Our Own Erotica

Black sexuality in Black literature

"It's odd that we are forced to talk about black eroticism as something odd," says Reginald Martin, a professor of English at the University of Memphis around whom the current black erotica movement is gravitating. After all, we sing about it and dance to it. But only recently have we begun to acknowledge our black erotic selves in literature.

Right now, black erotica resides mainly in pop and hip-hop lyrics concerning sexuality. But the growing physical and spiritual manifestations of black erotica in literature and art are just as creative, unpredictable and controversial as they are in music. For example, the photo of a barely clad Toni Braxton on the cover of Vibe magazine fueled the debate about the current trend toward depicting black sexuality more openly in American society.

Not everyone thinks that this new emphasis on black erotica is a healthy trend for African-American cultural and social expression. Gail E. Wyatt, a sex therapist and the author of Stolen Women: Reclaiming Our Sexuality, Taking Back Our Lives, says that talk about erotica is premature: "We need to understand our own sexuality before we can understand erotica." Wyatt suggests that the African-American community ask itself one important question: What is erotic to us?

Interested African Americans can surely find answers in Dark Eros: Black Erotic Writings (St. Martin's Press, 1997), an anthology edited by Martin. The poetry, fiction and essays contained in this urban anthology follow up on Erotique Noir/Black Erotica (Anchor Books, 1992), by Martin, Miriam DeCosta-Willis and Roseann P. Bell, which sold 150,000 copies and is cited in the publishing world as a pioneer in black erotica. While Erotique Noir features the writings of African-American, Latin-American and Caribbean-American men and women, Dark Eros is a collection of erotic writings by African Americans only.

For Martin, it was about letting young writers who are "literary nobodies" write from their own experiences and imagination, thereby cultivating an erotica with fresh angles. "Black sexuality has never been properly written about," he says. "Instead, what you had was a white view of sexuality." It's a view that plays into stereotypes of African Americans as obsessed with, focused on and committed to sex, anytime, anyplace and with anyone, at any cost.

But black eroticism is too subjective for such a narrow perspective. For example, Dark Eros contains a poem called "Mr. Goodbar," by Jeul A. Harris, which uses derogatory language to describe black women. Martin says that African Americans have to stop letting eroticism and black sexuality be decided by any one race or gender, because everyone brings differences in class and sexual orientation to the interpretation of these very personal insights. "Show 'Mr. Goodbar' to another male or to a gay male or to a gay woman," Martin asserts. "Don't fall into the binary-opposite game that white publishing and white media have set up."

Indeed, erotica is a personal experience, simply because it involves more of one's emotional gauge than does sex. So when someone has an erotic experience, which may or may not involve sex, he or she can talk about it all night and get up and write, sing, dance or paint about his or her own unique erotic experience. Dark Eros gives us a chance to look at our black erotic selves in a way that acknowledges our body, soul and imagination.

Courtesy of: findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1546/is_n5_v12/ai_19909408

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