Author RavenLeilani gave WWD a look inside her much-anticipated debut novel.
As any twentysomething creative knows, the journey from aspiring artist to having “made it” is complicated. Writer Raven Leilani, 29, knows the struggle well, and it’s one she speaks to in her much-anticipated debut novel “Luster.”
Leilani began writing “Luster” as an MFA student, and credits the community of her writing program for helping her to articulate that story she wanted to portray. In addition to being a full-time student, she was also working full time, an experience that informed the struggle facing Edie: how to pursue her identity as an artist while facing the more urgent demand of making money and paying rent.“Most of my work has been done after the 9 to 5,” Leilani says.
“What moves me to the page are stories and ideas that I’m obsessed with, that I cannot stop writing about.” For Leilani, those topics are art, faith, sex and parenthood. “What it is to be a child, the complicated relationships you have with parents, and the complicated relationships you have with romantic partners, especially when there’s a power imbalance,” she says.
Central to the story is the idea of sexuality and desire, which Leilani approaches with frankness. The opening scene of “Luster” involves her protagonist, Edie, meeting an older man, Eric, at an amusement park in New Jersey for their first date. “I didn’t want the Black characters in this book to be defined primarily by the pain that they can endure, or the isolation that they are trying to reconcile,” says Leilani. “And in this way, bringing two Black women together, though they are in two different parts of their lives of the self-actualization, it was a way to explore the joy of community, the complexity of community.”
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