She has, it turns out, been a keen video game player since she was five years old. ‘It has so much to do with memory’ … Final Fantasy 7. At a time in which video game references are still mostly consigned to YA and sci-fi books, Leilani has made them a central component of a literary novel. But a key part of her acutely realised portrayal of a millennial protagonist coping with crappy jobs and crappier love affairs is Edie’s natural relationship with digital culture and technology. Much of the fervid discussion around Luster has focused on Leilani’s astute and witty analysis of sexual politics and racial power structures in the 21st-century US. The confrontation is rife with fear and tension, and when it’s over (diffused when Akila’s white mother intervenes), the first thing Edie and Akila do is go inside, sit down and play a video game. Although Edie is compliant, Akila – younger and much less worldly – challenges the cops and gets thrust to the ground and restrained. The woman, Edie, is heading back to her lover’s house with his adopted black daughter, Akila, when the pair are stopped and questioned by two police officers. T here is an extraordinary and telling moment in Raven Leilani’s acclaimed novel Luster, about a young black woman who has an affair with a middle-aged white man and ends up living with his family.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |