Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: Recommendation. This was recommended to me at a romance bookstore when I was looking for sapphic romance tales with trans MCs.
We’re in an age where the formerly established fact of multicultural democracy is becoming unsettled. And as such, more stories by gay, queer, trans, enby creatives are going to be going by the wayside. You’ll probably still have “the table” at Barnes & Noble as the bookstore tries to cash in on branding writers by their identity more than their book. But there is going to be a lot lost.
And I lift this up not to be mournful or elegiac but as I was reading Make Room For Love, a very enjoyable sapphic romance, I just kept thinking of what actually gets erased. Mira’s identity as a biracial transwoman of color, her exploration of her own sexuality, her ability to have desires and be desired. Isabel’s navigating her patriarchal-dominated union job as a butch lesbian of Chinese descent, proving she belongs, trying to hold on to the tethers of her grieving family.
You don’t have to read stories like these because you want to tour identities. You can read stories like these to see how people inhabit those identities as flawed, imperfect, loving, wonderful human beings who are just trying to live their lives. And Darcy Liao does a great job of bringing these characters to life and their love to action.
Romance provides the escapism factor and this is good as far as romance is concerned. But the bigger picture is that these stories should be preserved, not just on “the table” but in the body politic. Life is what we of goodwill are fighting for.