ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way in which a 15-year-old Black girl uses the romance genre in her writing to explore the possible relationship between girls and boys. It argues for a more positive view of the place for the romance in young people's writing. Comment on the romance genre often starts with worries about its female readership. For English teachers, one consequence of these assumptions is to treat romances as if they were a highly contagious disease. Photo-love stories take as their theme girl-boy relationships explored as romance. Angelique, the story-teller, is quite clear that in her romances what the boys want and what the girls want is often different, and part of the function of her stories is to settle that conflict. The register of romance finds different expression in the Black community, whilst Angelique's acquaintance with the former has been made through reading books which deal exclusively with White characters.
