Dear Romance,
You didn’t find us.
We found you.
Before algorithms.
Before ring lights.
Before “romantasy” became a marketing budget.
We were in folding chairs at library book clubs,
passing around paperbacks like communion.
Highlighters tucked inside chapter fourteen.
Aunties arguing over which hero deserved redemption.
Wine sweating in plastic cups.
Somebody’s mama fanning herself at a kiss scene
like she didn’t just read the whole thing twice.
We were there.
Beauty salon Saturdays.
Church basements.
Living rooms that smelled like shea butter and ambition.
Stacks of novels beside bills and grocery lists.
Love stories nestled between survival.
Dear Romance,
you were never fluff to us.
You were field notes.
Blueprints.
Practice.
Because Black women know how to endure.
But wanting?
Wanting is a luxury.
And you let us want.
You let us imagine softness without losing edge.
Passion without punishment.
A man who didn’t need to be fixed,
just grown.
A love that didn’t require martyrdom
as proof of depth.
And while the industry was still figuring out
if we were “marketable,”
we were already the market.
We built book clubs before hashtags.
We stood in signing lines for hours,
heels hurting,
credit cards trembling,
waiting for a signature from a woman
who dared to center us.
Beverly Jenkins writing history back into our bodies.
Brenda Jackson building dynasties of desire,
making sure the men were fine
and the women even finer.
Rochelle Alers.
Shirley Hailstock.
Donna Hill.
Sandra Kitt.
Vivian Stephens pulling up a chair at RWA,
starting a chapter because no one else
thought we belonged in the room. That wasn’t charity.
That was strategy.
Vivian didn’t ask politely.
She organized.
She gathered.
She made space where there wasn’t any.
She understood something early:
If they won’t open the door,
build your own conference.
And so we did.
We showed up to RWA conventions
in bold lip colors and sharper business plans.
We networked between workshops.
We pitched between panel discussions.
We took notes on who was listening
and who was pretending not to.
We knew publishing could be polite
and still exclusive.
We knew covers could be beautiful
and still not look like us.
So we wrote anyway.
We wrote men who cherished us.
We wrote women who owned their hunger.
We wrote towns, cities, islands,
corporate boardrooms and ranches and kingdoms
where Black love wasn’t a subplot.
It was the plot.
My Dear Romance,
you’ve always been sexy to us,
but not just in the bedroom sense.
Sexy like ownership.
Sexy like contracts signed.
Sexy like royalties hitting.
Sexy like a Black woman saying,
“I’ll publish it myself then.”
You’ve evolved.
We’ve evolved you.
We asked harder questions.
Who gets the biggest advances?
Whose covers get prime placement?
Whose books get adapted?
Who gets called “universal”
and who gets called “niche”?
We can love a genre
and still interrogate it.
That’s foreplay for our minds.
And let’s be clear—
we never needed you to validate
our desirability.
We already knew we were the fantasy.
What we wanted
was for the shelves
and the screens
and the signing tables
to catch up.
And slowly,
they did.
Now we’re not just readers.
We’re editors.
Agents.
Publishers.
Festival founders.
We’re building imprints
that don’t wait for permission.
We’re hosting events
where Black romance isn’t a category—
it’s the headliner.
We’re still in book clubs.
Still in signings.
Still in the aisle whispering,
“Girl, chapter twenty-three…”
Still buying the hardcover
and the eBook
and the audiobook
because legacy deserves multiple formats.
Dear Romance,
during Black History Month,
let’s tell the truth.
You are better because we are here.
Because Black women don’t just consume love stories.
We archive them.
We protect them.
We expand them.
We understand that happily ever after
isn’t naïve.
It’s aspirational.
It’s strategic.
It’s spiritual.
It’s sometimes downright transactional.
But it’s ours.
And every time a Black woman opens a book
and sees herself centered,
desired,
respected,
chosen—
that’s not just entertainment.
That’s inheritance.
So thank you,
not for saving us,
but for giving us a stage
big enough to hold our hunger.
We’ll take it from here.
Love always,
A Sagittarius
who reads the contract
and the love scene
with equal intensity.
