Luster

Raven Leilani's "Luster" introduces Edie, a young Black woman navigating the tumultuous landscape of her twenties in Bushwick. Stumbling through a dead-end admin job and a series of questionable sexual encounters, Edie secretly harbors artistic ambitions, struggling to give voice to the art simmering within her. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Eric, an older digital archivist in an open marriage, whose wife, an autopsist, has set strict rules. When Edie loses her job, she finds herself, uninvited by Eric, living in his New Jersey home alongside his wife and their adopted Black daughter, Akila. Edie becomes a reluctant ally to the wife and, for Akila, perhaps the only Black woman she knows. "Luster" is a razor-sharp, darkly humorous, and intensely vulnerable portrait of a young woman grappling with hunger, anger, and the complexities of race, class, and sexuality, all while painstakingly trying to believe in her own nascent talent amid an era of shifting social mores.