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3. Brothers Under Covers AMANDA HOBSON 3. BROTHERS UNDER COVERS Race and the Paranormal Romance Novel INTRODUCTION From sparkling teen-angst-filled “vegetarians” to crime fighting warriors, the vampire hero has become a mainstay in novels, films, and television. Vampires have held the imaginations of readers since the time of the “penny dreadful” and Dracula. In contemporary American culture, the vampire has shifted beyond the borders of the horror and science fiction genres to become a featured icon in the romance genre. The subgenre of paranormal romance has inundated the publishing market over the last decade for both adult and young adult romance readers. One of the most glaring and intriguing aspects of these vampire romance novels is their consistent whitewashing. Just where are all the undead heartthrobs of colour, and why are they seemingly absent? Though this piece will focus on Black vampire heroes specifically, where are the women of colour as female leads? While these vampire romance novels may have periphery characters that are people of colour, they remain almost entirely populated by whites, mainly Americans descended from European heritages. I explore the representations of race and ethnicity within the paranormal subgenre, focusing on two popular series as guideposts: Kerrelyn Sparks’s Love at Stake series and J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. How can a reader understand issues of race and ethnicity within these vampire romances? The vampire, who has long-stood as the iconic symbol for the Other, reconstructs oppression within the narratives of these paranormal romance novels first by eliminating race and ethnicity from the vast majority of the texts and then by reinforcing the cultural stereotypes of Black masculinity. The genre in which the vampire fiction is written matters a great deal for the representation and inclusion of Black vampires. Using genre theory and critical race theory, this chapter examines the lacuna of race and ethnicity present within vampire romance fictions. Sparks’s Love at Stakes series began in 2005 with the publication of How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire and, with the publication of Crouching U. M. Anyiwo (Ed.), Race in the Vampire Narrative, 23–43. © 2015 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. A. HOBSON Tiger, Hidden Vampire in December 2014, currently has sixteen novels. The series centers on a long-term battle between good and evil vampires. The good vampires drink synthetic blood, while they contemplate morality and their immortal souls. They call themselves simply Vamps and are led by Roman Draganesti. The bad vampires murder, rape, and drain humans regularly, as they believe themselves superior to humans but also to the weak and moralistic Vamps. The Vamps call these bad vampires the Malcontents, but they refer to themselves as the True Ones, as they follow the old ways of feeding off of humans. Throughout the course of the series, there are several enemies against which the Vamps must battle, including not only the Malcontents but also human vampire hunters, including a special branch of the CIA, and demons. The Black Dagger Brotherhood series started with Ward’s publication of Dark Lover in 2005, and Ward released the twelfth novel, The King, in April 2014. In this series, Ward’s world building creates a complicated tale of vampires, who are a separate race of humanoid beings—one is born and not made a vampire—though humans and vampires can interbreed. The Brotherhood is a group of vampires bred to be bigger and stronger as hereditary warriors in the race’s fight for survival as the Lessers, who are undead and soulless creatures charged with the eradication of the vampires by the equivalent of Satan—the Omega. The leader of the brotherhood is Wrath, who is also the king of the vampire world. The members of the Brotherhood are all emotionally scarred and psychologically damaged, and some have physical disabilities. Sparks’ Love at Stakes series and Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series are both long-standing with huge fan bases, consistently making both the USA Today and the New York Times Bestsellers lists.1 These series function as many serial romances do in that they focus around an ever-expanding group of connected individuals who are combatting some type of common enemy or problem. Each novel of the series focuses on the specific couple overcoming not only their relationship obstacles but generally advancing the overall series’ narrative arc. With all but one exception, Ward’s Lover at Last, these couples are heterosexual. As with most traditional romance novels, the books end with the couples’ happily-ever-after moment (HEA) in which the couples solidify their relationships through a declaration of love and very frequently a marriage proposal—and sometimes even end in the couples’ wedding ceremony.2 Moreover, both Sparks and Ward’s series fall in the paranormal romance subgenre as they feature supernatural beings. Populated by humans, vampires, shapeshifters, angels, demons, gods, and monsters, 24.
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