For those that find it helpful to track, here is an #ownvoice ROMANCE NOVEL reading challenge you can use to be more intentional with your reading. The list for the challenge is by no means exhaustive but rather a starting point. The key is the novels need to have a HAPPILY EVER AFTER by an #ownvoice author. They can be in YA, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and other genres that aren't specifically categorized as ROMANCE by the publisher BUT the main character find and gets to keep a relationship with a partner that they love and loves them back because EVERYONE deserves to see themselves on the page getting a HEA.

So why do I think it's important to read diverse ROMANCE novels not just general fiction, literature, and children books for our youth?

In 1990, Rudine Sims Bishop published the essay "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors" in Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom.

"Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books." 
 

Bishop's essay was in reference to the importance of introducing diverse children's literature to the classroom so that all students have the opportunity to see THEMSELVES (mirrors) in stories and to see OTHERS (windows) so that with their imaginations (sliding glass doors) they can become part of those worlds.

BUT this isn't just relevant and important to our next generation to help foster empathy, understanding, and acceptance. It's important that ADULTS also experience this in literature. 

In 2009, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a TEDTalk called "The Danger of a Single Story"

"The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. " 
 

Adichie talks of her family history that includes refugee camps, inadequate healthcare, death, repression under military government, and other negative stories. That, while, these stories make her who she is, to ONLY speak of them and not the positives, flattens the experience and overlooks other stories that formed her.

This is where I think it's VERY IMPORTANT that we read diverse ROMANCE and not just diverse literature because while everyone should have an opportunity to have their stories told and for others to read them, we need to also allow EVERYONE to see they are worthy and capable of a love that gets a HAPPY EVER AFTER. 

In 2015, the documentary "Love Between the Covers" interviewed multiple authors and readers. One queer reader, Sandy Thornton, says about the publications of queer novels "For those of us who have once lived in the shadows, it is so wonderful to have these books out there for us to relate to...as I read some of the other pulp fiction books, it was always sad, and I never felt like my life should be sad. I didn't want to have to get married (to a man)...I didn't want to have to do any of those things. I wanted to just be a nice, normal queer." 

And for readers that have ALWAYS seen themselves mirrored back in the romance novels they read, it is important that you consciously make the effort to seek out and purchase the novels that provide windows to OTHER experiences because as demand grows so will the supply from mass-market publishers. 

Like Beverly Jenkins is quoted saying in the Love Between the Covers documentary; “Honey, if you can relate to shape-shifters and werewolves and (laughs) …chameleon people, but you can’t relate to an African American story, that’s a problem for me.” 
 

EVERYONE IS WORTHY AND DESERVING OF A PARTNER THAT SEES THEM AS THEY ARE, ACCEPTS, AND LOVES THEM.  WE ALL SHOULD BE ABLE TO BELIEVE IN HAPPILY EVER AFTERS. THEY AREN'T JUST FOR "OTHERS".