Dear Reader,
Happy Juneteenth to you. This week I was reading up a little on Frederick Douglass, and I want to share this quote, which I think is appropriate for the holiday and which also applies equally well in the context of Pride Month:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838, at the age of 20. He published his first autobiography in 1845. He then visited Ireland, coinciding with the Great Famine there; he had the experience of freedom from racism while also witnessing levels of poverty that reminded him of the conditions of slavery. (In a letter discussing this he commented, “he who thinks himself an abolitionist, yet cannot enter into the wrongs of others, has yet to find a true foundation for his anti-slavery faith.”) After his return to the US, he began publishing an abolitionist newspaper in 1847. He attended the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights in 1848. In the 1850s he advocated for the integration of schools. Douglass’s activism made him one of the most prominent voices of the abolitionist movement. His understanding of the power of photography also led to him being the most photographed American of the 19th century.
Through the lens of history, we know that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln in 1863, and that slavery was finally abolished in America by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. And there’s a great temptation when looking back at historical events to think that there must have been an inevitability to their progress — that because we can draw the line from one event to the next to see how things proceeded, therefore the path must have been predictable, the end foreseeable. But that is the narrative fallacy. In truth, when Douglass escaped from his enslaver at the age of twenty, he could not know whether he’d be recaptured and returned, beaten or killed or made to live in chains. Certainly that was the fate of many others. When Douglass wrote his first autobiography or began publishing his newspaper, he could not have known whether his message would carry or whether he’d be murdered by an angry mob, like abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy famously had been a decade earlier.
I find it astounding and deeply awe-inspiring that Frederick Douglass pitted himself against injustice with such absolute determination, with no assurance of success and many examples of bloody retribution. And of course there were a great many people who played a part in the abolition of slavery in the United States. Yet in a very real sense, you could say that Douglass was a uniquely pivotal figure who devoted his life to this cause, and he fucking won.
Just something to think about the next time you’re wondering whether it’s worth continuing to fight that uphill battle. Because: yes. Yes, it is. It’s the only way it can ever be won.
Of course, it’s a bit hard to pivot to romance novels from there. I do love me a noble sentiment, but you know, Frederick Douglass also had to wash his hair and trim his nails and pick out his clothes in the morning, and I bet he occasionally cussed when he spilled his coffee, and he probably got gassy when he ate too much broccoli. The little ordinary things of life are so much the same for all of us.
I recently have been reading a little more poetry again. I think of myself as eclectic in my taste, but in poetry as in romance, there are definitely things I’m drawn to. I like poetry that feels like a brisk knock on the doorframe or like sunlight plucked from dappled leaves; where there may be shadows and sorrows, a discovery of crawling things under old damp wood, or a memorial to grief, rough like stone against the fingertips; but then there is a return to this moment, a remembering of what is transient and precious. I don’t think poems need to have a point, the same way flowers don’t need to have a point; and yet sometimes flowers mean a lot, whether that’s a rose garden or a field of poppies.
In romance writing, I think the thing that I look for most is the arc of relational intelligence drawn by the story. I can’t put it into better words than that. There are books that should not have worked for me at all from the perspective of tropes that annoy me or plot twists that make me gnash my teeth, that somehow still worked for me in the context of the arc of the story and the way the characters fit together. The characters can start heart-dumb and grow wise, or they can start wise and then realize they weren’t so wise as they thought. They can be opposites who attract or a matched pair, sweet or smart or snarky or stoic. They can let each other down and forgive each other — but there has to be enough substance there to be worth forgiveness. They should bring out the best in each other.
I guess that’s it in a nutshell. I like stories about characters who ultimately bring out the best in each other.
So on that note, it’s book time.
I recently read The Love Study by Kris Ripper. I thought this was an extremely sweet story, and I liked the way that it played around with expectations of relationships and romance and other ways of looking at what we want from a partner. It’s written in first-person from the perspective of Declan, and the very first thing we learn about Declan is that he left his last boyfriend at the altar. He’s repeatedly teased about this by his friends, including the ex-boyfriend who remains one of his closest friends despite having been left at the altar, but it’s also left him totally afraid of romance and relationships. He meets Sidney, a genderqueer person who runs an advice show on YouTube. Sidney doesn’t date, and this sort of opens the field for Declan to spill his guts about his own conflicted feelings about dating, which leads to Sidney coming up with the idea for “The Love Study,” to bring Declan on their show as a guest, set him up with a series of dates, and talk about how it goes. Which is a great idea, except that it turns out the person Declan is feeling the most interested in is Sidney.
There were a few things about how the characters in this book communicate that might not have worked for me in a different story. One big recurring one: I struggled a bit with how regularly Declan’s friends gave him shit for leaving his ex-boyfriend at the altar, given that it seemed pretty obvious that he was kinda traumatized by the whole thing — not to mention everyone’s agreement that in hindsight he and the ex-boyfriend would not have made each other happy and their marriage would have been a train wreck, which means Declan did the right thing in not going through with it, even if he didn’t do it in the optimal way. But overall I really liked the friends, and I think this is actually a realistic sort of blindspot that can exist in real life friendships — you think that you’re teasing someone over an amusing anecdote for years and really have no clue that your poor friend feels it like the twist of a knife every time. And ultimately I was very satisfied with how this particular bit gets tied off at the end of the story.
I also thought this had an interesting take on its theme about conventional romance not being for everyone. Declan and Sidney’s chemistry is at its weakest when they try to do conventional romantic date type things, and recognizing that is part of them figuring out How To Relationship with each other. But what was funny to me is that their experience of spending quality time with each other and having good chemistry outside the context of conventional hearts-and-flowers romance? That very highly corresponds with my own actual lived experience of good relationships, and what I suspect is the actual lived experience of a lot of people. So it ended up for me being a sort of meditation on how we can trip ourselves up falling into cultural normative patterns that feel like something we’re “supposed to” do even when we ought to know better, even when we think we’ve shed the conventional mindset.
Also, I really liked it that one of the main characters politely called out the other for their internalized ableism about their anxiety. Because I had never really thought of it in those terms. There’s a lot of self-deprecating language that people use which masks some pretty negative self-talk that can be very unhelpful. Be compassionate with yourself, you know? Treat yourself the way you would want someone you love to be treated.
There are two follow-up books, The Hate Project and The Life Revamp, featuring characters from the same friend group. Haven’t read these yet but am looking forward to both.
That’s all from me today. Hope you’re well.
Love,
Beas
