"Power and the Word" by Taria (tariat@aol.com). I labeled this story "interracial sex." I could have perhaps labeled it "emerging sexuality," since the narrator's increasing self-awareness in the context of her sexuality and black literature is the main theme of this story. I went with the "interracial" label mostly because I wanted to show you that it's possible to have interracial sex without monster cocks and white girls who love to be called sluts.

Cleanthe is a young black woman who has arisen from her poverty to attend college at Columbia University. She is intensely attracted to her professor of African-American Literature, who is a white man. The story describes the development of that relationship.

This is an excellent story. It does a marvelous job of integrating into the story line poetry and sensible insights about a person's personality. This is the sort of story that I would love to have my students read; but I can't, because the Puritans who control American school systems severely harass teachers who try to introduce this level of realism into literature classes. So I'll just ban it instead, and that way my students will find it and read it on their own.