In an ongoing effort to expand the nature of discussion about P.O.C. Porn, I thought I would open it up to other voices. Today’s discussion comes from one of my readers Alice Sturdivant who is a published author in the field of erotica with works published in such anthologies as Oysters & Chocolate: Erotic Stories of Every Flavor, and Zane’s Succulent: Chocolate Flava II.

With that said I give the floor to Ms. Sturdivant who adroitly gives the reason that P.O.C. erotica shares the same fate as P.O.C. pornography:

I remember the first story I read about sex. It was a romance novel I found in my aunt’s house, tucked in a corner of a bookshelf that otherwise held dusty cookbooks and my cousins’ old school textbooks. The hero was a blond god of a pirate, the heroine a raven-haired, ivory skinned beauty. They had sweet, but hot, sex, outlined in lavender-prosed detail that proved addictive. I was fifteen. It would be three years later before I would read a romance novel with a black hero and heroine; scores of similar books, five years, and an ocean later that I would finally read an erotic novel that contained a woman – or man – that looked like me.

I still have that first (now dogeared) copy of Erotique Noire, and have since read (and written for) erotic anthologies that include characters of color. But they are few and far between, and frankly, I hoard them more than I read and enjoy them, so eager am I to preserve them. The three African-American historical romance novels I have are carefully secreted away in my personal library bookshelf; Beverly Jenkins was a revelation to me. While they were more educational and romantic than erotic, the mere idea of reading love stories that reflected people that looked like me was…astounding.

Not long ago, I asked an author whose work I admire if she saw herself writing a character of color in the future. “I’ve never consciously thought about the question,” she answered. ” Based upon the research I’ve done . . . and the characters I’ve created in the past. . . I would say not in the near-future.”

She writes erotic romance, set in Victorian London. I never wrote her back; what I wanted to tell her was, “People of color have been in Britain since before the 1600s.”

This author certainly isn’t the only one to write white by default; the most diversity one is likely to see in the romance/erotica section is in the jewel-tones of the covers and cleavage-and-bicep-baring blouses of the heroines (and heroes); the limbs intertwined on them as white as the pages within. To be fair, I understand the problem of writing historic fiction with people of color; hell, writing contemporary fiction featuring people of color can sometimes be problematic. Science fiction, fantasy, and even young adult fiction are beleaguered with the same issues. Earlier this year, a frank discussion on characters and readers of color in Science fiction and fantasy took place online. Google Racefail ’09 for the details; from the moniker, you can imagine how the discussion went. Author Justine Larbalestier found her novel “Liar” had been distributed with a white girl on the cover; the protagonist is black. Fiction requires a certain suspension of disbelief; science fiction and fantasy even more so. But for the reader of color, any reflection of self is too often absent altogether or marginalized; to imagine oneself as the protagonist, one must to extend the disbelief far beyond the page and recast him/herself as white.

The overwhelmingly monochromatic nature of the romance and erotic genres are even more telling. The expression of sexual fantasy and desire in novels is, for many, an extension of desire and sexual fantasy in real life: an escape in 300 or so pages. At its heart, romance – and erotica – is a reflection of current (and acceptable) sexual fantasy – even if your fantasy involves multiple partners, BSDM, dirty talk, public sex, or a myriad of other things (including the ever-growing trend of sex with vampires), you’re likely to find a book on the shelf. There are only three commandments in romance: thou shalt be beautiful, thou shalt have hot sex, and thou shalt Live Happily Ever After. The erotica rule is more pragmatic: If You Read it, They Will Come.

But if your fantasy is to have any of that with or as a partner of color, you’d either better have a good imagination , or be prepared to reread a Zane book. Or you could go online and order from a small, mainly online publishing house like Loose-Id or Ellora’s Cave, that have specific sections for ‘multicultural’ offerings, the majority of which are interracial. If you’re feeling determined, you could also sift through the mandingo-fantasy-laden ‘interracial’ topic at literotica.com.

Though I’m sure most romance authors would hate to hear it, mainstream romance and porn are extremely similar in the alienation of characters of color. When the fantasy ‘norm’ is white – no matter how chaste or kinky – everyone else is ‘other’. Just as in porn, openly affectionate black sex – never mind love – are almost completely absent. While as a black woman, pornography is relatively willing to showcase my fuckability, depictions of my ability to be loved, coveted, or desired as anything but a fetish object is sadly rare- on-screen or on the written page. As the author I questioned admitted, people that look like me just aren’t necessarily automatically and by default considered that way- if at all – even in ‘mainstream’ fantasy. So where does that leave readers – and writers – like me?

I hesitate to say that only brown authors can or should write stories containing brown people. Obviously, there are readers hungry for such material. But writing to demographic is a cop out; it absolves white authors of responsibility, pigeonholes authors of color,and avoids the ultimate issue of widening the sexual and desirable ideal to a diverse cast of characters. But apparently authors of color will have to lead the way, just as has been done in mainstream literature, film,and yes, porn. But it’s also a matter of artistic integrity: in the fantasy of erotica and romance, it’s precisely the romance and erotic aspects, that present a challenge. When you’re talking about people whose bodies were, if they were (some would say, are) legally their own, always in peril; whose sexuality was (is) turned against them, exploited and/or obliterated, an author is forced to navigate through some very un-erotic, unromantic, and frankly un-fantasy issues. It’s the creation of sexual fantasy despite this history that is the challenge: one that more authors should be interested in pulling off — if for no other reasons than the market is ripe for it, and to avoid a topic simply because it’s hard is, well, lazy.

And as any lover or artist will tell you, lazy isn’t sexy.

So what do you think readers. Does P.O.C. Pornography suffer from the same problems as P.O.C. erotica? What would you to change one or both?

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