This chapter wrestles with the contradictory power that popular romance wields in American culture. These novels both uphold heteropatriarchal norms through their fidelity to the marriage plot, but also unsettle romance tropes as a mode of resisting pernicious stereotypes about Black love and dysfunctional families and counter ubiquitous representations of Black pain. Through a close reading of work by writers such as Sister Souljah, Terry McMillan, and Beverly Jenkins, this chapter upends the claim that Black popular romance is unimaginative and does not merit serious critical analysis as well as defies the common belief that Black popular fiction is a political wasteland. As it reimagines Black popular romance as a space of political possibility with immense cultural impact, this chapter deromanticizes the book publishing industry as a site of antiracism by uncovering the numerous hurdles that Black popular romance writers must clear before they publish novels with Black love at the center.

Originally written in Malayalam, Indian writer O. Chandumenon’s novel, Indulekha (1889–90) was translated into English within a year of its publication and reprinted every year for almost a century. This chapter focuses on Indulekha’s engagement with a matrilineal household, typical of the Nair community in late nineteenth-century Malabar. In doing so, the chapter is attentive to the novel’s choice of genre. By taking up matriliny through the lens of realism, the novel not only departs from a fairly common nineteenth-century practice of depicting matriliny through romance but also remaps realism, extending its scope and valence amidst the social, sexual, and political shifts marking the fin de siècle, transimperially conceived.