Curator Danny Simmons, Photographer Quazi King and editor Michael A. Gonzales get OPEN about Neekid Blk Grls

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Neekid Blk Gurls is a new exhibit curated by Danny Simmons featuring the work of twenty talented photographers who capture the beauty of Black women. Here curator Danny Simmons, featured photog Quazi King and Michael A. Gonzales get OPEN about the exhibition and the dialogue it introduces.

Danny Simmons: On the Exhibition

I put this concept and show together because of my deep and abiding love for Black women. Today, Black women are at the center of our spiritual and cultural life yet in the media and popular culture they are usually depicted as objects…not objects of deep wells of wisdom, strength and beauty but objects of base sexuality with exaggerated sexually referenced features. Black women are most often portrayed in videos and on TV in two lights as whores and material opportunists and/or mammy types that only serve to nurture the interests of others. The image of the long suffering Black woman left by a Black man to fend for herself and the family alone is a stereotype that is the prevalent image often put forth.

I want to demonstrate with this exhibit, the truer nature of Black women as self-assured, beautiful, loving and in their many forms as fine as a M.F. When it comes down to it, in my way I just wanted to honor Black women for who they are and for their dreams and aspirations for us all. I want people to walk away admiring the artistic integrity and vision of the photographers in the show with smiles on their faces after seeing just how dope Black women are.

Quazi King: On Images of Naked Black Women

Why is a show like this important?
Quazi King: Many of us are wired to think less of ourselves, our culture, heritage, and in some cases less of our women. The large majority of our community perceive and define beauty solely by how is depicted in high-fashion magazines which ironically pays little or no attention to Black culture.

In American pop culture today, the phrase “naked Black woman” paints a picture of either a classless woman in an obscene pose or overly sexual. Shows like “Neekid Blk Gurls” are important because they are designed to challenge that mentality by showing Black women in a more artistic and dignify manner.

How would you describe your style of photography?
QK: Some say my style is raw and cultural driven, recently someone defined it as Afro-futuristic (they lost me on the futuristic part but oh well) To be honest, I never know how to successfully address this. It’s something I hardly think about because I’m always changing, so being comfortable with a style is a bit counterproductive.

Why do you enjoy photographing Black women?
QK: Shooting sisters is my forte. To me it’s a quest for beauty. The cocoa skin, the cheekbones, the rawness, the untapped sea of talent, etc. It’s a process that always manages to surprise me with beauty despite the redundancy. It’s really gratifying.

Michael A. Gonzales: On Neekid Blk Gurls

Nude female figures have been a consistent subject in art since the days of prehistoric cave paintings. Yet, when naked Black women become the cultural subjects, their images are more often fetishized. From the yesteryear days of bootylicious Venus Hottentot (Sarah Baartman) being exhibited throughout Europe as the original freak of the week to the rump shaking video vixens posing in glossy hip-hop magazines, nude Black women are viewed in the cultural realm as “hoes” or hoochies.

Even in our postmodern times, sisters still struggle with artistic representation that insists on depicting them, as acclaimed writer Maya Angelou once observed, “…as leering buxom wenches with round heels, open thighs and insatiable sexual appetites.” While the tongue in cheek title of the latest Rush Arts Gallery group show Neekid Blk Gurls textually teases the stereotype that even folks of color have come to expect when viewing Black female nudes, the images chosen for the show attempts to dive deep into the richness of cultural history.

Rejecting the theory of nude Black women imagery as overtly sexual and pornographic, curator Danny Simmons has put together a show that radiates with passion, strength and beauty. “It was our mission to take the traditional art form of female nudes and show images of Black women beyond that of sexual objects,” Simmons explains. With a juxtaposition of various styles included in this collective project, Neekid Blk Gurls overflows with arresting images by 20 photographers including Barron Claiborne, Delphine Fawundu-Buford, Guenter Knop, Mahlot Sansosa, Radcliffe Roye, Saddi Khali and others.

While photogenic works of this kind are often ignored by critics and curators alike, Neekid Blk Gurls attempts to redefine the subject of Black nude women for a new generation of art aficionados. Ranging from the brutally beautiful portrait of Russell Fredrick’s amputee staring defiantly into the camera to the Afro-futurism of Ingrid Baar’s almost painterly shot of an African warrior woman to the visual poetics of Alaric Campbell’s dancer and Mikelle Moore‘s glorious interpretation of “fet-ish,” each cocoa hued image is alluring.

While none of the artists were attempting to be overly political, in their own way each image in Neekid Blk Gurls serves as a critique on both race and racism, class and classicism.

Photo Credit: Quazi King

Nekkid Blk Gurls opens December 8th and is on view through January 27, 2012 at the Rush Arts Gallery in NYC. For more info visit www.rushartsgallery.org. For more on Quazi King, visit http://www.quazimottoonwax.com.

 

 

Poet, performer, actor and musician Saul Williams Gets OPEN with fayemi shakur

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Saul Williams is one of the dopest lyricists and thinkers under the sun. In 1996 he won The Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s Grand Slam Championship and in 1998 he served as both writer and actor in the classic film, Slam which won the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D’Or (Golden Camera). His poetry inspired a new generation of poets and poetry lovers and he has produced four colletions of his work. In 2001, he began pursuing music with a shape shifting flair that attracted listeners of a different order. If there was a prerequisite for his art it would be that one have a deep appreciation for freedom and deviation. But there is no such prerequisite. Creating within so many genres he says, balances him. From his newfound home in Paris, Saul talks about the importance of vulnerability in art, in life, and his latest intergalactic pop release, Volcanic Sunlight –his experiment with rock, electronic, glitch and hip-hop polyrhythm.  

 Would you describe yourself as an angry poet?
I have angry poems. I definitely have angry poems. The poems that I am known for are probably one one-hundredth of what I’ve written. I like channeling energy. When I’m angry it can be fun sometimes to write and come back to it with more clarity when I’m not angry. I was definitely angry at times so some of it might sound a little fucked up to some but at the end of the day it’s about poetry. Not too many people get angry and write poems. If you get angry and you write a poem I would argue that you ain’t really angry. There’s a difference between being angry and saying fuck you. Now if you ask me if I am a defiant poet, I might say yeah. Like fuck that. I’m not angry, but fuck that. That’s what my album is about. That I can be rebellious about everything I want to be rebellious about without being angry.

What is the importance of being vulnerable in art and in society?
When I think of the importance of vulnerability I think of it in life and where I place that in my art. Vulnerability is something that I grew to learn and appreciate in myself and for myself, just by becoming a better listener. There was a time when I think I really talked a lot and I didn’t have time for other people’s opinions. Thankfully someone helped me see myself and I didn’t like what I saw. So, I approached vulnerability from listening. What has helped me find my voice as an artist too has been my sense of hearing. Depending on how you hear a beat, as a rapper, will determine where you will place your vocals. Different approaches have different effects. If you place words over all the beats or between the beats, it’s going to have a different effect. A song can have a lot of energy in it. You can bring the energy up or bring it down. And if you want to bring the energy up then you have to listen very closely. Listening has definitely opened me up to collaborations with other people and as an artist making music I am collaborating with instruments, too. That’s why there aren’t a lot of words in Volcanic Sunlight because I didn’t want the words to get in the way of the music. In American society most of us are dissuaded from becoming an artist. That doesn’t really happen in a socialist country like where I am now, artists receive more support here. As a result of this system in America we really have to boost our ego to make us believe we can do it and when you do it you have to boost your spirit too because it can come out of balance.

You wrote the liner notes for D’Angelo’s “Voodoo” album. How did that come about and what are your thoughts what that album inspired?
D’Angelo asked me to do it while he was recording the album. I’ve never been an R&B head just to be clear. I can get into the classic Donnie, Marvin and all that. Erykah, D’Angelo, Bilal, Jill, Georgia Anne Muldrow I have made an exception for. D’Angelo I made a huge exception for. A friend of mine alluded to some song she heard in the studio that gave her some sort of sexual high and I had to go to hear what he was creating. D’Angelo’s manager Dom wanted to turn him into a sex symbol which really wasn’t what he was into. I went and stayed in the studio with him while he recorded the album and it’s rare that I feel compelled to write liner notes for an artist. But I probably did it because I liked his song “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker“. I heard his new album, too. It’s amazing and I’m a harsh critic of music. I don’t like a lot of shit. And I’m an even harsher critic of R&B but I love it. He’s doing very well.

Do you see a benefit to applying existentialism to art?
I approach life in general, in my experience that way. The high points of most moments in my life are when I’m not thinking about it, when I’m fully in the moment. But when I’m not absorbed I like to foster a dialogue with others or with myself on the meaning of what I’m doing and why. Whether it’s in writing a song or making love, for me I need to feel a visceral connection. I don’t really have that groupie jean. I can’t make myself too excited about something that isn’t tied to my overall grand understanding or conception of reality and my relationship to it.

Can you share a significant experience in your life that made you feel OPEN?
Heartbreak is probably the easiest to access. It makes you realize how open you were. I think of heartbreak in terms of something being broken open like a coconut that you have to break through to get to its richest essence. In myself I’ve observed a level of honesty and clarity where you can no longer lie to yourself. This is what it is. This is what I was doing. This is what I was after. Heartbreak has done that. It’s an experience I’m grateful for because it teaches me so much. I think of it as a bigger, deeper space to be filled. It’s a cathartic experience. A lot of people think of it as an excuse to be closed and jaded. But me I think of it as being broken open.

Is there any special reason why you chose 11.11.11 to release your latest project?
Yeah! That shit just sounded nice!  The label said the album could come out anytime between the 7th and the 14th. I’m familiar with numerology and all and I read about that day on that day but to me 11.11.11 just felt right. A lot of the album is written with the idea of inevitable day when a transformation would occur. In the song Volcanic Sunlight I say: ‘and on the day when the birds started singing the car alarms’.  In the first song Look to the Sun, I describe the day a tsunami comes. A man says: ‘don’t run from the water, run to the water’ and everybody turns around and runs into the wave. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about but intuitively the songs are references to this transformative day. I don’t try to make too much sense of it. I’m unclear on what my job is but I’m doing it.

How much attention or value should an artist pay to criticism and praise?
For the most part I don’t fuck around with too much criticism or praise. If I want one or the other I go to a social networking site. Sometimes people will say something nice. Sometimes someone goes I don’t really like @saulwilliams’ new album. They’re not really thinking about what they are putting out there. I don’t expect my friends to listen to my work but Volcanic Sunlight  is kind of more of an album I made for me and my friends to listen to. I think I made my other albums for my imaginary friends. Volcanic Sunlight is for my real friends. I want people to feel energy. That’s all I’m trying to deliver. The same thing you would get from juice. Just drink water and turn it up. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to do that through my experiments with polyrhythm. I’m just playing with it, that energy, the same energy I discovered in Fela Kuti’s music and Brazilian music, that energy in music.

For more on Saul Williams visit: www.saulwilliams.com
Follow him on Twitter @saulwilliams

Music:
Explain My Heart – video

Triumph (from Volcanic Sunlight)

Raw (from The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust)

Poetry:

You massage the universe’s spine
the way you twirl through time
and leave shadows on the sun.

My love is the wind song
if it is up to me I’ll never die
If it is up to me the sun would never cease to shine
and the Moon will never cease to glow
and I’ll dance a thousand tomorrows in the sun rays
of the moon waves and bathe in the yesterdays of days to come
ignoring all of my afterthoughts and preconceived notions.

If it is up to me, it is up to me
as thus is my love, untainted, eternal.
The wind is the Moon’s imagination, wandering
it seeps through cracks,
ripples the grass, explores the unknown
my love is my soul’s imagination.
How do I love you? 
Imagine.
- Saul Williams “Untitled” from the movie Slam

OPEN: fayemi shakur interviews poet, playwright, actor Liza Jessie Peterson

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     Liza Jessie Peterson is a funny lady but she doesn’t aim to be a comedian. She’s a naturally gifted, deeply spiritual, storyteller. A poet, playwright and classically trained actor, she gained popularity performing at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café in the 90’s as part of the legendary vanguard of slam poetry.  Liza’s poetry has been published in several anthologies: Vibe: The History of Hip Hop, Slam, Bum Rush The Page and The Long Shot Anthology.

She has written at least eight plays and has starred in several films including Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Love the Hard Way with Pam Grier and Adrien Brody. She even assembled a band, Ghetto Orchestra, made up of notable (now mainstream) musicians who brilliantly complimented her poetry and monologues. 

When Hollywood wasn’t calling enough, poetry readings weren’t paying and waitressing wasn’t cutting it, Liza took her play and her message, The Peculiar Patriot, on the road in prison maintaining a beauty and style all her own — straight, no chaser. In our debut issue of OPEN coming soon, Liza shares her poem, Piscean Solo. Here Liza gets OPEN, sharing a few of those peculiar things that make her a performance artist worth watching.

Your first play Chiron’s Homegirl Healer Howls had a spiritual premise to it as does much of your work. Why is it important to you to include spirituality in your art?

That play was a funk opera. It was about the evolution of your internal magic and the journey from homegirl to healer, you know, the universal Black girl journey. My work is greatly influenced by my life and how I experience and observe it. I have a very spiritual outlook on life. So there’s always a spiritual reason, lesson and experience in everything we do. I look at my life through a spiritual lens. I can’t separate my experience from my art.

What is the connection between spirituality and sex to you? What does sex feel like with that connection and without it?

Inherently the act of sex is the ability and the potential to create life. So sex is the potential of manifesting a miracle at its core. Therefore sex is a sacred act. You’re in the frequency of manifesting something divine. Without it if you don’t have that understanding, it’s a glorified nut and empty. This is not some holier than thou statement. I’ve had some good nuts. I’m not mad at that. But I haven’t had that tantric experience yet. I can only imagine it is experiencing the fullness of love, something divine and sacred. 

What power is there in spoken word?

The power is word sound power. Sound is a vibration and frequency. When reading it you have the freedom and the luxury to sit with the line and the phrase to digest it more slowly. With spoken word or performance poetry you’re getting a grenade in your ear, like an explosion. But when you read it you can dissect the piece on a deeper level. I really don’t know how it impacts my audiences. I just put it out there. If I don’t perform it affects me physically and emotionally. I have a need to perform, to express. If an artist doesn’t create, we’ll go mad.

Liza and Pam Grier

How did Pam Grier inspire your acting career?

When I saw her in ‘Foxy Brown’ (I believe that was the one where she had razor blades in her Afro and later pulled a gun from it too! had me gasping!) I was in total awe of her beauty, her sexiness, her height, stature, and her straight up gangster-ness. I said in that moment “that’s what I want to do…I want to be like her, I wanna be the next Pam Grier.” So having the opportunity to work with her in the movie Love the Hard Way with Adrien Brody was a dream come true. I was star struck. I’ve been in the company of many celebrities and I have never gotten star struck. But, Pam Grier? I was fawning and crushing, on set no less!

Why do you like to incorporate humor in your work?

Life is either a comedy or a tragedy. I find humor in everything. That’s how Black people survive, through humor. I was raised by a Class A-1-holdin’ court-take no prisoners-JohhnyWalkerBlack sippin-father. In our house if you couldn’t talk shit you were getting shut down. I grew up with a lot of humor in my house. It’s the evolution of Black folks’ survival. That’s how Daddy taught us.  It’s interesting I don’t try to write “funny”. I’m not looking to write a joke. Because I have such a dark sense of humor at times it just comes out that way because it’s how I am. If I try to write funny the shit be corny. I can go to the salon but I’m a saloon broad at heart. We like to talk shit, laugh loud and cuss real good.

What’s next for you?

I’m completing two books to be published next year that represent two significant touchtone experiences in my life as an artist. The first is The Peculiar Patriot, which includes poems I wrote, the play, a pin up calendar and journal entries from my prison tour. My professional and my personal life were consumed with prison for a long time. As I started to do research on the prison industrial complex, I found myself going down the rabbit hole and gave birth to these projects.

The concept for the calendar comes from a line from the play the Peculiar Patriot: “I was voted number one prison industrial complex pin up…” I thought it could be a funny, marketing tool. The idea of the calendar evolved into being a piece of inspirational memorabilia to bring attention to the draconian industry.

from The Peculiar Patriot 2012 Prison Pin-Up Calendar

The other is a memoir: Finding Light in Dark Journey: An Artist’s 15 Year Journey through America’s Prison about experiences working within the prison industrial complex. Being a teaching artist in a prison is one thing by itself but being a full time Board of Education certified teacher teaching teenage boys in Rikers Island is another thing. All I could do was journal about the escapades and situations. I was in Bizarro Land. I went back and looked at my journal and realized it was a book. Working with those teenage boys was a mix between Welcome Back, Kotter and The Wire. Funny and scary.

For more on Liza’s work visit www.lizajessiepeterson.com

Also check out Liza’s beautiful photos in The Peculiar Patriot 2012 Prison Pin Up Calendar: http://lizajessiepeterson.com/calendar.html

& The Calendar Manifesto: Black Ass, Beautiful Art – A Meditation: http://lizajessiepeterson.com/calendar-manifesto.html

 

 

Singer/songwriter Goapele gets OPEN with Michael A. Gonzales

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Singer/songwriter Goapele recently released her third disc Break of Dawn, which includes the stunning first single “Play.” The beautiful Oakland-based singer spoke to OPEN about her sexy new video.

 

“When I was preparing to do the video for “Play,” I knew it had to be something that would fit the song. I wanted it to be sensual without being in your face or distasteful. I had worked with the directors John Mazyck and Dahveed on “Milk and Honey” a few years ago, so I knew they could give “Play” a kind of classic, but sultry look I wanted. The black and white worked perfectly, because I wanted it to fit me and be sexy, but I refused to be raunchy. I’m the kind of person who just naturally holds back, but part of the balance when collaborating on the video was just being OPEN and allowing people in. After that, I had no problem tapping into my sexy side.”

Goapele – Play (VIDEO)

Goapele – Milk & Honey (VIDEO)

More videos by co-director John Mazyck

More videos by co-director Dahveed

OPEN: Michael A. Gonzales Interviews Erotica Writer/Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel

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Even before becoming friendly with erotica writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, I wanted to write for her. As a short story writer, I’d seen her name on many erotica collections over the years and always found her books to be fun and exciting as well as featuring a diverse line-up of writers.

She has edited for Alyson Books, Avon Red, Cleis Press, Pretty Things Press, Ravenous Romance and Seal Press, including Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex. Orgasmic, Fast Girls, Passion, Obsessed, Bottoms Up, Spanked, Tasting Him, Tasting Her,  The Mile High Club, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Best Bondage Erotica 2011 and 2012, Best Sex Writing 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012. She has contributed to over 100 anthologies, including Susie Bright’s Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006 and X: The Erotic Treasury, as well as The Sexual State of the Union and Yes Means Yes.

From 2005-2010, she ran the In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series in New York City, which featured 300 readers, including Jonathan Ames, Laura Antoniou, Mo Beasley, Susie Bright, Mike Edison,  Gael Greene, HoneyB (Mary Morrison), Debra Hyde, Maxim Jakubowski, Scott Poulson-Bryant, M.J. Rose, Susan Shapiro, Danyel Smith, Cecilia Tan, Carol Taylor, Jo Weldon and Jerry Rodriguez.

Recently she completed her 40th anthology Women in Lust (Cleis Press) and, with more than a few books scheduled for 2012, she shows no signs of slowing down.

Although I’ve never tasted them, I understand she makes great cupcakes.

 

Michael A. Gonzales: How did you get in writing and editing erotica?

Rachel Kramer Bussel: I pretty much stumbled into erotica by reading a lot of it. I started reading erotica in college and at the time it wouldn’t have occurred to me to try to write it, but then I moved to New York for law school and was reading a lot of it and saw a call for submissions for Shar Rednour’s book Starf*cker, about celebrities, and I decided to write about Monica Lewinsky. That story got picked up for Best Lesbian Erotica 2001 and I’ve just kept writing from there. Through my writing and reviewing lots of books I got to co-edit an anthology for Alyson Books, Up All Night, and then eventually others for Pretty Things Press, Cleis Press, Seal Press and Avon Red. Now I edit about seven anthologies a year, and aim to always have at least one call for submissions out there so I can direct writers to it and always have a project in progress.

MAG: What does the Open tattoo on your back mean?

RKB: I wrote about this for Lemondrop, and it’s interesting because since I got it a year ago, the meaning of open has only grown for me. I’ve realized how pessimistic and narrow-minded I often am, and sometimes I reach behind my back and touch my tattoo as a reminder that that is ultimately not the kind of person I want to be. I’m thinking of getting the word “heart” on my left inner arm, because I like the word and it pairs perfectly with “open.” That’s what I aim toward, and while I don’t always have an open heart or mind, I know what I want to work toward. To me it’s a goal and a way of pushing myself to examine whether I’m acting in my own best interests. It’s spiritual for me in that sense, which is a little ironic since traditionally Jews aren’t supposed to get tattoos, but I definitely see it as both part of me and a force outside of me, like an angel on my shoulder.

MAG: What other art forms inspire you?

RKB: All sorts of art inspires me. Music inspires me, sometimes a specific lyric, like the Sleater-Kinney quote from the song “Jenny” at the start of “The End,” a breakup erotica story that was in Best Lesbian Erotica and Best American Erotica (Susie Bright told me it made her cry), or a title. I wrote a story called “Bed-In” for a book whose theme was “Between the Sheets” and used John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s bed-in as a frame of reference, but went in a whole other direction. Recently, I watched the documentary My Kid Could Paint That and it somehow led to me writing a story set in an art gallery called “The Heart of Chaos” for Shanna Germain’s upcoming romantic BDSM anthology Bound by Lust. The connection is extremely tenuous, but it makes sense to me.

MAG: What are some of the reactions from friends, family and/or strangers when you tell them you write and edit erotica?

RKB: By now all my friend and family know what I do, since it’s been ten years. It was a little awkward at first with my family, because with most other things I’d written I’d say, “Here, read this.” I don’t want my family or even all my friends reading my work; of course, they can if they want to, but they’re not necessarily the intended audience. My favorite story is that one of my relatives in her seventies bought an anthology Susie Bright edited (I think Best American Erotica 2006) to read and I had a story in it.

With strangers, it’s a little more challenging because I don’t always want to have a cocktail party conversation about erotica or sex writing. Most people are either politely curious or occasionally a bit too interested, but I’ve mostly gotten over any issues over revealing it. I used to sometimes get “what is erotica?” but now it’s more out there, though I think people don’t always realize the breadth of erotic material available.

MAG: What has been the reaction of former lovers, friends or family concerning specific stories?

RKB: Most people I’ve written about, even ones where they are not portrayed in the greatest light, have been okay with it. I think it’s more of an issue with my nonfiction, because that’s usually written in real time, whereas erotica is more after the fact and poetic. I think with fiction you always have plausible deniability, and even if someone was there, they don’t know whether it could be about someone else.

Once in a long while I use second person, and the times I have it’s been very personal and often some of my darkest material, where I couldn’t even face the idea of first person. I like to experiment with that, though I have trouble putting an autobiographical story in the third person. I used to often write stories basically as they’d happened, and now I tend to embellish more, whether for the sake of the story and the flow of the language or because I want to explore a mix of what happened and what might have happened.

I think anyone who knows me knows I may take something they’ve said or done and it might find its way into my writing, but I try to honor them by not revealing their identities. I also sometimes use lovers or crushes as inspiration, but in such a way that you’d have to basically be in my brain to know what the connection is. Often it’s one person’s quirk and another person’s voice and another person’s body along with my imagination. That’s what I love about fiction vs. nonfiction.

MAG: What is the strangest erotica submission you’ve ever received?

RKB: I got a story where I was a character, and the main character stumbled upon me and wound up spanking me. It was very odd and not something I would ever publish, not only because it utterly squicked me, but even if it hadn’t for some reason, I can’t imagine being so self-aggrandizing and narcissistic as to publish something like that. Granted, I do often fictionalize my personal life but I try to do so in an artistic way where it’s not quite so obvious whether it’s true or not. I have actually been a character in a story, “Exegesis” by Marcelle Manhattan, in X: The Erotic Treasury, edited by Susie Bright, in which I also have a story. Her story is set at my former reading series In The Flesh and involves me as the host, not in a sexual way, just with characters who attend the reading. I didn’t know it would be in the book so it was very odd to open it up and see my name not as my byline but in someone else’s story, but in that case I was honored.

For more on Rachel Kramer Bussel, visit her website: http://rachelkramerbussel.com/index.php and follow her on Twitter @raquelita

OPEN: Michael A. Gonzales Interviews Writer/Editor Carol Taylor

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In 1997, when I was writing the Black Metropolis column for NY Press, I met writer/editor Carol Taylor through a mutual friend and fell in love with her from the beginning. Not a romantic kind of love, but the kind of love that happens when you realize from the conversation, “This person is going to be my friend forever.” At the time, working as a book editor for Random House, she was smart and funny and had the coolest Lower East Side pad on the planet.

In 2000, with the Random House job and apartment behind her, Carol called and invited me to contribute a short story to her recently sold Black erotica anthology Brown Sugar (2001). Writing for Vibe and The Source, I was primarily known as a music critic, but for some reason, Carol was willing to take a chance on me and my fiction. Through many long nights, my crazy piece “Movie Lover” was finally finished.

It was from working with her on the first three of the four book series that I began writing and editing erotica, a talent I didn’t even know I possessed until Taylor showed me the way. Although I could possibly spread in on thick as chocolate icing, let me just say that Carol’s care and patience with ALL her writers helped produce one of the most groundbreaking and provocative series in Black literature that had come along in years.

Until the last Brown Sugar (#4) was published in 2005, Carol’s line-up of writers included Zane, Nelson George, Miles Marshall Lewis, asha bandele, Greg Tate, Rebecca Carroll and many others. Some old school vets, some new jack macks, all offered the chance to flex their erotica muscles. A very talented writer herself, last year Taylor published her first book The Ex-Chronicles, one of the best New York City novels I’ve read in years.

Still striving and surviving in Brooklyn, where she also operates an editing service, Taylor is currently working on the Ex… follow-up, a much-anticipated sequel to her debut. The editors of Open are proud to present Carol Taylor for our inaugural interview. 

Carol Taylor

Michael A. Gonzales: What was it about the genre of erotic fiction that attracted you in the first place?

Carol Taylor: What most interested me in erotic fiction was its marketability—that nothing like Brown Sugar had been done before (stories that portrayed black life as it is, in all its diversity) and that there was a market for the book

Next was the opportunity to create a format or template for a new genre: the erotic fiction anthology, to a book editor this was an irresistible opportunity. Then of course, was the opportunity to work with a diverse group of writers—literary, commercial, as well as poets, West Indian, African-American and Latino—and introduce these authors to a different audience.

I particularly like that I was able to introduce literary authors, like Edwidge Danticat to a commercial audience and commercial authors, like Zane to a literary audience and out of the box writers like Sapphire, to both commercial and literary audiences and to edit them in a way they’d never been edited before.

Last, was the opportunity to not only conceive the format of erotic fiction anthology and to edit the anthology, but to also contribute as a writer. My introductions in all four books have a short story in them. Writing stories in the introductions allowed me to hone my craft as a writer and subsequently become a published author and a novelist.

MAG: What do you think is the line that separates erotica from porn?

CT: That’s a tricky question because not only is that line subjective, it also colored by what society has deemed as porn or erotic so we always have that ruler in the back of our mind. I think erotica tells a more complete and realistic story that is relatable and believable, while porn is more one-dimensional, and geared to quick stimulation.

I’ve heard that porn is geared to men while erotica is geared to women, though I think that has changed significantly in the film world, and I think that Brown Sugar has changed this in literature, because men and women are relating to and enjoying the stories in the anthologies. I also think porn stimulates the body, while good erotica stimulates the mind and the body.

Erotica has more depth of scene, and character as well as a back-story. Porn is usually more front-loaded and in the present. We don’t really get the impetus behind why the character is doing what he or she is doing in porn, or what drove him or her to the place we find them. With erotica, we get the character’s back-story and an understanding of the relationship between the characters in the story. With erotica, there is room for character, scene and story development. This gives the reader a better understanding of what and why the characters are doing what they are doing it.

What I like the most about erotica is that it can be as diverse as the people who write it and cover many different erotic elements, not just fetishes but deeply emotional factors, that usually stem from our childhood or our personal relationships that may have nothing to do with sex.

Sometimes writing erotica is like going into your psyche with a pickaxe and a flashlight and unearthing all the psychosexual memories buried there that have influenced many of our sexual predilections and emotional concerns. This is all very heady and emotional stuff.

Brown Sugar blurs the line between sexual and sensual—often the difference between porn and erotica—because some of the stories have no sex in them at all. They are so evocative and sensually written and the idea of want, desire and lust so beautifully rendered, that writing a sex scene would have been redundant.

MAG: In the beginning of the last decade, your Brown Sugar series helped launch the black erotica movement. As an editor dealing with writers, publishing companies and the public, what were some of the highs and lows of the series?

Definitely getting the Brown Sugar book deal was a high point, also the book hitting #2 on the Bestseller List its first week of publication, was another. Conceiving the template for a new genre was very exciting and getting to work with talented writers, taking them out of their genre and getting them play with the idea of what is erotic, was an editor’s dream.

The low point would have to be seeing the market inundated with lesser quality anthologies, and since I have two publishers for the four-book series, Viking/Penguin and Simon & Schuster, seeing the book change in format. The very lowest point was the cover concept change in Brown Sugar 4, which was very disappointing. The cover was geared to an audience that would not fully appreciate the stories, and not geared to the audience that would.

MAG: In your own erotica writing, are there any filmmakers, painters or musicians whose work you revisit for inspiration?

CT: I don’t consciously consider films when I write though if I did Pedro Almodovar’s Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, Yimou Zhang’s Raise the Red Lantern, for their deep sensuality and layering of imagery, would be among them. I take a lot of inspiration from song lyrics, particularly (and oddly enough) hip-hop lyrics because they are so true to the vernacular.

The title Brown Sugar comes from D’Angelo’s song of the same name. My writing includes many lyrics and nods to song lyrics as well. Mostly, I mentally reference writers: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita for packing so much imagery in each sentence and for the way he plays with writing and words, Langston Hughes The Ways of White Folks is unflinchingly heartbreaking, anything by Iceberg Slim for his colloquial language, David Sedaris and Cynthia Heimel because they’re so damn funny, Quentin Crisp because of his wry and self-deprecating humor, Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker The Berry, for being unwaveringly honest yet also sexy, particularly in its depiction of what is supposedly not sexy—dark skin on black people—and Chester Himes for being evocative and truthful at a time when it could have gotten him killed for it.

MAG: What words of wisdom would you give to writers who might want to work within the genre?

CT: Never give up, never surrender; always be true to your style and aesthetic.

I always tell writers to write what they know, and then elaborate on that. The stories will then be convincing without them having to try too hard or to make up too many things. In my stories, I combine details of my own life with fiction and that’s often just the starting point I need.

For more info on Carol Taylor, please check out her website: http://www.brownsugarbooks.com/index.htm

 

Call for Submissions: Now Closed – Stay tuned for the next one…

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OPEN is a new publication debuting this fall dedicated to showcasing the work of writers, photographers and visual artists with an appreciation for the erotic aesthetic. OPEN serves as a platform to promote sex positive erotica that explores themes of existentialism, spirituality, identity and self-definition and to encourage and inspire healthy dialogues about sex, love, exploration and intimacy.

HOW TO SUBMIT

  • Send an email to express your interest. Please include a short bio and/or link to your website, or sample of your work.
  • The deadline for submitting to Issue 1 is: September 15, 2011. 
  • Stories should be no more than 2,000 words. Original poetry submissions, song lyrics, orginal essays are also welcome
  • Images submitted should be high resolution photos or jpeg images of original artwork.

YOUR RIGHTS

We are requesting the right to publish one time in the journal. Any future reprint rights would be appropriately requested and negotiated separately. The journal will be independently published in print on MagCloud.com. The premiere issue debuts on November 11, 2011.

 OPENEROTICA.COM

Interviews with various erotica authors, writers, photographers and artists will be featured here to share the thoughtful perspectives and methodology behind the work we create.

Deadlines for future issues will be announced at a later date. 

STAY TUNED. STAY OPEN.

top photo credit: Akintola Hanif (c)