a flawless balance of humor, heat, sweetness, and depth, and I loved every page.” – Helen Hoang, USA Today bestselling author of The Bride Test we’ll be a burden on a relationship or people aren’t going to understand it, so showing that’s not true and giving Chloe a happy ending is inherently political.“Absolutely charming. That’s not really something we’re told that we deserve. It’s the same way in any form of representation that I choose, like the fact that Chloe is chronically ill, and she gets a happy ending. Black women are often dehumanized and shown as unworthy of love, unworthy of care and delicacy – we’re presented as the ones who care for everyone else, so I do think it’s very political and an act of resistance to center black women and femininity in romance novels. Especially because I write about black women. Who you choose to star in your romance novels and the happy ending that you give them and the love that you show them being worthy of can be very political. or more deserving or less deserving of happiness. Inherently we see people as either better than or less than people. Who does and doesn’t deserve a happy ending and what they have to do to get there is a very controversial topic in our society.

Romance is obviously a genre that relies on happy endings. Could you elaborate on that and why you feel that way? You’ve said before that you see writing romance as an act of resistance and something you did because you were inspired by your grandmother. It’s important to me that it’s said explicitly and in a positive way rather than, “Oh you can’t use that word because it’s a bad word and it’s a bad thing to be.” It’s not, so that’s why that was important to me. Chloe is a fat woman and that’s a positive thing. Because of that, it’s always been really, really important to me that I represent diverse body types in my romance to show that all different kinds of people can be attractive and all different kinds of people deserve happy endings. It’s so pervasive and it leaves people with lifelong scars, mental health issues, eating disorders, all of that affects their body and their physical health. But the fact of the matter is that negative representation of fat women is something that hurts people deeply constantly. This is kind of difficult for me to talk about extensively because I have been fat, but I am not the minute, so I never want to overstep. Can you tell me more about the importance of using that word and normalizing it or trying to remove stigma from it?

You choose to refer to Chloe specifically as fat.

Get a life talia hibbert