Love Lives - Unrequited love and why we need to make romance more inclusive

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Support Millennial Love with a donation today: https://supporter.acast.com/millennialloveThis week, Olivia is joined by celebrated author Sareeta Domingo to discuss unrequited love and why we need to make the romantic genre more inclusive.The two talk about Sareeta's new book, Who’s Loving You: Love Stories by Women of Colour, a groundbreaking anthology of original short stores, covering everything from forbidden love to lost love.We also talk about why diverse storytelling is so important within the romantic genre in particular.Follow the show on Instagram at @millennial_loveSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like, and now that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity and more.

This week I'm thrilled to be joined by Sarita Domingo. Sarita joined me to discuss her latest book Who's Loving You? Love Stories by Women of Colour. The book is a collection of 10 original short stories from female writers of colour covering love in all its guises from lost love to forbidden love to unrequited love. We spoke about why a book like this is so necessary and why the romantic fiction sphere is so dominated by white voices. We also talk about why diverse storytelling is so important within the romantic genre in particular and how it can impact the way people behave in their own love lives. And Sarita also spoke about what writing about love has done to impact her own relationships and how she separates fact from fiction. Enjoy the show.

Hello. Hi, hi there. How are you doing? Yeah, not too bad, you know, surviving. Yeah, I think that's probably the best that all of us can say to that question at the moment. So we are here to talk about your brilliant book, Who's Loving You? So we want to start off by asking you a bit about what made you want to create this wonderful anthology of short stories and what it is about these particular stories that you enjoyed and how you went about I guess curating the anthology as well um well yeah it's it's a collection of love stories written by British women of colour and having had a couple of novels out myself um that have been sort of classed as romantic fiction when I was going into spaces that were ostensibly for like promoting romance or any of those kind of events,

I was often the only person of colour there. And, you know, it did feel quite lonely. I mean, romance as a genre, particularly in the UK, isn't really something that I see a lot of writers of colour pursuing so I kind of wanted to put together a collection of stories particularly written by British women of colour to kind of redress that to a certain degree but also to just sort of speak to some of my favourite authors both established and up and coming and have them write a story based around love that is not necessarily

sort of within the constraints of what people always perceive romance to be like I think people have a lot of preconceptions about romance fiction and I wanted these writers to feel free to sort of write on the topic in whatever way they saw fit so it it was kind of um yeah about approaching these writers and seeing if they'd be up for doing that. I um I feel like uh you describe yourself on your website as a hopeless but realistic romantic. I feel like you have like a similar fascination with romance as I do. What is it about that kind of genre of writing and I guess that genre of popular culture more generally that you find so compelling? And have you always found it so compelling? I think I have. Yeah. And I think the key thing for me, at least, is the vicarious feeling of

romantic stories, romantic fiction or romantic films. It's getting to live that experience of falling in love again and again and again, because who doesn't enjoy that feeling? And even if, you know, I'm married and I'm in a committed relationship but it's still such a compelling thing to live that experience through other people and have all sorts of different scenarios that you can live um through those works I think that's the thing that I find most compelling about about it I completely agree and that that fits really well into my next question because obviously I think in order to really empathize with a story and with a love story and with those characters

it helps if you can identify with them in some way and I know this is one of the reasons why I wanted to write about the book because there is such a dearth of romantic stories featuring people of color particularly when you look at like the kind of classic hit rom-coms of the noughties it's all that all films fronted by white people so I know in the introduction to the book you wrote about how the first time you saw people falling in love that looked like you on screen it was in an American film so can you talk to me a bit about what the film was and how that kind of impacted you? Yeah the film the film was Love Jones which I think came out in must have been like the late 90s or maybe early 2000s but it

it featured the central characters are played by Lorenz Tate and Nia Long but it's a story that's kind of you know he's playing an author and she's a photographer they're creative people and sort of the circle in which they moved were people who I just kind of could identify with as creative people as people who kind of had an interest in the type of music I liked and you know they go to poetry nights and things like that and it just wasn't something I'd seen represented on screen before you know I was too young to be like you know going off to poetry nights and things like that myself but it was sort of the first time I saw a black couple on screen falling in love and having a love story like that um where I felt I could really identify with the characters that I was seeing because as you say there are so well

certainly at that period at least there were so few films that I felt did that. Also I think it's really important for white people as well obviously this sounds like a really silly point but it's really important for white people not just to be reared on a culture where they only see love stories fronted by white people absolutely yeah um I mean I talk a bit about that in the introduction to Who's Loving You as well because it kind of is about that sense of being conditioned to view people a certain way and this is across all fiction but I think it's particularly important in romantic stories that the people of colour, black people, Asian people and other minorities are seen as desirable, they're seen as worthy of love,

they're seen as people who do fall in love, fall in love with one another, fall in love with other people. You know, I have encountered people who find it surprising when they read or see stories featuring black people say, and it's just a love story. something else to be going on some kind of trauma or whatever or they are legitimately surprised that like we fall in love and have relationships in the same way that they do which is disturbing it's really disturbing and it's really absurd I was talking about this with Baloo Babalola when she came on the show in July yeah her book and it's just like it's this kind of there's just a real whenever you do have these love stories that do feature people of color often the subject matter is at least partly to do with race or racial issues and obviously that's important but if that is the main focus it sort of detracts away from the point

because it's like you need to have these stories but that's not a factor otherwise you know it's just it's just more of that same conditioning so when you were growing up how did how did not kind of seeing yourself represented in popular culture within those kind of romantic stories shape your own understanding of desirability and desirability politics? I mean I think inevitably it did lead to a sense that the type of people who were who were desirable weren't people who looked like me they were white people um you know I don't know to what extent I really internalized that but it was definitely something that was was um it was something I was aware of and in terms of how it's shaped my sort of relationships going forward I I do think that to a certain extent it has shaped my perceptions of um of who is desirable or what other people might think is desirable in me or not desirable as

the case may be. I think that's why like you said like you know diversity in public what is so important I think particularly within romantic stories because it is you know falling in love is one of those rare things that most people on the planet probably do so it's like if you don't see people who you can identify with doing that it like you said inevitably that is going to then fuel some sort of insecurity about well am I worthy of love um if I don't look like that I mean the only way that I can identify that as a white woman is just in terms of body diversity on screen because one of the other things that is so rare is to see plus-size women fronting these romantic comedies these classic rom-coms I'm thinking there

was one there was that Rebel Wilson one uh not that long ago yeah but like that was like maybe two years ago and that was the first kind of rom-com fronted by plus-size women but but that's the thing it wasn't exactly yeah but that's the way it was solved because it was like then there was that whole controversy about how was actually like women of color have been fronting like plus-size women have been fronting these rom-coms and it's like it it just it highlighted the whole issue really didn't it yeah and it's kind of it as you point out it is it's such a universal feeling um the idea of falling in love or a universal desire at least I I doubt there are

many humans on the planet who deep down wouldn't like the sense of finding that one other person who sees them for them and desires them loves them and it's not necessarily just obviously a physical thing but it is so important to start to sort of have that sense of being recognized for your whole self that is what love does is um you know hopefully it will allow you to be seen as in your entirety and I think if we don't see depictions of that it's dangerous it genuinely is it's dangerous for the people who aren't represented but it is also dangerous for the people who are represented because as you say they need to be conditioned in the same way that others do

acas powers the world's best podcasts here's a show that we recommend i'm jesse kirkshank and on my podcast phone a friend i break down the biggest stories in pop culture but when i have questions I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween.

Facebook is like a no. That's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jessesse crookshank is not available on facebook it's out now wherever you get your podcasts acast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere acast.com some of the subjects that the stories touch on um i want to kind of delve into those a bit more so one of them that i find endlessly fascinating is unrequited love so i think this topic i find particularly interesting i think recently because of now we live in this age of social media and dating apps that feeling of loving someone and not having them

love you back is almost I feel like exacerbated in contemporary culture because you know you can you can never really cut someone out of your life you can see the person that you adore who doesn't love you back you can see them on Instagram with their partner who isn't you or like you can follow their whole relationship it's like it's more painful and I feel like we kind of live in this culture where we almost we indulge that pain and suffering a bit more because there's like something romantic in it you know what I mean yeah I think that's an interesting take on it because I always think of unrequited love as not necessarily positive but kind of um that that sense of yearning is inherently very romantic and I think that I guess it depends on whether you've had the

sort of opportunity to have a romantic relationship with that person and they've rejected you I think that's different and then I think you're right if you then see them you know everywhere you turn on social media with somebody else that that's sort of a different kettle of fish but I guess there's also the unrequited love way that other person may not even be aware that you're having those feelings towards them so there's always that sense of potential which I think you know maybe in some regards it's better not to know a person if you have that kind of sense of unrequited love because then they're more of a fantasy for you um and that can have its positive aspects as well I think yeah it's a really interesting subject traditionally I'm not quite good man you know it was the basis of sonnet writing it was literally

enough um there was there was something artistic about loving someone that doesn't love you back and writing about it and very often the men because it was often men writing these sonnets didn't know the women who they were writing about but do you think do you think we run the risk like because of that history do you think occasionally we run the risk of romanticizing and kind of fetishizing that feeling of yearning fetishizing that feeling of yearning yeah I think that is a possibility um and I suppose it can be dangerous if if people are projecting a sort of ideal on a person they don't really know and I think that that's true of any relationship but I do think it is as you point out it could be a different dynamic if it's the man projecting an ideal onto women or femininity um that that can have its dangerous aspects because you know if men sort of perceive women a certain way and women don't necessarily want to live up to those sort of ideals or

stereotypes you can run into difficulties so yeah um it's an interesting one how did you go about um when you were choosing the stories were you conscious of making sure that they covered like a wide range of different love stories in terms of like you have the unrequited love stories you have the kind of forbidden love stories the kind of lost love stories were you very conscious of that so that it was kind of an all-encompassing anthology? I mean beyond asking each of the authors to write what they viewed as a love story I didn't really prescribe things in in that sort of way you know I was I did sort of determine what they were planning to write and make sure like

in case there was something that was glaringly similar to another story but because there is such a multitude of stories it didn't really come up as an issue it was really just sort of maybe in terms of the order of the stories in the book balancing things out and making sure two stories weren't you know juxtaposed in a way that was sort of too similar but no I don't think I think because of the natural multitude of stories that there are it didn't really come across as and it didn't come up as an issue it's really funny that because I think if you tell someone you just give someone the brief tell me a love story I think it's impossible to get a similar response from two people because everyone everyone's experience of it is so different that's why it's such an interesting topic isn't it because it's

like it is like I said at the beginning it is something that most people do but everyone experiences it differently yes exactly yeah um so you also talk about this idea of forbidden love um that's that's in who's loving you and we also kind of we saw that in your debut novel right that was kind of based on yes talk to me a bit about what that was what that was about and what made you want to write that story yeah so my debut novel um it's called the Nearness of You and it came out in 2016. And it is a story about the central character is in love with her best friend's boyfriend. And he has recently moved in with them. So, you know, the torture is extra, extra potent for her.

You know, the torture is extra, extra potent for her. And she's also kind of dealing with a lot of sort of personal issues that have come up for her recently. The story begins with her discovering a suicide by the side of the Thames. It brings up issues with her mother and all of this kind of thing. But, yeah, there is a sort of forbidden love aspect there. Her best friend goes away and she's sort of left in the flat with this man that she's in love with that she's not meant to be getting involved with. And inevitably there's tension. It's such an interesting tension to explore that. I think it's like that kind of trio of like the best friend getting in the way between

the dust and lovers and something uh it's like endlessly gripping I'm thinking of examples like I've seen it in again these are all examples fronted by white people which makes such which goes back to what we were saying before but I'm thinking of One Tree Hill, The O.C., Something Borrowed like all of those kind of entities um so what what was it that made you kind of want to explore that trio dynamic and how how do you think you brought something to it that put like a fresh perspective on it because like we said it is something that we see in so many different kind of forms I mean I think love triangles is sort of yeah as you say it's a classic dynamic but I think in terms of storytelling tension is so important or it's important to me at least in

a story and romantic tension particularly so it's just an easy way to create tension by setting up a character dynamic where you know that these two people aren't supposed to be together it just heightens the tension between them because you're waiting and waiting and waiting for them to get together so I think from a narrative perspective that was why I wanted to explore that but I think there's sort of spin on it I mean because if you just take it on the surface my best friend's boyfriend sounds like something you'd write to an agony aunt or something but I did want to make it kind of um a bit more about I guess a bit more realistic it's sort of

um kind of a coming of age story the central character Taylor is sort of reconciling a lot of things not just romantically but also as I've said in her personal life trying to find a direction sort of when I started writing it was in that sort of post-university what am I meant to do I've done an arts degree what am I meant to do with that kind of space? So I wanted to make sure that it was relatable in that regard as well. She's a mixed race character. She's a mixed race black woman. Her best friends are mixed race black women as well. So all those aspects, I just kind of wanted to make it feel, yeah, a bit different than what you might think of as the cliche when you hear,

I'm in love with my best friend's boyfriend. Yeah. It's also, it's a dynamic that happens so often in real life as well yes I mean it wasn't my experience just to put it out there but yeah well no I mean we spoke about this on my previous episode about how women who write about love because we know that female novelists always get asked how much of their work is biographical but I think it is particularly targeted at women who write about sex and relationships yes absolutely and I wanted to this is like this is quite personal so you don't have to ask this if you don't want to but I am just interested as someone who's a lot of my work is about interrogating relationships and kind of asking questions and talking to people about romance like every two weeks that I do on

the podcast writing a book about it I noticed the impact that that has on my own relationships I wonder if that if you have noticed that in your life as you have you know you have made a career out of this as well yeah has that impacted your own behavior and relationships at all do you know what honestly I don't think it has in the sense that I I kind of feel like maybe it's because I write fiction I don't know but it does feel quite separate um it it feels like I guess when I'm writing it feels the same way I might feel when I read a romantic story it's a fantasy to even though I like quite realistic stories it's a it's a fantasy to a certain extent it doesn't feel like how I'd navigate romance in my real life

um you know I've never felt compelled to write a story based on my own life and experience I mean I've been with my partner for years and not not to denigrate him but it it doesn't feel like something that I'd be compelled to sort of document in my fiction it feels very separate um for me and you know even previous relationships or dalliances or whatever, I've never thought, let me draw on that experience. It always feels like something I invent completely in my head. But yeah, it is interesting that people, I think it helps once you've had multiple stories out,

they realise it can't possibly be that your story is being repeated over and again but people do have that conception that you're writing your own experience yeah absolutely I think you're right I think the more stories you kind of churn out people eventually understand like this can't all be about you yeah um right it's time for our lessons in love segment so this is the part of the show where I ask every guest to share something that they've learned from their previous relationship experiences uh so Sarita what is your lesson in love I think one of the key lessons I've had is kind of not not settling so I think um I've certainly had experiences where um I felt just grateful to be in a relationship at all. And I think that is never a good place to be coming from in a relationship.

It needs to serve you and it needs to be on your own terms. So I think one of the key lessons, yeah, is not to not to settle and not to just be grateful. But to really make sure that relationship is serving you. I think that's a really good one, because settling is such a, it's such an, it's such an easy thing to do in the sense that you won't, you don't necessarily realise you're doing it until you've stopped. Yes, exactly, exactly. It is sort of a lesson you learn in hindsight but I think the more you can sort of dial into your own gut feelings about a situation the more you'll be able to think no I deserve better I deserve something more something different or just

something that supports where I am at this present moment in my life. How much of that do you think is also about kind of like trusting your own instincts and like you know if you because if you are settling chances are maybe you have like this kind of like niggling feeling beforehand and you ignore it. Yeah I think it is about learning to yeah trust your instincts trust your gut feelings I mean that that's easier said than done because obviously if you're aware you're settling you're aware something's not quite right but I think particularly as women it's kind of easier to think well this is something that everyone expects me to do or everyone um strives for and I've got it so I shouldn't let it go I shouldn't take it for granted um that feeling of just being grateful

um and it's important we shed that and sort of focus on ourselves that's it for today thank you so much for listening if you're a new listener to this show you can subscribe to us on apple podcasts acast spotify or anywhere else you can comment and leave us a rating too so that more people can find us keep up to do with everything to do with the show on instagram just search millennial love see you soon Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Kirkshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture,

but when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no, that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook.

It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.