‘Luster’ is the Friends of VCU Libraries Book Club reading for November
Join us on Sunday November 14 at 2 p.m. at Cabell Library for the Friends of VCU Libraries Book Club. “Luster” by Raven Leilani, is the Cabell First Novelist winner for 2021. From the publisher’s website:
“No one wants what no one wants.
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.”
The Book Club meeting follows the on-campus appearance of Leilani at VCU Libraries on the evening of November 10. That event will also be streamed via Zoom.
If you would like more information on the Book Club or wish to attend the meeting on via Zoom, please email kjgotschalk@vcu.edu.
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Categories Alumni, Community, Donors, Friends of VCU Libraries