Voyages out 2 : lesbian short fiction

The second in Seal's series of short-story collections by lesbians is decidedly uneven, with flashes of insight and some entertaining moments. Blackwomon's offerings are generally the stronger. Her tale "Ophelia" is about a white woman who demands that people around her accept her "inner self"--a self that she sees as black. In "Marcia Loves Jesus," a woman announces that she wants to "be with Jesus," and her lover wryly reminds her that there is no feminism or Grand Marnier in heaven. Caspers's "Chicken Dyke" describes a humorous, though traumatic, evening in a lesbian bar with a woman who finds it easier to sleep with a stranger than to ask her to dance. In one of the weaker stories, "When I First Kissed Marsha Brady . . .," the narrator visits TV's squeaky-clean Brady Bunch only to discover that Marsha is a lesbian and her siblings include a kleptomaniac and a neo-Nazi. Blackwomon's work has been anthologized in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology and Caspers's in Word of Mouth.