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The State of Black Erotica
By Scottie Lowe
Perhaps one day someone will convene a panel of scholars
and academics that discusses Black sexuality and that
addresses the subject of Black erotica. From the
rhythmic tales of the sagacious griot, weaving tales of
slaves whose love endured the horrors of chattel
slavery, to the Harlem Renaissance with its unapologetic
look at that mysterious element which made our natures
rise, to the soul-stirring harmonies of R&B that have
been the soundtrack to our seductions for decades, Black
people have always had a long tradition of erotic
expression. In 1992, an editor by the name of Miriam
Decosta-Willis, published an anthology of erotica called
Erotique Noire that was not only groundbreaking,
it truly was a celebration of Black sensuality and set
the stage for a new genre of expression. Today, if you
venture into the African American section of any
bookstore, it’s filled with shelf after shelf of
degrading, crude, and offensive books that don’t even
deserve to be called erotica. We’ve come a long way
baby, but it certainly hasn’t been an erotic evolution.
One can’t have a discussion of the topic of Black
erotica today without discussing
Zane; she and Black erotica are virtually
synonymous. For those of you who haven’t been in the
African-American section of a bookstore in the last five
years, Zane is the number one selling Black author who
writes Black erotica. She says she is empowering Black
women with her in-your-face brand of sexual writing.
She certainly has done well for herself, selling over
2.5 million tittles and plans to launch television
shows, plays, movies and a whole host of other branding
opportunities from her tales of dark lust.
Zane’s story is one of triumph. She started out with
rejection letter after rejection letter from publishers
who told her that her brand of writing was too vulgar,
that people wouldn’t buy such hard-core material.
Self-publishing her books and selling them out of the
trunk of her car, soon publishers were beating a line to
her door to offer her a deal. Now she has her own
imprint and is publishing upwards of 30 authors
herself. She certainly deserves kudos for her good
old-fashioned ingenuity and determination. She’s single
handedly reshaped the face of Black erotica an opened
the door for anyone, ANYONE who writes about sex to get
a publishing deal, regardless of talent, or in most
instances, the lack thereof. Sentence structure,
spelling, grammar, and editing be damned. Publishers
have taken the Zane story and capitalized off of it to
the detriment of the genre and to the absolute
degradation of any sort of example of healthy Black
sexuality.
Writing Black erotica is a lot like rapping. Anybody
who can come up with three words that rhyme can call
himself or herself a rapper; anyone who uses the words
dick, pussy, and fuck in a sentence can call themselves
an erotic writer. Black erotic today consists of the
same storyline told over and over again: super-beautiful
women with abnormal libidos and superficial standards
seduce their super-rich, lovers who always have
super-sized genitalia complete with matching, heightened
sexual appetites, and a non-existent commitment to being
in a relationship. Throw in several dozen references to
capitalist trinkets and you essentially have every
erotic story on the shelves today.
Black erotica has made being ghetto equivalent to being
Black. We have a unique culture and experience that can
come across on the page in our reflections, our words,
and our perceptions. That, however, doesn’t have to
include baby mamas, visiting day at prisons, spelling
the words boys with a z, or eroticizing the N
word. Instead of writing about our beauty, our pain,
our history, we write about our dysfunction, throw in a
few sexual escapades, and call it erotica. Yes, our
stories need to be told, but glorifying behaviors that
are unhealthy isn’t art. There certainly is more to
Black life than what we are being force-fed.
The publishing industry has all but shut out writers
with integrity to the craft who want to tell our stories
in a way that don’t degrade but that celebrate Black and
interracial sexuality beyond clichés and stereotypes.
So terrified are the Black middle class of being
associated with the freaks and nymphos depicted in Black
erotica, so distanced are we from a healthy example of
our sexuality, we sit in silence, never demanding more,
never complaining about the proliferation of erotic
literature that reduce our sexuality to nothing more
than a sweaty, recreational activity.
When our literary diets consist only of poorly written,
grammatically incorrect, inane tales of ghetto sex, it's
not feeding our souls, it's poisoning our minds. It's
reinforcing that the institutionalized, substandard
education that we have been fed is acceptable. It's
crippling us, as Black people, academically so that we
will never be able to read and appreciate a well-written
novel in our lives, let alone be able to construct a
sentence that would be considered well-written. We MUST
raise the bar when it comes to what we are feeding
ourselves, what literary sustenance with which we
nourish ourselves.
Even with the proliferation banal Black erotica and the
horrendous mediocrity of it all, there are still those
who value the melodies and harmonies of jazz, who feel
the angst of Morrison’s Beloved, who treasure the beauty
of Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, and who appreciate the
artistry of true erotica. Long gone are the days when
we dog-eared the pages of
Erotique Noire
and quoted
passages to our lovers in steamy late-night phone
calls. Truly empowering erotica lifts us up, paints a
picture of our lives and our sexuality that have nothing
to do with exchanging sex for money or adultery but that
allows us sensual release and to mentally travel to a
place of sights, sounds, sensations, and tastes that
arouse all of our senses.
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Scottie Lowe is the founder, CEO, and the creative driving
force behind
www.AfroerotiK.com, THE most unique website dedicated to showing the true beauty of Black
sexuality in all its many facets. AfroerotiK creates
customized and personalized erotic stories written from
a decidedly Afrocentric perspective and embraces
diversity in sexual expression. Tired of erotica that
portrayed black women as man-stealing gold diggers and
brainless nymphos, and black men as thugs, players, and
emotionally immature dick-slingers, I decided it was
time to write erotica that represented the complexity
and full spectrum of African Americans. Look for her
highly controversial upcoming book, In Loving Color,
to create quite a stir with literary works of art that
are dripping with sensuality and explore groundbreaking,
socially relevant topics. It will include breathtaking
photography that will be sure to arouse and stimulate
intense passion and establish In Loving Color as
the standard for Black erotica.
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* * posted
18 August 2007 |
