Erotica and Sensuality

I’ve been reading Brown Sugar, edited by Carol Taylor—a collection of erotic Black fiction.

Don’t ask.

Fact is, it’s reshaping what I think erotica can be. I’m a creature of my time, okay? I’m on BookTok, I love it…but sometimes you end up on the side of the algorithm where everyone is purely in search of what is basically written porn. And each to their own—it’s really never that serious. But reading “spice” in everything has gotten completely boring for me, especially as someone who has a complicated relationship with sexuality. Not my sexual orientation—just sex itself.

I always thought there was something wrong with me because of my past traumas: being assaulted as a little girl, and then again a few times as a teenager. Some people either shut down or become hypersexual. It comes down to the psyche—how the brain tries to protect itself.

With everything I’ve consumed—media, literature—I built up this rigid idea of what sex is supposed to look like. This book, with its short stories, has given me so much food for thought. My mindset has been actively changing in real time this year. My relationship with intimacy, especially after having a baby, has really evolved.

But I digress.

Black people have always been perceived in a certain way, especially when it comes to our bodies and intimacy. There’s a stifling sexualization of Black bodies in a world that can’t decide whether it loves us or hates us. So reading this book that also embraces being comfortable in our own sensuality has been eye-opening.

I’m pleasantly surprised to find that it’s not all hard. It’s vulnerable. It’s soft. It’s so sensual and intimate.

It’s like everyone is trying so hard to be provocative that they forget how much power there is in subtlety. Everything feels loud, glossy, performative. It’s the same arch of the back, the same carefully curated moan, the same predictable rhythm and a headboard. And somehow, all this deliberate sexiness has flattened the experience. It doesn’t feel alive or personal anymore—just a checklist of what’s supposed to be hot.

Mind you, I’m not discrediting the BIPOC author community that delves into spice and people of color being satisfied. I’m just saying we all know who and what is saturating that area at the moment. But you know, I love me some Kennedy Ryan and Tahereh Mafi. They’re not what I’d call writers of erotica after reading Brown Sugar, but they write yearning, sensuality, beauty, and love so well.

Brown Sugar has been such a contrast to that. It doesn’t shy away from desire, but it’s also not afraid to slow down and sit in the small details. A touch that lingers longer than it should. A moment of hesitation before giving in. A softness that coexists with hunger. These stories don’t feel like they’re trying to sell me something; they feel like an invitation to witness vulnerability.

Because of the way I don’t really internalize or get turned on by “spice,” this book has mostly been a point of introspection for me rather than a source of arousal. I’ve just been having so many conversations and thoughts about vulnerability and relationships, about the way romantic and sexual dynamics can shape how we see ourselves.

It also made me think about how rarely we see Black characters allowed to be erotic without being reduced to stereotypes. So much of what’s marketed as “sexy” about Black bodies is rooted in centuries of fetishization and violence—this idea that we are naturally more carnal, more aggressive, more available. 

And when I say Black, I mean everybody Black, regardless of where you are in the world, because we are all perceived the same way. We’re raked in like leaves into being a monolith, despite the fact that there are literal layers to this shit. There are different layers to who we are. 

That narrative is exhausting, so to read work where Black desire is tender, complex, even shy, feels like a small reclamation. It’s a reminder that we are allowed to be multidimensional in our longing, that our sensuality doesn’t have to look like a music video or a porn clip to be worthy of attention.

There’s a world of difference between something that is erotic because it’s graphic and something that is erotic because it is honest. Lately, I’ve been craving honesty more than anything else. The kind that doesn’t perform for the male gaze or for social media approval. The kind that feels private and a little unpolished. The kind that leaves room for imagination.