ABSTRACT
This chapter explains black lesbian feminist thinkers paved the way for all black women to exercise our right to know and understand the erotic politically. Reading black women's fiction we enter a world that unashamedly exposes the crisis in our 'erotic' lives. That we have much to reconcile in relation to our sexualities and our sensualities is evident, whatever the sexual orientation of the author. Significantly, black lesbian women have been at the forefront of our efforts to transform black female's relationship to the erotic. Audre Lorde's powerful essay was groundbreaking. It not only provided us with a blueprint for rethinking the erotic away from the context of patriarchy and heterosexism, it gave us permission to talk publicly about sexual pleasure. Given the way patriarchy and notions of male domination inform the construction of heterosexual identity, the realm of black heterosexual sexual expression is rarely a place where black females learn to glory in our erotic power.
