Making Gods Out of Feeble Men

An Inspired Thought From Reading "Luster" by Raven Leilani

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“Luster” by Raven Leilani is a bold, incisive novel that confronts the reader with the discomfort of seeing a young woman try to make a life out of scraps. Themes such as numbness, race, power dynamics, male dominance, belonging, and sexuality intersect to reveal the interior world of a protagonist who is endlessly positioned as peripheral—someone who must fight to be seen in a world determined to render her invisible.

From the first page, Edie is presented as a woman standing just outside every circle she wishes to enter. She doesn’t quite belong anywhere: not in her childhood home, not among her peers, not at work, and certainly not in the home of the married man she becomes involved with. Her age, her finances, her trauma, and her Blackness all function as barriers that repeatedly cast her as the “other.” She is so accustomed to existing on the margins that the reader can’t help but hope she will eventually claim a higher standar…