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Opinion

Searching for the Non-White Heroine in Books

Namera Tanjeem

Staff Writer

Namera is currently an English student at the University of Cambridge who loves romance novels, Harry Potter, true crime stories, and cats. You can find her over at her blog, The Literary Invertebrate. She can be contacted by email at namera.tanjeem@outlook.com.

This is a guest post from Namera Tanjeem. Namera is an English Lit student and book blogger from London. She loves romance novels, Harry Potter, true crime, and cats; you can generally find her searching feverishly for her next read when she ought to be studying.


It’s 2018, and you know what’s still harder to find than a needle in the literary haystack?

The non-white heroine. More specifically, I mean a mainstream non-white heroine, in a book that isn’t labelled “Interracial Romance” (as if that’s a sub-genre which should actually exist separately) and tucked away into a minor corner of the book-reading world.

searching for the non-white heroine in books

Of course I can admit things have gotten better over the last few years: we have things like the #ownvoices movement now, specifically featuring marginalized characters, and I can recall reading a couple of books with Chinese or African American heroines. But that’s kind of the problem: I don’t want to be able to recall them. I can only do that because they’re so rare—I have no idea how many blonde heroines I’ve read about, or ones with “creamy white skin,” or blue eyes.

If most non-white heroines are like needles in haystacks, at least the proverbial needle still exists within the proverbial haystack. Discussions of religious affiliation are more like hen’s teeth: completely and totally nonexistent. As a Muslim, I am DYING to see more girls with headscarves, or who pray five times a day, or who fast. I don’t just want to see Islam represented, either. Where are the Jewish heroines? Hindu ones, Buddhist ones?

I understand, of course, that authors might feel uncomfortable writing about a heritage or religion not their own. But sensitively handled, the end result is brilliant: I remember reading a motorcycle romance with a Muslim heroine and being impressed at how well the author had done it. In my personal opinion, writing this kind of thing should be no different to having, for instance, a disabled heroine: research, care, attention and well-rounded characters should take care of it all. And I mean, sensitivity readers are a thing.

There isn’t going to be diversity everywhere; we’re obviously unlikely to see a Native American heroine in a regency romance. I wouldn’t even want to see a Native American heroine in a regency romance, because I’m nothing if not a stickler for historical accuracy. (I’m the kind of person who gets annoyed when I see a British man in 1817 supposedly named, of all things, Chase. Because that’s legit). But in the contemporary world, anything can—and should—happen.

After all, these are books, the ultimate escapism; if we can’t find diversity here, there’s certainly going to be no hope of seeing it in reality.