Beyond the Plot with Raven Leilani
The Brooklyn-Based Author on Armor, Adornment, and the Upcoming HBO Adaptation of Her Debut Novel
- Interview: Khalila Douze
- Photography: Naima Green
Raven Leilani’s debut novel Luster is the first-person account of a young Black woman in New York who takes a lover in an older, married white man who she eventually learns has an adopted Black daughter. First published in 2020 and now set to become an HBO miniseries via Tessa Thompson's production company, it’s deeply complicated and one the most entertaining stories I’ve ever read. The Brooklyn-based author’s protagonist, Edie, ends up moving in with the man’s family after losing her job at a children’s book publishing company, and developing complicated relationships with his wife and child. Daringly funny and unfeigned, Edie faces unending obstacles with high-speed wit and honesty that’s at times so morbid, I found myself contemplating how the many white book critics who praised Luster for its comedic edge could comfortably laugh.
At the urging of one of her teachers, Leilani began writing Luster while in a graduate program at NYU. “I was already pretty earnest, but I was also scared, and the book I wrote before Luster was riddled with that fear. I started from scratch, and it came out of that spirit—I wanted to mean it in a different way, and the story that came mirrored my own doubts about making art,” she says. Her character may be carefree, but Leilani herself is extremely careful. While Edie’s thoughts and actions exude a certain blasé, Leilani herself set a specific intention with Luster. “I wanted to write about a wild Black girl who isn’t punished for her wildness,” Leilani explains. “I wanted to talk about all the personal and structural impediments to doing the work, but I was mostly focused on how that cumulatively feels.”
The Bronx and Albany–raised writer says she was desperate to get Luster out of her system when she began writing it. Leilani was working as an archivist at a publisher and as the editor of a literary magazine at the time, as well as studying with the likes of Zadie Smith and Katie Kitamura. Today, Leilani is hard at work on her next novel, which she is tight-lipped about for now. Rather than set up a meeting to discuss my thoughts on her work, she preferred to communicate via email: “I want to be able to answer your questions precisely—and writing is better for me.”
Top Image: Raven wears Gauge81 dress and Manolo Blahnik heels.
Khalila Douze
Raven Leilani
When did you first begin writing stories, and why?
I started writing around 12, maybe a bit before that. I made little booklets out of looseleaf for my friends and we’d pass them around during class. I got in trouble for it once, but otherwise my teachers encouraged me. I wrote because I was a lonely, devout kid. My religion made things complicated, socially, and writing was the best way I knew to make my own fun.
What religion were you raised in?
I was raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist.
What is the most enjoyable part of your writing process? How has that changed over the years?
It can be a double-edged sword, but I love spending a day with a sentence. If I’m there that long, it’s likely I’m sweating, trying to find the most precise, least opaque way of saying the thing without sacrificing the muchness I love. I love adornment. I just try to be careful that it doesn’t become armor. I’m a very slow writer, so lingering the way I do is not exactly a temperament I chose, and I can’t say I recommend it. Sometimes the lingering is anxiety, which is something I’ve learned over the years. But to spend a while with a small part of your work, and to finally have that gut confirmation that it feels right—I live for that.
What planted the seed of Edie’s character for you? How did she develop as a character over time?
I’m only ever interested in the feelings—how it feels to long for recognition, good sex, working bowels, etc. She came about as I wrote toward the idea of a Black girl who needs, desperately, and is free enough to take swings and roll with the big, inevitable misses.
I found myself forgetting her name was Edie throughout the first half of the book. It kind of renders her invisible, which feels related to how she’s initially treated by Rebecca and Akila in their home, and how she’s treated in her other external environments. Is it on purpose that we don’t get a lot of dialogue where she’s named by others?
If I’m honest, this might be more a consequence of both the book’s perspective, and a habit I have of neglecting the practical details—names, furniture, etc. I’m thankful to the editors who have reminded me to do that. Since we are in Edie’s head, the names of other people do tend to be more prominent, and you’re right, it has this marginalizing effect, which is not helped by the fact that I barely let people talk in my fiction, where they might have a chance to say each other’s names.
Bodies are central to this book—was there an intention behind that fascination?
I’ve always been fascinated by the private rituals we cultivate around our bodies. Writing explicitly about the body, specifically feminine maintenance and surveillance around the body, meant I could really get into the weeds. Women are often very astute students of other women’s bodies, and I wanted that conditioning to be felt. Not just how acute that level of attention is, but how that is married with one’s own suppression of body drama. It felt important that you see Edie working and wishing she could shit.
Something that stood out to me was how serious Edie’s interviewer at the clown school was and how deadpan Edie’s general narrative tone is. Her jokes are actually about quite serious things (racism, sexism, grief) and then at a job interview at a clown school she’s asked to take things more seriously. Would you talk about Edie’s sense of humor?
The friction between the tenor of her interior reality and the hyperbole of her exterior reality is an absurd kind of dissonance. Racism and sexism should feel absurd. I wanted the book to be funny, but so much of that came about naturally as I wrote a Black girl who is doing what she can to get by. Her deadened resignation to the brutality of her world shows up that brutality as mundane and functions too as the necessary armor to survive it.
Edie as a painter is also interesting because her presence is often overshadowed or underappreciated, but that puts her into the role of keen observer.
Edie is a painter because I love writing about painting, partly because that medium was my first love. I started as a painter and gave it up early, so when I sat down to try and write candidly about failure and art-making, this is what came out. A person at home in those peripheral spaces is maybe more adept at the kind of rigorous scrutiny that you need to paint, or write. When you are less visible, you can observe unimpeded by performances that might obscure the view.
Edie’s connection with Akila seems like a way of getting in touch with her own inner child. Their connection feels like the healing aspect of the story, but I want to know more about what you think their relationship means for both of them.
Edie sees a young Black woman who is, in her isolation and self-protective posture, a kindred spirit in need of guidance and communion. She isn’t entirely sure how to forge this connection as there are significant differences between them, and they are both dealing with a kind of instability that precludes emotional availability, but it was important to me that despite that, they find joy and camaraderie on their own terms. It’s something they both work at. That felt important too, that they have to reconcile the ways they are very different in order to bond.
Raven wears Gauge81 dress.
How were you able to set the scene of a thrash metal concert so well? Have you been to one yourself?
I’m old and soft and retired. No thrash, but I’ve moshed a handful of times and I was always excited by the volatility of it, though I will not pretend I ever felt entirely at peace there. The clarifying quality of blunt force is something I can get listening to music alone in my room. I do still love writing to metal. It really focuses me. My brother was a painter and he was the same. He’d give me an album and say something like, “This is the angriest shit you’ve ever heard,” and it’d be this intense, Norse theater that would get me through road trips, and much later, the draft that became this book.
Are you Caribbean? (I am.) I have to imagine you are because of the nuanced way you touched on Edie’s ancestry.
I’m Trinidadian! My grandfather came to New York in the ‘40s on a ship named Nerissa, which means “raven-haired,” if you can believe it.
It’s been two years since the book came out. How have these years passed for you? How do you feel about how it’s been received?
The reception of the book was more than I ever hoped for. People have engaged with my work with real care, and my life has changed completely. I put the kitchen sink in that book. All my dirt, all my obsessions and anxieties, and people showed up for it. Now I have time to do the work I love. I can help my family out. New readers are still reaching out to me, which is a complete trip. These past two years I’ve experienced some of my highest highs and lowest lows. In 2020 my brother and my dad died, so after my book tour wrapped, I had to take time away. Frankly, I was not doing that well, and I needed a moment to adjust to all life transitions that had happened, it felt, all at once. But the book, the people who supported it, made it possible for me to take that time.
How is the HBO adaptation going?
The team is brilliant all the way through. Along with Tessa [Thompson], Kishori Rajan, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Lileana Blain Cruz are behind the project, and every one of them cares deeply about the art of it.
Raven wears Gauge81 dress.
What are you reading lately? What's on your nightstand?
Books I’ve read and loved lately are Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson, Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Dirtbag Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, and Bliss Montage by Ling Ma.
Do you have any favorite writers?
There are too many to count. I love all the writers I just mentioned, but also Fariha Róisín, Melissa Febos, Doreen St. Félix, Sheila Heti, Alexander Chee, Damon Young, Garth Greenwell, Asali Solomon, C Pam Zhang, Sarah Thankam Mathews, Leslie Stein, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Sharon Olds, Hanif Abdurraqib, Saidiya Hartman.
Why did you give up painting?
I stopped painting when I was 19 or so—I felt my limits really acutely, and I didn’t have the humility or discipline to be better. The foundational work that would’ve made me better felt tedious, and I didn’t have the necessary tolerance for being bad at it. I was pretty bad at all of the formal elements that required rigor and close study. In 2020, after my dad and brother passed, a friend sent me a box of paint and canvases. Maybe 10 years after I mostly stopped painting. I started again, more patiently and carefully. It came back into my life exactly when I needed it.
Khalila Douze is a freelance writer, publicist, and tarot card reader based in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cultured Mag, Vogue, Dazed, i-D , and more.
- Interview: Khalila Douze
- Photography: Naima Green
- Date: December 16, 2022
