There's so much happening in politics right now.

So red wine and blue is here to ask, okay, but why?

It's disingenuous to say that book talk should be in apolitical space because books are inherently political.

The government knows that an educated population is harder to control.

When people think of romance novels, the first thing that comes to mind is shirtless dukes

with wind-swept hair on the covers of mass market paperbacks. The damsel in distress main character

who's waiting for a love interest to come and save

her from the clutches of evil.

They're a thing for girls.

It isn't real reading, because their stories typically written by women, for women, and

starring women.

But what if I told you that romance books, even the most quote-unquote

raunchy of the genre, are deeply political? The romance genre has always been popular,

generating billions of dollars in revenue annually, and its roots go all the way back to the 18th and

19th centuries, with novels like

Samuel Richardson's Pamela, the Gothic romances of Anne Radcliffe, and the famous works

of Jane Austen.

Even from the beginning, despite their flaws, these books focused on the lives and struggles

of women, something that had hardly been spotlighted before.

It's as if the world woke up one day and realized, wait, women can have interesting stories too?

The protagonists defied conventional social order and overcame personal struggles, all in

pursuit of their own dreams and a happily ever after.

...