#raven leilani

[buryme-makeoutcreek]

How can I forgive myself for growing up before I was ready?

Fatima Aamer Bilal //Nickie Zimov //Cameron Awkward-Rich// Mitski// Fortesa Latifi// Mad Men// Succession// Grady Hendrix// Sylvia Plath// @twofigs// Shanice Bloodbloom// Jenny Slate// Simon & Garfunkel// Raven Leilani// Carrie Fisher

[araekniarchive]

SELF-PORTRAIT AT 24

Ana Carrizo, What Was Missing

Louis de Bernieres, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Brenna Twohy, ‘ON SEEING PHOTOS OF HIS NEW GIRLFRIEND ON FACEBOOK’, from Swallowtail

Bruce Coville, Jennifer Murdley’s Toad

The Antlers, Bear

When Harry Met Sally (1989) dir. Rob Reiner

Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

Raven Leilani, Luster

Comment left on a pinterest post

Elle Emerson, Regarding the Röttgen Pietà

Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

Dominique Christina, Stargazer

Lia Kimura, Unknown (2018)

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Florence + The Machine, South London Forever

Wislawa Szymborska, Moment of Silence

Barbara Ras, ‘You Can’t Have It All’ from Bite Every Sorrow

[lillyli-74]

There are grey, anonymous hours like this. Hours when I am desperate, when I am ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void.

~Raven Leilani

[quillaffinity]

To the Setting Son - Leona Kingscholar Web Weave

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“Honestly, most of your life's decided for you from the moment you're born. There's no point in workin' hard.” 

-  Leona Kingscholar (School Uniform, Home Screen Lines)

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Twisted Wonderland is produced by Aniplex and Walt Disney Japan

Character Design and Story by Toboso Yana

Twisted Wonderland - The Manga: Book of Savanahclaw is illustrated by Suzuka Oda

twst - the manga / ??? / twst - the manga / raven leilani, “luster” / heather havrilesky, “ask polly: help, i'm the loneliest person in the world!” / sk osborn, “a hunger like no other” / twst - the manga / rainer maria rilke, “rilke's book of hours: love poems to god” / twst - the manga / olivia laing / twst - the manga / twst - the manga / rosanne cash, “bittersweet” / twst - the manga / sylvia plath, “the journals of sylvia plath” / anon / twst - the manga / patti smith, “woolgathering”

[moodyinapinkbow]

Moodboard: Aesthetic - Dark Academia. 

❝There are grey, anonymous hours like this. Hours when I am desperate, when I am ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void.❞

[phaedraismyusername]

3 Unsolicited Recommendations

(( for fans of Fleabag ))

* all of them are around 200 pages, have that strong flavour of feminine chaos, neurotic sexploits, sharp social observations, and unfettered access to the characters deepest darkest thoughts.

1 - Luster by Raven Leilani

Edie is in her twenties, stuck somewhere between depression and apathy, and burning her way through a slew of bad choices, when she finds herself invited into the life and home of a married couple and their black adopted daughter as she does her best to find her place in the world.

2 - Hysteria by Jessica Gross

A guilt-ridden sex obsessed college student walks into a bar and falls into a reflective relationship with a bartender that she's pretty sure is actually Sigmund Freud. It's chaos all the way down.

3 - I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel

This book y'all, how do I even explain it lol. It's a single perspective intense character study of a woman who has become obsessed with a glamorous american influencer after learning that she is romantically entangled with the man she's cheating on her boyfriend with. Or trying to, at least. Bad decisions and biting social commentary made this one genuinely so addicting to read lol

[federalchickensoup]

Ok. I read, no, shoved “Luster” by Raven Leilani down my throat in ~2 days. And let me tell you. The choices these ‘adults’ made weren’t wise. Leilani’s prose was so fast paced, emotionally charged, and at times breathtaking—I had to reread a few sentences to wrap my mind around the articulation of the craftsmanship. Fuck it, dog eared and all.

I think I found my fav or comfort genre: unhinged/manic(?)/self destructive character

[wellconstructedsentences]

She says she is aware of the irony of being a medical examiner who smokes, but that for all the blackened lungs she's seen, it is more disturbing to open the chest cavity of a veteran and find that it is pristine.

Luster by Raven Leilani

[library-love-affair]

“… racism is often so mundane it leaves your head spinning. The hand of the ordinary in your slow psychic death, so sly and absurd you begin to distrust your own eyes.”

- Raven Leilani (Luster)

[elwenyere]

"It's likely I'm sweating, trying to find the most precise, least opaque way of saying the thing without sacrificing the muchness I love. I love adornment."

-- Raven Leilani on crafting sentences

[studiesinpolterghost]

Process of Memories from Luster

done back in march 2023

[pinkbowjournal]

There are grey, anonymous hours like this. Hours when I am desperate, when I am ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void.

Raven Leilani, Luster.

[don-simon]

"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."

[sasukeisawake]

“It is not that I want company, but that I want to be affirmed by another pair of eyes. The acceptable interval for which I can be embarrassed for what I said to the doctors has passed, but I still think about it for weeks, what I meant when I said I was an artist. I think about the painting in the clinic and the canvas fibers curled beneath the oil. All the raw materials that are gathered and processed into shadow and light. The pigments 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 record, proof that I was here."

- Luster, Raven Leilani 

[plexurade]

I believed, like a Catholic or a Tortured Artist, that the merit of a commitment correlates directly to the pain you endure in its pursuit.

Raven Leilani, Luster

[elizalona]

“He wants me to be myself like a leopard might be herself in a city zoo. Inert, waiting to be fed. Not out in the wild, with tendon in her teeth.”

Luster by Raven Leilani