A short history of contemporary black erotic fiction: the best of black erotic literature since 1992 reveals as much about our souls and how they connect as it does about how we entangle and unite our bodies.

Could it be that I'm a prude? I balked initially when I was asked to write about black erotic fiction as a genre. But then I decided to challenge my preconceptions, and sure enough, I was enlightened as a result: This genre isn't just about sex.

In 1992, the anthology Erotique Noire: Black Erotica, edited by Miriam DeCosta-Willis, Reginald Martin and Roseann P. Bell (Doubleday), was the forerunner in a now burgeoning field of black erotic writing. Although the black literary tradition is by no means straitlaced and anti-erotic, the publication of Erotique Noire, with its well presented mix of selections flora a wide range of writers, marked the first time that crotica was the focal point of a collection by black writers, announcing "Here we are, speaking our own truths. Let's celebrate!"

Since then, a large number of volumes of black erotica have become widely available in mainstream bookstores. Notable are such collections as Dark Eros: Black Erotic Writings by Reginald Martin (St. Martin's Press, August 1997), The Bluelight Corner: Black Women Writing on Passion, Sex and Romantic Love by Rosemarie Robotham (Three Rivers Press, December 1998), and the novels of writers like Zane (see "Zane Inc.," page 17). And two new collections of erotic fiction hit bookstores earlier this year--Intimacy: Erotic Stories of Love, Lust, and Marriage by Black Men, edited by Robert Fleming (Plume, January 2004), and the third volume in the Brown Sugar anthology series, Brown Sugar 3: When Opposites Attract, edited by Carol Taylor (Washington Square Press, January 2004).

When Taylor's first Brown Sugar: A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction (Plume) was published in 2001, it immediately hit The Los Angeles Times Bestseller List at No. 2 and won that year's Gold Pen Award for Best Short Story Collection. Brown Sugar 2; Great OneNight Stands (Washington Square Press, December 2002) was also commercial success. In Brown Sugar 3, Taylor presents such writers as Denene Millner and Nick Chiles ("Play It Again"), Michael Datcher ("The Happiest Butterfly in the World"), Patricia Elam ("Scenes From a Marriage"), and Lolita Files ("Standing Room Only"). These works run the gamut from thought provoking to highly provocative and downright hot. "Eroticism is in the language, the characters, the situations, the settings and in the relationships," says Taylor. 'The complexity of the main characters' relationship is more important to me than the act of sex itself." She adds, "These stories go beyond erotica, beyond sex, to a place you will find more familiar than not, no matter how far from your own experiences they may be."

In her third collection, Taylor notes in her introduction: "The lawyer is drawn to the gangster, the old to the young, the mother in the convict, the rich to the poor, the ethereal to the corporeal, the gay to the straight, the professor to the student, the saint to the sinner, and the intellectual to the street smart." We learn that "being involved with our opposite allows us to see ourselves more clearly than when we are with someone with whom we share many similarities," says Taylor. Her fourth collection, Brown Sugar 4: Secret Desires, will be published in January 2005.

With Intimacy, Fleming gives us a strictly male perspective. The award-winning former reporter for the New York Daily News, and author of an earlier collection of black erotic fiction, After Hours (Plume, July 2002), says he was drawn to this project because black women would be interested in "the fact that black men could express themselves about their life stories, whether real or imagined."

The collection features such revered writers as Stephen Barnes ("Jet Lag"), David Anthony Durham ("An Act of Faith"), James Alan McPherson ("Private Domain"), E. Ethelbert Miller ("Giovanni") and John Edgar Wideman ("The Statue of Liberty"). "These celebrated and respected writers refuse to believe that writing about the erotic should get in the way of fashioning stories that would deepen an understanding of ourselves," Fleming notes in his introduction. "They attack much of the Old School thought about what a man should be, what he should feel, what he should revere, and how he should love." Indeed, adds Fleming, whose After Hours was named Best Erotic Collection of 2002 by Black Issues Book Review, "they demolish the sexual myths of the black stud and brute, and replace them with three-dimensional men."

Observing the growing popularity of the genre she helped to put on the map, DeCosta-Willis notes, "Partly because of the pandemic of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, African Americans are turning increasingly to popular culture--music, dance, film, and fiction--for sexual expression." But Taylor's observation that her series "cuts across a wide readership" promises much more for the continued success of the genre as a whole. As Fleming puts it so succinctly in speaking of Intimacy, "These stories are not just about love and sex, they are about life and living."

Denolyn Carroll is the deputy managing editor of Essence magazine.