Yes We Can! by Robyn Amos

I’ve been an avid romance novel reader since I was a teenager.  When I decided after college that I wanted to write my first romance novel, I knew I had to write about characters who looked like me. The only problem was that I’d never seen any books on the shelves featuring multicultural heros or heroines.  Luckily, my timing was perfect, and shortly after I started writing, I found out that Arabesque, the first line of romance novels featuring African-American characters was about to be launched. Writing about African-American characters gave me the opportunity to explore the unique nuances within my race that went beyond stereotypes.  For Arabesque, I had a lot of fun writing a character with a British accent (Into the Night) or blue eyes (True Blue).  And, more recently for Kimani Press, I wrote about a heroine who is Goth (Enchanting Melody), my first interracial romance in Sex and the Single Braddock and in my April 2009 release, Cosmic Rendezvous, I write about black astronauts.

For the last decade or more, authors have been writing powerful heros and ambitious heroines that just happen to be black.  In our fictional worlds our characters can accomplish anything regardless of race.  But, I wonder how many of us really believed it was possible to elect a black man to the highest office in the nation.

I must admit, after the last eight years of what seemed to me to be social and economic regression, I was highly skeptical.  But, it wasn't long into the democratic primaries that I began to get excited about a man named Barack Obama.  When he went from being underdog to frontrunner to win the party nomination, I actually started to believe.  Maybe the world was changing.  It was possible that, yes we could!

But, since moving beyond stereotypes has always been important to me as a writer and a black woman, I had a real fear that Barack Obama's election would be more about his becoming the country's first black president than about his being the best man for the job.  I made it my civil duty to list to any and all who would listen all of his skills and qualifications that had nothing to do with his ethnicity.  I was so caught up in this endeavor, that I was caught off-guard by my emotions when the dream became a reality, and Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States.

I am currently pregnant with my first child, and my baby will be born in March.  Suddenly, it has become startlingly clear what it means to have my baby boy born into the world after the first black president has taken office.  I now know, when I tell him he can be anything he wants to be, they aren't just empty words.  He'll grow up in a society that has taken one more step forward toward the truth that we're all created equal.

And, any time he tells me that he can't,  I can say on good authority, Yes We Can... and we did... and we're not going to stop now!