Guest post written by Janae Sanders’ Second Time Around author LaQuette
LaQuette writes sexy, stylish, and sensational romance—the kind of sentimental-and-steamy stories that feel like Hallmark movies… if Hallmark suddenly ramped up the sexy and gave us the hawt love scenes we deserve. Expect big emotions, bold choices, and characters who strut through the pages like the book is their own personal runway. When this current Ph.D. student isn’t writing, reading, or studying, she’s probably trying on (or hunting down) her next must-have makeup find. And honestly? No one would be surprised if it’s yet another shade of red or pink lipstick. At this point, it’s basically a personality trait. Contact her here.
About Janae Sanders’ Second Time Around: In LaQuette’s new second chance romance, a single mom gets a second chance at love with her high school sweetheart. Out January 6th 2026.
Hey, I’m LaQuette, the author of Janae Sanders’ Second Time Around, book two in my Savvy, Sexy, and Single Club series. I recently had the pleasure of teaching a Black feminism class that focused on Black American romance authors using their work to highlight Black feminism and resist stereotypical representations of Black womanhood and Blackness in romance. Today, I’m going to share some of the titles I selected for my assigned readings and impart why they were specifically chosen.
As an educator, I don’t assume everyone is entering a conversation with the same fundamental understanding of the topic at hand. As such, here’s a quick and dirty run down of what Black American feminism (specified because there are other feminisms within and outside of the United States) is.
Black feminism has been here since Black folks were brought to American soil. However, in 1977, the Combahee River Collective defines it as:
- Acknowledging the lived experiences of Black women as knowledge
- Understanding Black women’s oppressions are unique and separate from those of Black men and white women because of the simultaneous intersections of race, gender, and class oppressions
- Promoting self-definition and agency
- Promoting community and solidarity while creating networking opportunities by acting as a collective, uplifting our members and resisting our intersecting oppressions.
So, how do we analyze romances for Black feminism? Per my criteria, a romance novel that is written through a Black feminist lens includes and explores:
- Black women’s agency
- Intersectionality
- Resistance to Stereotypes
- Community & Sisterhood
- Love as Liberation
- Black Futurity
- Cultural Grounding
- Political & Social Awareness
First, Forbidden, by Beverly Jenkins, shows Blackness as something to long for not run from. Where most historical authors shy away from Black history because all they know of it is slavery, Ms. Jenkins sets her story in the early days of Reconstruction. In it, Rhine, a Black, white-passing man aches to live his life as a Black man. Unfortunately, if he does, he’ll lose all the wealth he’s amassed that he uses to finance Black entrepreneurs’ businesses in his town. Rhine doesn’t pass because he wants to be white or he hates being Black. He passes because he wants to be of service to his people.
Eddy is determined to build her own business through hard work and determination. When she’s robbed of her seed money and left for dead in a desert, Rhine saves her from the elements. When he offers to help Eddy financially, she declines because she wants to do it on her own. Rhine immediately respects Eddy’s choice and instead he uses his considerable connections to introduce her to the right people who can help her.
Black women’s self-definition, agency, and resistance to stereotypes are core themes in this book. Eddy’s determination to build something of her own through her own grit directly opposes the idea that Black women are shiftless and lazy, never wanting to earn their way. She’s also very concerned about propriety during a time when the wrong reputation could ruin a woman’s life, which counters the hypersexualized Jezebel controlling image of Black women. Black futurity is also represented strongly through the various Black entrepreneurs who are successfully running business in a town where both Black and white people coexist (if with some tension).
Subsequently, Ms. Jenkins emphasizes the power of community and sisterhood throughout the interactions with the protagonists and side characters. This is evident in how Rhine supports his community, even if its members don’t know he’s one of them. We see sisterhood specifically through the business and personal relationship between Eddy, and Sylvie, a Black woman saloon owner.
Jenkins makes political and social awareness prominent characterization throughout the story. As we watch Rhine carefully navigate the truth of his identity and how Eddy, who is unaware of Rhine’s real identity for most of the book, must navigate the probable fallout if she is seen as falling for a white man. If this is discovered, she’ll become an outsider to the community she’s building.
Reading through a Black feminist lens, love as liberation is represented through Rhine’s decision to stop living a lie so he can openly love Eddy and live amongst his people as one of them. In addition, cultural grounding is witnessed through cooking, sisterhood, and even Rhine’s reminiscing and exaltation of his mother and other enslaved women that he references as the “Old Queens”.
Naima Simone’s Played follows Solomon, a widower, father of a young son, and a Black hockey player and Adina, a grieving firefighter who accidently comes into possession of Solomon’s journal where he writes to his late wife. When Solomon discovers Adina has read every word before returning it to him, he is five-alarm fire mad.
The connecting theme in this story is grief. Solomon is still mourning his late wife and Adina is morning her late fiancé who died on duty in front of her. While Solomon hates that Adina reads his journal, he quickly realizes their mutual grieving of romantic partners connects them, forming community he’s lacked throughout his grieving process.
Both Solomon and Adina’s chosen professions in predominately white male fields also creates community between them, while addressing their intersecting oppressions of their respective identities speaks to political and social awareness. This is especially true concerning intersectionality and Black women’s agency when a white male coworker makes unwanted and unsolicited advances toward her that culminate into sexual harassment. Adina is forced to address these unwanted advances while navigating the tension and consequences of misogynoir. Consequently, Adina’s role as the only daughter who is also the only Black woman on her squad where her Black father is the fire chief, is another opportunity to examine the sociopolitical positioning of her identities that allows the reader to see how her race, gender, and class influence her actions and ways of thinking regarding resisting stereotypes, self-definition, intimacy, and agency.
Simone also displays resistance to stereotypes through Solomon’s lens as a man who is a loving father and was once a loving husband. His dedication to his wife and the family they created challenges the idea that Black men abandon their families and have no hand in raising their children. This becomes evident as Solomon firmly puts his father-in-law, the owner of his hockey team, in his place when he oversteps Solomon’s boundaries regarding his son.
Lastly, we see cultural grounding and love as liberation through Adina’s family and her relationship with Solomon. Her family, though overbearing at times, provides the care and support she’s needed to follow her professional aspiration. Through her relationship with Solomon, she learns it’s okay to grieve who and what she lost. But at the same time, it’s equally okay for her to find and embrace new love. This frees Adina from the hold that grief has on her life.
Tracey Livesay’s, American Royalty is a twist on the Sussex’s love story if Duchess Meghan were a dark-skinned Hip Hop artist with a Black skincare line. Dani has worked hard to build her rap career. She’s at the top of her game when a hater (a white woman) tries to use Dani’s success as a stepping stool by casting Dani in a negative light on the internet. To rehabilitate her reputation, even though there’s no truth to the accusations, Dani needs do something that boosts her public stock while landing her on a worldwide stage. Through a series of events, she acquires a spot at a musical event hosted by the fictional royal family of England.
Prince Jameson hates most things about royal life. His goal: to live in peace as a college professor. To maintain that peace and his job, he must occasionally submit to his grandmother’s requests to represent the family at public events. This time, that request comes in the form of organizing the royal music event which puts him in the direct path of Dani or Duchess as she’s known in the Hip Hop world. Jameson’s royal duties further intrude on his life as he realizes Dani has been given residence in his home for the duration of her stay in England.
From the very beginning, Livesay relays to the reader how difficult it is to be a Black woman in America and the world. Her guilt is assumed when a white woman makes her out to be an aggressor simply by playing the victim to a situation the hater instigates herself. This speaks to the angry Black woman trope. By watching Dani’s artistry and livelihood be threatened simply because she wouldn’t capitulate to her hater, it becomes obvious that Livesay is simultaneously challenging stereotypes of Black women while speaking to political and social awareness by depicting how harmful those stereotypes can be in real life.
Another strength of Livesay’s writing is that she maintains Dani’s agency over her career and personal life. Dani refuses to let others control her, even going as far as disassociating herself from her manager when it becomes clear he’s not advising Dani, but trying to control her. And when the queen tries to box her into a corner, Dani decides no matter how much she loves Jameson, she loves herself first and will always choose what’s best for her. This is Dani insisting on defining herself regardless of the cost.
There is a constant theme of Dani defining herself and doing what’s best for her. Through this determination, Livesay explores topics like the hypersexualization of Black women in Hip Hop. By Dani owning her sexuality, she explores it through her own lens. Never letting anyone brand her as a Jezebel. She simultaneously embraces her sexual desire for Jameson and chooses to present herself as a sexual being through her artistry.
Lastly, one of the most powerful things about this novel is that Livesay completely divorces Dani from the societal expectation that as a Black woman, it’s Dani’s job to take care of everyone else, even at the expense of herself. She doesn’t coddle Jameson when he initially can’t see the microaggressions being lobbed at her by the public, the queen, and the royal family. She also doesn’t take on the responsibility of teaching Jameson about how the world seeks to harm Black women. To his credit, however, Jameson puts in the work, proudly owning his relationship with Dani and standing up to the queen when she attempts to destroy Dani.
While the story is set in Jameson’s royal world, it wholeheartedly centers around Dani’s experiences as a Black woman and stereotypical representations of Black women in popular media. Even Jameson’s emotional growth happens as a direct result of his interactions with Dani as he becomes more politically and socially aware of the often-invisible problems Black women must deal with professionally and personally.
Ultimately, the best thing about all three books is that though they enact Black feminism through the various methods I’ve mentioned, and they speak to the Black feminist inequality and resistance to intersectional oppressions, they aren’t centered on the hardships or the socio-political positions of Black women. These novels are romances first and foremost. Full of love, romantic tension, and all the sexy times you could want. It’s the skill of these authors that layers Black feminism and Black history into their stories in very subtle, yet powerful, ways. I promise, if you read these books, you won’t feel you’ve entered a lecture hall. Instead, you’ll get all the feels.
