You might be asking yourself, what’s the difference between Black romance books and other romance novels? Isn’t love just love? Why does Black romance matter? Well, for me, it wasn’t until I was older that I was able to see Black love in literature. As a millennial, I lived through the ’90s and I rarely saw popular Black love books. They weren’t in my supermarket or planted in the front displays of my library. When we had RIF (Reading Is Fundamental) fairs at my school, Black authors were a rarity. All the teen romances I consumed were created with a white gaze and I had to envision them as Black to enjoy them. But as I got older and started really digging for Black authors, I embraced Beverly Jenkins, Brenda Jackson, Zane, E. Lynn Harris and Cheris F. Hodges with delight as they have all given me various versions of what Black love is. This year, I encourage you to read more Black romance books, especially if you enjoy romance titles overall. My fellow Book Rioter and Black love expert Jessica P. Pryde is the editor of the forthcoming nonfiction anthology, Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters, which challenges us to understand the history of romance books but to understand the importance of why Black love needs to be celebrated. For the sake of this list, I’ve divided the books into three categories: Adult, YA and Black-led interracial. The adult books range from clean to extra steamy romance on page. The YA titles will make you wish you could be a teenager again and the Black-led titles push the envelope on social commentary, class and privileges. Just to be clear, Black-led interracial romances are romance books where one protagonist is Black and the other one is not.
Black Adult Romance Titles
Black YA Romance Titles
Black-Led Interracial Romance Titles
Expand your Black romance reads by checking out this list to discover some legendary Black authors who continue to pen some of the best romance stories we’ve ever read, and this list of some of the best Black-authored historical romance novels from the past 25 years.
