However, not only does the heroine, Bai Ying-Hua/Catherine, have English and Chinese heritage but the novels draw on a genre called wuxia, a literary and cinematic form with a centuries-long history in mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan. Sherry Thomas’s Victorian and Qing-era-set 2014 novel My Beautiful Enemy ( MBE) and its prequel The Hidden Blade ( THB) are notable in this vein. But a multicultural strain has grown stronger in recent decades, particularly in terms of one or both protagonists being African/African-American/Asian/Latinx/multiracial. That the romance genre has an international readership (in English and in translation) is well known, as is the fact that the texts are predominantly Anglo/white European/American in both their characters and settings. She is currently working on her second book, a study of romance fiction heroines. She is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College in the City University of New York and also serves as a Vice-President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. Her struggle to determine her ethnic and political identities alongside filial piety and romantic love makes for a more transcultural romance novel.Ībout the Author: Jayashree Kamblé is the author of Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology (Palgrave 2014) and a two-time recipient of the Romance Writers of America Academic Research Grant Award. MBE enacts the genre’s features closely: the heroine is a righteous knight errant and a racial and gendered Other, intervening in nineteenth-century English and Chinese politics through uncanny martial means. Readers might find its infusion in romance appealing for two reasons: one, it features a warrior heroine (a type popular in paranormal and urban fantasy romance, which questions gender roles), and second, it taps into the worldwide appreciation for wuxia, inspired by hits like Crouching Tiger. It is also associated with immigration and exile, perhaps resonating with Thomas’s own move from China to the U.S. MBE’s heroine is Anglo-Chinese, and the novel’s plot draws on wuxia, a literary and cinematic genre that has a long history in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Abstract: A case study of Sherry Thomas’s Qing-era My Beautiful Enemy (and its prequel, The Hidden Blade) allows for a fruitful discussion of changing representations of diversity in romance fiction and its appeal to readers.
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