Yé Moun La ! Let’s celebrate “Tim Tim? Bwa Fik!” first anniversary with a couple of updates with guests from season 1. Check out my discussion with Candi (@tennei), a fellow Caribbean romance reader I met on Twitter. She shares her perspective on the current state of Caribbean romance and its future.
Black romance, romance noire, regards croisés sur la littérature sentimentale – Tim Tim? Bwa Fik!
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0:00 – 1:02: opening credits
1:03 – 2:30: intro
2:31 – 3:34: Candi’s self-introduction
3:35 – 7:43: her romance journey from Mills & Boon / Harlequin to Beverly Jenkins, contemporary Black romance, Caribbean romance
7:42 – 10:09: the happy ending debate to define romance + her first Caribbean romance novel (Rilzy Adams)
10:10 – 11:49: the struggle to find stories where Afrocaribbean characters are leads and not props
11:50 – 12:59: what she enjoys about Beverly Jenkins’s storytelling
13:00 – 15:09: her great-great-grand-father love story as an example of the kind of Caribbean romance that can be set in the 19th century/early 20th century
15:10 – 18:59: her take on which kind of tropes would work well with Caribbean romance
19:00 – 19:40: how French Caribbean romance usually features a Black woman with a White man
19:41 – 23:11: how the urban genre would work well with Caribbean romance + the importance of also writing about ordinary Black people
23:12 – 25:29: her cute meet-and-greet with her husband + the double standard mafia vs. ghetto
25:30 – 29:59: her research process to find more Caribbean romance novels
30:00 – 32:09: the algorithm issue that invisibilizes Caribbean romance + the interracial couple strategy
32:10 – 36:59: her hope for Caribbean romance to get more new releases, to get more visibility
37:00 – 40:34: her goal of promoting Caribbean romance throughout June for the #readcaribbean month
40:35 – 42:42: the risk that Caribbean romance gets highjacked by traditional publishers once it hits big
42:43 – 46:01: the bad reputation romance has in the Caribbean + why can’t Caribbean author write us being happy
46:02 – 51:01: the need to write love in a forward, honest but compassionate way like Beverly Jenkins does + encourage new authors to write about happiness
51:02 – 51:45: outro
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Eugenia O’Neal: vintage.caribbean
Joanne C. Hillhouse: jhohadli.wordpress.com
Rilzy Adams: rilzywrites.com
N.G Peltier: ngpeltier.com
Callie Browning: calliebrowning.com
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Music: Yenki Vou – Meemee Nelzy (A/C: M.Nelzy/M. Nelzy)
Tim Tim? Bwa Fik! 