Scan barcode
A review by ulmaridae
Luster by Raven Leilani
"God is not for women, he is for the Fruit. He makes you want and he makes you wicked, and while you sleep he plants a seed in your womb that will be born just to die."
"All the raw materials that are gathered and processed into shadow and light, the pigment drawn from sand and canterbury bells, the carbon black drawn from fire and spread onto slick cave walls. A way is always made to document how we manage to survive. Or in some cases, how we don't. So I've tried to reproduce an inscrutable thing: I've made my own hunger into a practice. Made everyone who passes through my life subject to a close and inappropriate reading that occasionally finds its way, often insufficiently, into paint. And when I am alone with myself, this is what I am waiting for someone to do to me. With merciless, deliberate hands, to put me down onto the canvas so that when I'm gone, there will be a record. Proof that I was here."
Though the subject matter of this book was sad and often uncomfortable, the writing was absolutely breathtaking and almost trance-like.
"All the raw materials that are gathered and processed into shadow and light, the pigment drawn from sand and canterbury bells, the carbon black drawn from fire and spread onto slick cave walls. A way is always made to document how we manage to survive. Or in some cases, how we don't. So I've tried to reproduce an inscrutable thing: I've made my own hunger into a practice. Made everyone who passes through my life subject to a close and inappropriate reading that occasionally finds its way, often insufficiently, into paint. And when I am alone with myself, this is what I am waiting for someone to do to me. With merciless, deliberate hands, to put me down onto the canvas so that when I'm gone, there will be a record. Proof that I was here."
Though the subject matter of this book was sad and often uncomfortable, the writing was absolutely breathtaking and almost trance-like.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage, Racism, Police brutality, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, and Death of parent
Moderate: Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Abortion, Drug use, Grief, and Animal death