January 1, 2001
"In Brown Sugar we're here to represent, to show the real souls of black folk, our own particular ardor and passion." So writes Taylor, a longtime publishing professional and coauthor of Sacred Fire: The QBR 100 Essential Black Books, in her introduction to this stylish anthology of original black erotica. Nineteen authors (including Taylor) contribute stories; none are literary superstars and many are relatively obscure, but a few will be familiar to readers of Af-Am lit, particularly novelist R.M. Johnson (The Harris Men) and poet Sapphire (American Dreams; Push). The stories span the spectrum of sexuality, from straight (the majority) to gay (Reginald Harris's "The Dream"; Pamela Sneed's poem, "Peeping Tom") to gender-bending (Marcia Blackman's "Hail Mary Full of Grace"; Leone Ross's "Drag," whose 18-year-old narrator announces, "Today I feel like a drag queen," and proceeds to pick up a man outside a porn shop and ask him to have sex with her "like I'm a boy"), with a smidgen of S&M tossed in. None of the entries are pornographic, though graphic depictions of sex abound. The best of the stories, like Diane Patrick's "Never Say Never," explore the emotional as well as sexual aspects of the erotic; in this lively tale that blends humor and high spirits with genuine warmth, Patrick blind-dates a shorter (white) man and in so doing learns more about her own humanity. Just so, readers may learn more about themselves as they explore the erotic imaginations at work in this book, not the first collection of black erotica (e.g., Reginald Martin's Dark Eros, 1997) but one that is particularly intelligent, varied--and sexy. (Jan.) Forecast: This title can be niche-marketed to success, but the infusion of graphic gay material into a book that appeals primarily to heterosexual sensibilities may prove a problem.