Interview with Nikki Payne, author of Pride and Protest

Today we have a special feature – an interview with Nikki Payne, whose book Pride and Protest is now available for pre-order! I’m so excited about this diverse retelling from a long-time member of the JAFF community.  Actually it’s two interviews – a written one with questions from our authors and an amazing video interview by our own Elizabeth Adams. Elizabeth and Nikki hit it off so well that they talked for over three hours in the original, unedited video! Don’t worry – the one posted here has been edited. But let’s start with the book blurb:

And now for Nikki’s responses to our questions – along with some of her dream casting for her book!

Abigail Reynolds: Tell us a little about you. How did you first discover JAFF, and what inspired you to write your own? Have you always wanted to be a writer, or is this something more recent? Where would you like to see your writing career going from here? 

Nikki Payne:  I started out as a massive reader. Like most of us, I was reading books way out of my league at a young age– Johanna Lindsey Stephen King at 10 and 11 years old. I read Abigail Reynolds and Beth Massey and joined a JAFF community because of them.  And these women were just so welcoming and open. I fell in love with the community.

As a cultural anthropologist, I studied aesthetics and power and taught a popular course entitled “Politics of Ugly” at the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve always been deeply interested in the cultural aspect of desirability.  I read an article about romance that found that Black women and Asian men are the least responded to in dating apps. That Black women and Asian men carry less sexual capital in these digital cultures was a prevailing truth I wanted to counter in the least digital way possible. Classical literature. Classic heroes and heroines are often arch

Logan Browning, Nikki’s dream casting as Liza

etypes of desire. But gendered racial hierarchies of desirability are as socially constructed as other racial hierarchies. Seemingly, personal preferences and choices in modern romance are profoundly shaped by larger social forces. I ask you, can anyone brood harder than an Austen or Bronte hero? These characters are raced and gendered in the way they are in my story on purpose. Making Dorsey a hot Asian Male savior and Liza a hot vulnerable, delicate woman in need of care is an act of reclamation.

AR: I’m thrilled to see authors of color writing Austenesque fiction, especially in light of the Jane Austen fandom’s ongoing struggles with racism. Can you tell us about what it means to you, an author of color, to be telling this story? 

NP: The tension with the Jane Austen community is really this deep fear of replacement. Someone has told all of these beautiful Jane Austen Fans that new or inclusive adaptations will supplant or replace their firmly held faves and it is just not true. It’s scarcity economics and it will have us clawing our eyes out when, to quote Hamilton, The world was wide enough. I’ve read 1000 Jane Austen adaptations and I’m likely to read 1000 more. My appetite for Jane Austen in new and inventive ways is endless, and a lot of our readers feel the same.

There is also a class of fans that like to read Regency novels to escape into a “safe and sacred white space.” I blame Masterpiece Theater but  Regency England was raucous, teeming with life and diversity. And most of those claims yearning for historical accuracy quite miss the point of Jane Austen’s fiction. These aren’t biopics.

I relate to Jane Austen as a black woman because there is something of the pithy outsider to Jane Austen.  I call myself Jane Austen’s sassy black friend as a play on that very common TV trope. Often in books and television, the sassy black friend is allowed to transgress propriety and social mores to speak to the simple truth of a situation. If you want to get nerdy about it, Henry Louis Gates Jr’s  Signifying Monkey is a great place to start.

“You’re in love with the Boy, honey!” Sassy black friend is a double agent, though, speaking truth to power in a way that mainstream culture folks won’t recognize as critique. This is what Jane Austen does, sits slightly outside of the British upper class and just critiques everything she sees, mostly to hilarious effect. That was part of the reason I was so excited to make Liza a DJ, because she gets to be this pithy wordsmith.

Monica Fairview: I love the idea of the novel! From the description, it has the vibe of ‘You’ve Got Mail’, which is one of my favorite ever movies, but with the added complexity of ethnicity and race. My question is: what gave you the idea of having Darcy as an outsider, and how do you think presenting him that way relates to (or contrasts with) the original Darcy. 

Manny Jacinto, Nikki’s dream casting for Dorsey

NP: What appeals most to me about Jane Austen is her ability to incorporate very large ideas into tiny interactions. She can have an entire argument about romanticism versus rationalism when Marianne goes on and on about dead leaves. I’ve seen variations that paint Mr. Darcy as being on the Autism Spectrum,  or having social anxiety. I wanted to think about the ways people of color experience anxiety in public places. And  I like the idea of being overly concerned with perceptions and how you are perceived.  People of color in highly visible positions are very vulnerable to this type of anxiety. The original Mr. Darcy admitted to not being a great conversationalist but he also never seemed relaxed anywhere, even at Pemberley. Spoiler alert: that very comfortable lake scene from 1995 was not in the book. I wanted to capture that sense of someone not comfortable in his own skin.

AR: What comes next after Pride & Protest? I understand you have another Austen-inspired book in the pipeline!

NP: I am writing a Sense and Sensibility story that has no right to be as sexy as this. I wanted to write an Edward Ferrars I could get behind, and it was insanely fun to write!

AR: Wow, sounds fantastic!! Thanks so much for joining us today.

Elizabeth Adams here! I had so much fun talking to Nikki. Not only did we discover we are exactly the same age, but we also lived in Houston at the same time as kids. Unfortunately, we were in separate elementary schools.

Check out the video to discuss dream casting, gentrification, and some good old-fashioned fan-girling.

About Nikki Payne:

There is a reason the same story can be told over and over and never get old. There are certain ideas we love to revisit. As anthropologist, I understand the power of a well told fairy tale and am unapologetic about my love for Romance Tropes.

I believe in building the world I want to live in, so my heroes and heroines come from many backgrounds- though I borrow heavily from my own southern African American experience.

Church on Sunday and romance novels are some of the most racially segregated spaces, as such, multicultural love still strikes me as the last frontier in romance writing and in creating shared understanding.

By day I am a Ph.D cultural anthropologist, solving big tech problems- by night, I dream of subverting the canon.