Today I’m a guest blogger at THE MAD REVIEWER where I’m setting my sights on the Romance genre and you guessed it, pushing them to diversify all that panty-melting, heart-stopping bumping and grinding.
The Crossfire series
The Hardwired series
The Submission series
The Seductive Nights series
Ava and Gideon
Erica and Blake
Monica and Jonathan
Michelle and Jack
Complex and intelligent characters written by talented writers, with interesting storylines, compelling back stories, and of course, loads of panty-melting, fabulous, raunchy, dirty sex.
And not a single one of those books contain diverse main characters.
In fact, despite all of the books I mentioned taking place in large cities like New York and Los Angeles, I believe the only diversity in any of those books is found in the secondary characters, the outliers. The characters that add some spice and perhaps a side storyline or two, but nothing too memorable and certainly nothing noteworthy.
No brown girl falling for a white guy. No black guy falling for a Asian girl. No black girl falling for a brown guy. No white girl falling for a…
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Madhuri Writes Things 
One quick question:
Don’t interracial characters count? Eva, from the Crossfire series by Sylvia Day, is half Mexican.
girl, you are SO right. I totally forgot that. Completely! And I know why I did, because as much as I love that series, Eva has always been a huge bore to me – just a blank space. Wow. It’s funny because when I first started reading that series, I commented that I went through the entire first book not having a picture of Eva in my mind because she did nothing for me. Wow. And apparently she really did nothing for me because I recall none of her important details. Thanks for pointing that out! I’m going to go over to the original post and leave a clarifying comment. Wow…just wow.
Well, it’s easy to forget. Eva spends most of her time focusing on Gideon. ;’) If it weren’t for the scenes with her father, we’d probably forget it altogether.
even with the scenes with her father, I forgot!
I get what you mean about a bore. She’s all about Gideon 24/7
Honestly, I feel bad but Sylvia Day spends so much time describing her blonde ponytail, that really it’s all I see when I think of Eva. Which is a shame because she’s a great writer and could have made Eva so much richer than she did but perhaps that’s not what readers want. Maybe they want a blank space upon which they can picture their own wants and desires in relation to Gideon? He, on the other hand, is quite distinct and defined from the first time you meet him.
He is much more distinct than Eva. TBH, she doesn’t really come across as an interracial person. She should be influenced in some way by her heritage,but she isn’t. She doesn’t speak Spanish, or identify with that part of herself at all. That’s why I understand your forgetting that she’s supposed to be biracial. That trait was paper thin. Given only word, as opposed to action or language. I only remember it so well because I was pleasantly surprised by the mention when I read the book. But that’s really all it was: an honorable mention.
As for Gideons depth, I always chalked that up to the female obsession. The way that women are capable of loving vicariously, and the way we notice every little thing about the object of our love.
Once you brought it to my attention, I remembered it and also remembered wondering why Sylvia Day even made that part of the story when it was such a non-story since like you said, Eva expresses nothing of her heritage, nor does she show any affinity for it. Which is interesting because it’s not like she and her father weren’t close. I don’t feel as bad as I was feeling for TOTALLY forgetting Eva is biracial and am now thinking her character is another blog post altogether (is it necessary to whitewash your diverse characters to make them more mainstream?) Also, her biracialness (not a word, I know, but am using it nonetheless) comes across like an afterthought, almost so Sylvia Day could check off some boxes on a diversity checklist, rather than actually explore and expand upon Eva’s dual heritage.
Very interesting point. And I’d like to read that post.
Go get’em!