This is how literary authors should respond when romance novels come up
From an interview with Barbara Kingsolver in the Los Angeles Review of Books:
Interviewer Sarah Boon: âYouâve mentioned that storytelling can be used to introduce new ideas into receptive minds â in your case, environmental or social justice ideas. A colleague of mine once suggested that we should write romance novels that incorporate themes of environmentalism, climate change, and science because the market is so big for these books, and she thought it would be a subversive way to introduce these ideas into receptive minds. Do you think that the romance novel works in such a way that you would still be able to bring your political themes to bear in that genre?â
Barbara Kingsolver: âI donât know anything about the romance genre, but I would suspect that it does work in the same way as literary fiction. Writers of commercial fiction are living in the same world that I am, so many of the same things must worry them. Iâd imagine that racial tensions, gender issues, and perhaps even environmental issues do come up in the romance genre.Â
âIâm not writing genre fiction, but I do set out to write a love story or a conquest story, and I structure a plot so that it follows some person trying to figure out how to do something. Fundamentally itâs a human story. I donât start with saying, âThis oneâs going to be about capitalism,â or, âThis oneâs going to be about climate change.â I set out to write a story about people and the world in which theyâre living, so the problems of that world are part of the setting and part of their lives.
âIn Unsheltered, when Iâm writing about the contemporary family (Willa et al.), they have student debt and employment problems and health care issues, especially since theyâre living in the United States. This is what people deal with every day. So yes, I think that even genre fiction is focused on the world we live in.â
Be respectful and admit what you donât know. Itâs that easy.
