Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

107 reviews

emmalinallap's review

dark emotional inspiring tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, Child abuse, and Racism

writingcaia's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Very powerful, touching, and heartbreaking - a tale that tells of the injustice, the blindness, the erasure of Black and Brown women.
This is the story of a girl that has to grow up too fast when her widowed mother goes to jail and she has to take care of her older brother that wants to pursue a doomed to failure music career and a little boy who lives next door whose mother is an addict and never around. But, how? She’s only seventeen, she can’t find a job. Desperate she takes the darkest plunge and starts walking the streets breaking her feet and her soul, giving herself to the worst of men. In her Nightcrawling she meets an older woman with a pimp and she considers it but then she’s almost arrested and the police start using her. And, the rest you need to find out.
It’s a devastating story of how doing your best can mean the worst for you, when trying to come clean can devastate your life, but it’s also about love for others, supporting the weakest, being there for your loved ones, and doing the right thing, even when it’s wrong, even when it can cost you.
The writing is beautiful but did feel weird and repetitive at times, taking you a bit from the story, but that’s the only flaw I found.
The friendship between our girl and bff, the love between her and the little boy she takes care of, it really made my heart swell, even if amidst such tragic and life threatening events.
It’s definitely a must read debut if the theme interests you.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual harassment, Police brutality, Racism, Sexual violence, Rape, and Child death

Minor: Trafficking

okiecozyreader's review

dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

In the author’s note, Leila Mottley writes that when she was a teenager a story broke how members of the Oakland Police Dept and several others participated in the sexual exploitation of a young woman and tried to cover it up. She says she was 17 and “contemplating what it meant to be vulnerable, unprotected and unseen.”

Kiera and her brother Marcus are living in an East Oakland run-down apartment complex while the rent keeps going up astronomically. Marcus is trying to make it as a music star and Kiara is just trying to make rent, even if it involves relationships with men who take advantage of her by Nightcrawling. 

Such a tough read but she definitely tells the story of these women for these women.

“I am telling her how these streets open us up and remove the part of us most worth keeping: the child left in us.” P267

“Number one rule about entering somewhere you not supposed to enter us don't never guestion none of it. Don't ask nothing and don't act like you don't know what you doing because that'll land you right where you don't wanna be.” P235

“That was before I learned that life won't give you reasons for none of it, that sometimes fathers disappear and little girls don't make it to another birthday and mothers forget to be mothers." P81

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Vomit, Child death, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Racism, Gun violence, and Sexual assault

sandysmith's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

A hard-hitting read about Kiara, a young 17 year old black woman fending for herself, her father dead, her mother in a halfway house, and her brother following his music dream. Living in Oakland, with rent spiralling, she faces eviction. She looks after 9 year old Trevor, whose mother disappears for periods of time. She ends up working on the streets. Police brutality, blackmail, sexual violence are key themes. It's a dark, beautifully written work about survival, which is so difficult to read. Power and corruption,  and based on a true crime story it's a haunting debut.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Violence, Police brutality, and Racism

Moderate: Suicide attempt

Minor: Death of parent

_meeg's review

challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Grief, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, Child death, Death, Cursing, Suicidal thoughts, Kidnapping, Trafficking, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Murder, Gun violence, Abandonment, Sexual content, Violence, Addiction, Racial slurs, Child abuse, Hate crime, Police brutality, Classism, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Drug abuse, Racism, and Sexual violence

anna_in_the_spring's review

challenging dark sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Rating this book is really difficult. I can tell that it is a good book. It just really wasn't for me.
The writing is lyrical, which I only like sometimes. While I thought it was okay in this book, maybe that was because I had a much bigger problem with the language that is being used. In dialogue and sometimes also in internal speech African American dialect is being used. And I hated that. Let me explain. I am a non-native English speaker with dyslexia. Slangs and dialects in written English ( and any other written language I understand) irritate me greatly. I am at a level of reading comprehension with regular English where I can just read the text. Written dialects trigger my dyslexia and slow me down a great deal and make understanding difficult. They are like another foreign language. And I don't have the energy to deal with that. I just want to read a book, not struggle with a language that to me, who had such a hard time learning the original language, seems just wrong and like someone is playing a malicious prank on me. 
I understand that this is not the intention and I don't have a problem with the existence of dialects. Just with having to read them. I try avoiding these kind of books.
I still struggled through the book , skimming over some parts, because it is a good book. And I understand why the language is as it is. It just wasn't for me. That's fine. 
I didn't enjoy the plot, but I don't think you're supposed to. I'm not a big fan of tragedies, so again, not really for me. The subject matter is also thankfully very far removed from me. Still, if the dialect hadn't been there, I might have been able to enjoy the book, the way one enjoys a tragedy. Like this, I was never really able to get into it.  But without the dialect it would have been a different book. So, again, this was just not for me. And that's fine.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Child death, Death, Trafficking, Drug use, Police brutality, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Suicide

mlachevre's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Rape, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Violence, Pedophilia, and Police brutality

kmbutcher's review

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Misogyny, Sexual violence, Police brutality, Trafficking, Death of parent, Rape, Sexual assault, Transphobia, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Racism, and Suicide attempt

samantha1960's review

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This story is heartbreaking and absolutely unnerving but so beautifully written it’s hard to put it down once you pick it up. Kiara is a character I’ll think back on for years to come. An unbelievable debut novel.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Blood, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Trafficking, Sexual violence, Vomit, Suicide attempt, Violence, Death of parent, Rape, Sexual assault, Grief, Pedophilia, Racism, Self harm, Death, and Police brutality

unavezmas's review

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Police brutality, and Sexual violence

Minor: Transphobia