On Love in Color

I may just be an idiot. I saw the title at my local library with no idea it was a collection of romance stories; I assumed they’d be remixed myths, which they are — but every one is a romance. That should have been obvious from the title, the cover, and the blurb, but I fixated too much on the subtitle. In any case, Bolu Babalola is an excellent writer. Romance isn’t what I normally reach for, and this was a fine way to branch into a genre I read little of. I expected a dose of the world’s traditions, and they’re here, but the bulk are sub-Saharan African stories, which makes the book all the stronger: I know Psyche and Eros, and Scheherazade and Nefertiti, well, but I had no background in the sub-Saharan folktales, and that ignited my curiosity.

The best stories lean into romantic comedy — Thisbe and Pyramus (originally Mesopotamian), or Naleli and Khoisi (Lesotho) — but the others are strong too: Attem and Ituen (Calabar) and Siya and Maadi (Soninke) are serious, one fairytale-like and the other more of an epic, and both are exceptional. Near the end there are three original contemporary stories, the best of them Orin’s, set during a failed date at a club. Babalola is an author to keep watching, and the way she centers her female characters is what gives the stories their power — turning Naleli from a woman hidden behind a crocodile skin into a teenager hiding her vitiligo is genuinely creative. She has a sharp imagination, and her gift for language is as good as her plotting and world-building. For reimagined African myths this is the place to go, and it’s also a fine starting point for anyone curious about romance who hasn’t read it before.