Happy Disability Pride month! Welcome to the first issue of Sugar Daddies*, a newsletter where I hope to look more deeply into the narrative use of Type 1 Diabetes in (largely) 21st-century romance novels. What is an HEA with T1D? In addition to more straightforward questions of representation and authenticity, I’m interested in how cultural tropes of T1D intersect with, surface, and shape existing romance tropes or trace new ones, and how chronic illness, capitalism, and health insurance manifest in (again, largely) books from American authors.

I’m a scholar and teacher of literature, disability studies, and literary culture - and while my primary expertise is in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, representation of Type 1 Diabetes is understandably scarce in my usual source texts. (Prior to the discovery of insulin in 1921 by Frederick Banting and Charles Best at the University of Toronto, it was invariably a fairly quick death sentence.)

My curiosity about contemporary romance novels was piqued quite recently. Last spring, I taught a course on moral panics around women reading novels from the eighteenth-century to now (we started with Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (1752) and ended with the Twilight debates of the 2010s). While doing some hands-on research into current BookTok trends at local romance institution The Ripped Bodice in Culver City, I spotted a cover where the FMC was wearing a clearly visible CGM (continuous glucose monitor - an implant device diabetics use to continuously tack their blood sugar levels). The frisson of recognition seized me, I bought it immediately, and started looking for more.

Somewhat to my own surprise, I found a lot. A few rounds of puns later, the idea of Sugar Daddies* started to coalesce. (On that note… One of the first topics I’m eager to dive into in more depth is how financial stability in the form of health insurance and reliable access to insulin is a prominent plot point in many of these books.)

Romance novels deserve to be taken seriously, especially as a venue for representation and identity fashioning. I want to know more about when, why and how Type 1 narratives resonate with readers with various lived experience with T1 or other chronic illness and disability. I’m also interested in gender

I would love this newsletter to become a community-driven project, so please comment or email me with thoughts, suggestions, and book recs. “Sugar Daddies” is used here with tongue fully in cheek, and the asterisk is meant to signal that “daddies” is gender inclusive! In fact, I am actively looking for two kinds of recommendations in particular - M/M romances with T1D rep and F/M romances where the male lead is the T1D, as the largely straight and sapphic texts I’ve read so far seem primarily focused on women with Type 1. (Another forthcoming newsletter will explore some hypotheses on why that is.)

Sugar Daddies* will be a somewhat eclectic amalgamation of essays, reviews, and connecting threads. What do T1 romance novels have to do with the T1 social media influencer space? How can we bridge “book fandom” and academia? What can disability studies and romance studies learn from one another? Can our lovers overcome their highs and their lows?

Stay tuned! Up next: An investigation into cartoon covers and disability visibility - CGMs and insulin pumps.