‘I wrote this book for Black women’

The American author’s debut novel dives into the politics of sex and race

1 How did the story of Luster come to you?

I was working towards my MFA at NYU at the time, and I started the program with an entirely different manuscript. I planned for this manuscript to be my first book, but the mentors I found there pushed me to write with more care, and I started Luster, which immediately felt more urgent, more true.

2 Who did you have in mind while writing the character of Edie?

I don’t know if it’s possible, or even my intent, to depict a complete picture of the varied experiences of a generation, but as I wrote it felt necessary to treat those experiences with humour and specificity. Edie is unsure, and prone to questionable decisions, and I think that space of uncertainty is where art comes from, something we all wrestle with in order to do the work. As for Edie’s choices, I wanted her to have the space not only to be uncertain, but to be fallible, to make mistakes, which are informed not only by her humanity and ego, but a pressurised context that requires her to respond in kind.

3 Do you think sex-writing is overrated?

I write sex because it’s fun, but also because sex — how they have it, if they have it — is great character-building. One way of making the body concrete. Some of my earliest experiences with fiction were with texts that were unabashed in their presentation of the erotic, and I’m always striving for that. I’m always striving to capture the private negotiations we make around our bodies, and capture them in a way that feels honest.

4 What are your comments on interracial romance? In your book, a young Black woman has an affair with an older White man, who, with his White wife, has adopted a girl child who is Black.

I wrote this book for Black women, which is a function of being a Black woman myself, or of the project of this book, which was to put a Black woman at the centre, to treat her reality with tenderness and seriousness. The interracial dynamic is significant in that it is a study in contrasts, one way to interrogate discrepancies in power, empathy, and the ability to live authentically. At the same time, I tried to explore the complicated pleasure of imbalance, the thrill of a nakedly transactional dynamic, what it means to reject it and also lean into it.