Here’s the thing about being a bruja—and a professor for that matter: Sooner or later (the correct answer is sooner), you need to get real about social justice and historical erasure. In a lot of ways, you can’t really call yourself a witch if you aren’t invested in inclusion and equity, and, yes, mason jars. The same goes for being an ethical professor—minus the mason jars.
This means that a lot of the work we do is about undoing historical erasure and figuring out a healthier, happier way forward. In life. In politics. In the arts. For me, that includes finding and teaching narratives that center people with historically marginalized identities working through their stuff and getting happy endings. Enough trauma porn already! It’s time we see ourselves in stories of growth, change, and possibility.
Sometimes, in order to do that, however, we need to look at when inclusion is not done right. There’s a real difference between stories that center BIPOC characters, for example, and stories that do that well, meaning in a way that is authentic to that community and not sanitized for a broader, whiter audience, or that doesn’t fetishize that marginalized identity.
As we celebrate Indigenous history month this November, I want to take a closer look at the problematic history of the Indian romance, a typically western romance featuring an Indigenous man and a white woman, and how the genre is evolving to celebrate actual Indigenous romances written by Indigenous authors.
Steve Ammindown has become a bit of an expert on the Indian romance and the complex and wild history surrounding it. I was so delighted to interview him about this history and how it might represent issues within the genre more generally. As Steve said in the interview, this is not just important genre history, but an important slive of American history that we can learn from. You can read his brief history of Indian romances here.
But before we dive into that conversation, I’d like to share some wonderful Indigenous romances, in case you are as eager as I am to continue diversifying your reading list and celebrate Indigenous voices living in the here and now, not treated as relics of the past. Carolina Ciucci wrote about eight fantastic romance novels by Indigenous authors, and Jessica Avery developed this list of Native American romance novels by Native authors, both on Book Riot. Rebekah Weatherspoon, a fantastic romance author in her own right (seriously, read her work!), created this thread on Indigenous Peoples Day to celebrate Indigenous romance authors. One of my personal farotive books, Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An Indgenous LGBT Sci-Fi Anthology, features a serious of hopeful stories exploring centering Indigenous LGTBQ+ identities in a myriad of fantastical settings.
So, who is ready to deep-dive into the fascinating and sometimes cringe-worthy history of Indian romances, how they are representeative of issues within the genre, and how we can read and support Indigenous romance authors living and writint today? Discover all this, and more, in my interview with Steve below.
Guest Contributor Bio
Steve Ammidown is an archivist currently based in Northwest Ohio. In 2019, he was the Romance Writers of America Cathie Linz Librarian of the Year for his work in preserving and sharing the history of the romance genre with scholars and the public. He currently writes about the history of romance fiction on his blog, romancehistory.com.
The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.
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