not being an available commodity for those like me. Love was
contingent to acceptance, something that is usually not a part of the American
experience for anyone regardless of background, yet even more so for those of
the other variety. So the outliners of love became obvious points of
acceptance. Perhaps love can overcome the racial issues in a relationship, the
cultural calamities, even the religious bias. But love, for the sake of love
was not a possibility. As a person of color you must be exemplary and perhaps
someone will forgive your background enough to develop a passing acceptance and
affection for you and this includes other people of color.
 |
| How it Can Feel |
The stunning truth of what I had been shown all my life
crippled me for hours. I cried as if everything beautiful and precious in this
world had been stolen from me. I cried
as if all faith and hope was lost. I cried for the crime committed to so many
like me. I cried for my femininity which suffers blows of lack of love
constantly as I blame my figure, my not so perfect face, my hair length for
lack of love. I cried for my darkness that rendered me unlovable for more of
the population than I would like to know. Mostly I cried for my humanity
because of all the things lost with the realization that love was not something
portrayed as something I was fully capable of that was the one that denied me
all I've ever wanted in life.
Love, the ability to feel it, give it and receive it is an
inalienable human concept. Personhood of other animals is usually determined by
the ability to attain complex thought and love. You will find that they are not
mutually exclusive as we equate complex thought without emotion as an inanimate
function. Emotions, and not just any emotions, but love specifically is the
high bar for being human. Being willing to risk all for love, to survive for
love, to overcome for love. In many ways none is more human than romantic love.
The inexplicable pull and tug to a complete stranger for no comprehensible
reason shows the extraordinary capacity of humanity and life. To be denied
that, in any form is tantamount to death. Stolen then are the chances to redeem
the glory of all life holds that is sublime and precious.
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| Who Love is For |
When people are cut out of stunning and moving instances it
not only cripples the people who are not being portrayed. It equally cripples
the people who are, who are being told that love comes in shades of beige,
blonde, maybe redhead or brunette. That love has a certain figure and form.
Being told that love exists within confined spaces determined by socioeconomic
and religious guidelines. Those being told that what they may feel for someone
who is not of this character mold must not be real because its outside of the
lines where love lives.
I came to the understanding years ago as my marriage fell
apart and birthed my path as an author that I was, still am, and will always be
a love based creature. As love left my life I had to create new ways to pull it
back in. I cannot live without love. I craft for joy and I create for passion.
I reach out for love, always reaching out for love. I will always write of love
and the beauty it brings to this place. I'll write of the lives it has changed. I'll write of the healing it has done. And I
will write it with faces that we never get to see experiencing these amazing
events with hope in my heart that those days will end one day and love will be truly available and visible for all.
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