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A novel
by Leila Mottley
Book Reviewed by:A dazzling novel about a young black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system - the debut of a blazingly original voice that "bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole" (Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There).
Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.
One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. And her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.
Full of edge, raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.
Kiara's interior monologue is shot through with the dreamy, poetic sensibility of a young person who comes to see the world as it really is, but nevertheless has not lost hope. She sees the people she meets stripped of the fanfare of how they present themselves to the world. Camila, a sex worker who acts as a mentor to Kiara, appears to be a model of poised self-confidence, but Kiara comes to recognize how this is an act Camila performs to feel more in control. Kiara also comes to understand her own needs more fully — "And I am still waiting to be hit by some universe-halting love that will turn me inside out and remove all the rotting parts of me" — and that expressing and pursuing those needs in the face of systemic abuse is a radical act. Nightcrawling has deeply perceptive commentary on gender, race and class that defies the comfortable assumptions readers might bring to a story like Kiara's...continued
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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
As she explains in her Author's Note, Leila Mottley based Nightcrawling loosely on real events involving a teenage sex worker who was sexually exploited for months by members of the Oakland Police Department. The girl is known as Celeste Guap in court documents. According to her, she began "dating" Officer Brendan O'Brien in February of 2015, when she was 17, after running to him for help on East Oakland's International Boulevard when she was being threatened by a pimp.
Her relationship with Officer O'Brien led to Guap having sex with multiple other members of the Oakland Police Department, as well as officers from other jurisdictions, often in exchange for information about prostitution stings. As the East Bay Express (who broke many ...
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If you liked Nightcrawling, try these:
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Leila Mottley has an extraordinary gift. She writes with the humility and sparkle of a child, but with the skill and deft touch of a wizened, seasoned storyteller.
