Lesbian Short Fiction: 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 . (Sept.)