Friday, April 3, 2009
Black People In The Teen Love Stories
Over the past years, I have read many teen love stories. I love them-addicted if you will. Espeically those such as The Mortal Instruments, and am a former lover of Twilight. I have also had my fair share of Sarah Dessen novels. In each of these, there has been a girl who gets involved with the guy and so forth. I love the strong roles and characters within the girls, but there is one thing that hurts me when I read them: All of these girls are white. All of these perfect guys are white. Tell me when you come across a book where the main girl is black and falls for a black man, and she doesn't get pregant, where he isn't invovled with drugs or is in a street gang. And in the stories I read, they are beautiful. But being biracial myself, I don't feel like I have much of a chance as a "love story" like this as much as my white friends who sit at my lunch table reading the same book. So this blog is designed to talk about this. And maybe create a beliveable beautiful "love" story with more then a strong white women character.
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hey its sophia reed. i tottally agree with you. i have been thinking this for YEARS. in fact, i am in the process of wrapping up a love story i worte about a rich black girl from NYC who falls for a middle-class latino boy.i hope it is one of many more ameture books like it. GO YOU KLOIE!!!!! WOOT
ReplyDeleteThat's so true! I love reading all these teen love stories that i love and stay all night to finish! I've read many books such as the mortal instruments, twilight, the sisterhood of the traveling pants series but all the main characters or all the characters are white. Other books i tried to find in the library about characters, that they're races are something else besides white, but all the books I find are about pregnant girls who are dropouts of high school and live with they're boyfriends who is in a gang and has drug problems or something like that. It makes me sad that those are the only books I can find about my race. I feel it's a stereotype against other races. Making ppl who read these books believe those stereotypes. Thanks Kloie!
ReplyDeletehey this is sari
ReplyDeletei guess i always just took it in stride, thank you for bringing it to my attention. i dot actually think that i have read more then one or two books like that....
um i dont know it this would count but Tamra Pierce's circle of magic books have a black girl, but they are fantasy, they also in later books have a guy who is not white.... but again its fantasy. Also Midori Snyder has a few books (again fantasy) that have non white main characters but there not like african american of anything like that.
sari
That is very true, Kloie. Teen Romance books always have the main characters white. Doesn't this send a message that kids of any other color skin besides white could never have a man or woman that treats them right, a good settled family at home, good grades, and intelligent, charismatic personality?
ReplyDeleteAnd I fully support the idea of more books, in general, with non-white main characters; people of all different races (that terrible, terrible word) should be able to find people of their color represented in books. Not only represented, but represented in a truthful, non-stereotypical way; shown being successful and good, as all people have the potential to be.
Actually, I believe that books like this do exist already too - we just need to find a way to get them into the libraries as well along with new books. Reform and progress!
Hey! It Raquel. I joined! And I like your blog.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've read any books with main characters with a different race than white that falls in love but if its any help I did read this one book where there was this white girl who got pregnat and was one drugs and stuff. Haha, its sorta the opposite of what you are looking for but its a good book.
Its call Born Blue if you want to read it.
My opinion is that there are many books out there that have a storyline very similar to having a black girl fall in love with the perfect black man, but you just have to look for them. Granted, they may not be as popular, but that's because there aren't many black authors out there. If you look at how many black authors there are, that's absolutely nothing compared how many white authors there are.
ReplyDeleteI have NEVER read a book were received ideas do not come into play. I think that making a generalization is just the closest way for an author to relate to as many people as they can.
ReplyDelete