Black Confessions and Bronze Thrills: Black romance magazines (cont'd)

Some years back I wrote a blog post on the black romance magazines. It was an ode to my hormonal teenage years when I desperately sought out anything that could offer me a preview of what was in store for me when I "got grown."

While I loved them dearly, I was critical of the glaring editorial errors that sometimes made a story unreadable. But I continued to buy them because they were special to me and captivated me, and helped me realize that I too wanted to write stories.

Well years later, I still have most of those magazines. The ones from the 90s are worn, and a couple are missing their covers, but everything else is in tact. I didn't realize the response I'd receive from that post.

I've received feedback from people directly involved with these magazines and it inspired to me highlight these publications once again.

These days, women who enjoy black romance are no longer able to go to the grocery store and pick these up (correct me if I'm wrong). We have websites we can go to for black erotica. And of course, we have gritty, raunchy urban lit books. But not these magazines.

Please let me (and others) know if there are any equivalents out there. It's amazing how much we have available to us now through social media, blogs, sites, and apps....yet some things remain hard to come by. Like magazines that let us live vicariously through the sex and love lives of characters, who much like ourselves, are just trying to figure out this thing called love.

Before I go, I want to give a shout out to the ads these magazines used to have. How many of you remember the lucky talismans, the love potients, the padded underwear, the psychics and healers, the wigs and hair pieces? It's a little funny now to look at these ads and not see a website or an '@' address to follow them on Twitter and Instagram. Just a PO Pox and a phone number.