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A review by cindy_f
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
5.0
Nightcrawling hit my radar when novelist Ruth Ozeki, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction praised Leila Mottley for her debut novel during her acceptance speech. The premise for this book picqued my interest because I’m from the East Bay Area and worked in Oakland. Little did I know that this would be one of the best written books I’ve read this year. Mottley wrote this novel as a teenager living in Oakland and was inspired by an investigation surrounding corruption within the Oakland Police Department and a teenaged sex worker.
This novel contains themes of survival, poverty, sexual violence, prostitution, drug addiction, abandonment and police corruption. This may not be for everyone. This first-person narration by Kiara (Kia) is so real and invokes empathy in the reader, but it is also heavy. Seventeen year old Kiara lives at the Regal-Hi apartments in Oakland with her brother Marcus and takes care of nine year old Trevor who was abandoned by his crackhead mother. Behind on their rent and Marcus not working to focus on his music aspirations, Kiara finds herself in a situation where she gets paid after a drunken sexual encounter. Desperate to keep a roof over their heads and feed Trevor, she starts Nightcrawling, or prostitution. She gets entangled with police officers who continually take advantage of her and threaten to arrest her and her brother if she exposes them. Kiara gets knee-deep in a police investigation surrounding these involved officers, and when Marcus gets arrested, Kiara has to make a decision that could set him free.
Even though this novel takes on heavy themes, the use of lush language and poetry are richly evident in the writing. It’s exquisite! I see this as a love letter to Oakland and gives a voice to black women who are exploited every day.
This novel contains themes of survival, poverty, sexual violence, prostitution, drug addiction, abandonment and police corruption. This may not be for everyone. This first-person narration by Kiara (Kia) is so real and invokes empathy in the reader, but it is also heavy. Seventeen year old Kiara lives at the Regal-Hi apartments in Oakland with her brother Marcus and takes care of nine year old Trevor who was abandoned by his crackhead mother. Behind on their rent and Marcus not working to focus on his music aspirations, Kiara finds herself in a situation where she gets paid after a drunken sexual encounter. Desperate to keep a roof over their heads and feed Trevor, she starts Nightcrawling, or prostitution. She gets entangled with police officers who continually take advantage of her and threaten to arrest her and her brother if she exposes them. Kiara gets knee-deep in a police investigation surrounding these involved officers, and when Marcus gets arrested, Kiara has to make a decision that could set him free.
Even though this novel takes on heavy themes, the use of lush language and poetry are richly evident in the writing. It’s exquisite! I see this as a love letter to Oakland and gives a voice to black women who are exploited every day.