We were bonded in our mutual hatred of our bodies - "Luster" by Raven Leilani
Eddie is a 23 year old black woman working in a publishing industry. She is a failed artist that lives a mediocre life filled with confusion, desire and self hatred. While working in her office, she is involved with multiple men which leads her to being sacked from her job for "sexual misconduct". After that, she gets entangled with a 40 year old white man named Eric who is in a sort of open marriage with her wife Rebecca.
Throughout the novel, we get the sense that she is a deeply flawed, lonely woman constantly making poor decisions that leads her in trouble. Her promiscuity is the result of being lost in her own mundanity which she tries to compensate by escaping from her own self and looking for satisfaction from outside. She time and time again askes herself whether Eric is genuinely interested in her, has ulterior motives or simply wants to erase his white guilt through her. These negative feelings are exacerbated when she enters his house where she comes to know that the couple has adopted a black girl named Akila who is around the age of 12-13. She thinks that maybe this was Eric's plan all along : to find a black women for his adopted child and that she has not managed to entice him in any way. Thus, we see Edie being trapped in her own thoughts and insecurities which makes us sympathize with her.
The thing that this novel perfectly manages to capture is the different kinds of inter - relationships that the characters within this book form. Take Eric and Eddie for example. It is clearly established in the novel that there is an imbalance of power and social hierarchy between them. Eddie is a masochistic woman who liked being hit by Eric as it reminds her of her mother. Eddie's father was abusive as well and she feels that she can connect to her mother and can only find resemblance between her and her mother through the bruises on her body.
Similarly, Eddie and Rebecca share a weird dynamic as well. They form an unusual bond riddled with anger, resentment and mutual disagreement but understanding and acceptance at the same time. Eddie sees her dead mother in Rebecca in some ways. Rebecca is a medical examiner working with cadavers and Eddie's mother committed suicide at a young age. There is a beautiful allegory of Rebecca seemingly making dead people alive through her work. Thanks to Rebecca, Eddie starts painting again. It is interesting to note that both Eddie and Akila form meaningful relationships with Rebecca even though she didn't want an open marriage nor did she want to adopt a child at first. This situation mirrors over patriarchal society perfectly, where a woman has to bear the burden of the decisions and mistakes made by the man associated with her. During the end of the novel, she paints Rebecca which brings her whole character arc to a full circle (The story started with her painting her dead mother and ended with her doing the same with Rebecca who is, in a way, her substitute mother). In the final pages of the book, Eddie tells us that she wants someone that can illustrate her on a canvas "with merciless, deliberate hands". The author manages to do just that and much more through this book.
This book is a social satire and it aptly presents the condition of black women in America in a witty and snarky way. For instance, when Eddie goes through the current "diversity" offerings from her office, she finds out that they include : “a slave narrative about a mixed-race house girl fighting for a piece of her father’s estate; a slave narrative about a runaway’s friendship with the white schoolteacher who selflessly teaches her how to read; a slave narrative about a tragic mulatto who raises the dead with her magic chitlin pies; a domestic drama about a Black maid who, like Schrödinger’s cat, is both alive and dead.” This perfectly describes how people in America like to pretend that racism doesn't exist and prove that by pointing out books featuring black people most probably written by a straight white male. These books are caricature of the same tropes which makes the readers feel that black people have no desires and ambitions of their own and that their life is filled with tragedies.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with writing such characters, however, it becomes a problem when tragedy becomes the character's whole personality. In another example, we see Eddie interacting with her black colleague Aria who is the perfect image of a black person the way white people want to see : twice as good as her counterparts, always smiling and grateful for being given a chance to prove her self worth. It is deeply dehumanizing, the way black people have to "prove themselves" in order to be taken seriously. However, Eddie is the complete opposite, which is another reason why she is fired and replaced by Aria.
Raven Leilani does a masterful job at juggling through different themes in this book. This book is a social commentary but in an entertaining way. She writes in a stream of consciousness and outlandish way which makes us feel that she is not trying to impress anyone through her story. There are little to no dialogues in this book and the prose is beautifully divided in short chunks in a diary like manner. Apart from that, the whole book is written in a present tense (excluding the part where Eddie talks about her past) which makes the experience immersive and real.
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