Across social media, I am seeing the trend “bring back yearning.” I’ve seen it referencing both books and visual media, but let’s specifically talk about romance books. Frankly, I don’t like this trend, and not because I don’t like yearning. What I find sinister is the way this phrase functions very similarly to another refrain that we’ve all heard a lot: Make America Great Again.
Tell me I’m reading too much into it. I’ll tell you you’re not reading enough into it. What makes MAGA such a troubling phrase is the implication that America was once great, something made it not great, and we have to eliminate whatever that is to bring back the greatness. The subtext is dripping with the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, transphobia, and homophobia we’ve come to expect from people in power.
Now, think about “bring back yearning.” The implication is we used to have yearning, something replaced it, and we have to eliminate that to bring back the yearning. Let’s take these implications in turn.
We Used to Have Yearning
We still have yearning. If you can’t find yearning in books, that’s a you problem and not a books problem. Please pick any book by Kennedy Ryan or Cat Sebastian, to name two authors off the top of my head. Truly, any book from either of those authors will fill whatever depleted yearning reserves you’ve been fretting about enough to make your problems public on social media.
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Something Replaced Yearning
The intimation here is that “smut” or “spice” replaced yearning. To that I say, these things are not mutually exclusive. Books have had sexually explicit content since they were invented. Get over it.
For those looking to avoid sex on the page, there are definitely hugely popular books that have both yearning and little to no “spice.” Divine Rivals springs to mind. Virtually all of young adult romance is right there. Authors who write great sex, like Talia Hibbert and Rebekah Weatherspoon, have even shown their mastery of romance by writing young adult novels that forego sex scenes. Equating more spice with less yearning is fallacious. These are two separate dials that authors can turn while writing books.
We Have to Eliminate Spice to Bring Back Yearning
By stating the back half of the above sentence, the first half is invoked. And what may be reflecting individual reading tastes now sounds an awful lot like a systematic effort to censor books. Book bans are real, and if you don’t want to accidentally align yourself with them, think deeply about the implications of the rallying cries you join.
One Last Point
I searched “bring back yearning” on TikTok, and it took me all of one minute to find videos that made explicit what I’ve said is implicit in the phrase. User oamiyawrites writes, “stop spice, bring back yearning.” User likeablade says, “Bring back yearning in books. I want earthshattering slow third degree burn type of love. Not Lust.”
“Stop spice.” “Not lust.” Everyone is allowed their reading preferences, but a call to police what sexual content gets written and published? They’ve captured perfectly why you’ll never hear me say “bring back yearning.”
Source : What We Talk About When We Talk About “Bringing Back Yearning”
