Leila Mottley
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley is based on a real crime committed in 2015 in which police officers in the Oakland Police Department sexually exploited and brutalized young women, especially women of color.
The story unfolds in the voice of Kiara Johnson, a seventeen-year-old African American living with her older brother, Marcus. Their father is dead, and their mother is detained in a rehab facility. Marcus refuses to get a job, pinning his hopes of finding success in the music industry. Faced with eviction, it is left up to Kiara to find the income to pay for the rent. To add to her problems, Kiara assumes responsibility for her neighbor’s son, Trevor, a nine-year-old abandoned by his drug-addicted mother.
Unable to find employment and desperate to earn an income, Kiara becomes a street walker. She is picked up by two police officers. Her life of sexual exploitation by some Oakland police officers begins, spiraling Kiara into a bottomless pit where she faces threats unless she attends their parties and complies with their sexual demands. When a police officer commits suicide and mentions her name in his suicide note, Kiara becomes embroiled in a police investigation.
Kiara’s interiority generates sympathy for her plight as she tries to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges and is torn in all directions. Motivated by her determination to protect Marcus and Trevor, she gives in to demands that humiliate and degrade her. She is thrust into a life of prostitution because she feels she has no other options. Initially, she tries to convince herself she is making a rational, economic choice. She becomes a pawn in the hands of police officers who may or may not pay her but who threaten to arrest her brother if she exposes them. Later, she is a pawn in the hands of the justice system. Through all this, Kiara emerges as tough, intelligent, articulate, resilient, and with a fierce passion to do whatever is necessary to save the people she loves regardless of the cost to her personhood.
In Kiara, Mottley has created an unforgettable heroine. Kiara’s voice is poetic, rhythmic, immersive, and infused with energy. She activates all the senses in the depiction of her dingy apartment, of the sewage infested swimming pool, and of the seedy but vibrant Oakland streets she walks at night. Her diction is peppered with vivid imagery and colorful metaphors, some of which are a little strained. And there are times when credibility seems stretched to the limit. But throughout it all, Kiara’s voice soars with authenticity and vibrancy.
In unflinchingly honest and compelling diction, Leila Mottley has depicted the plight of the powerless, poverty-stricken, and marginalized as they navigate situations and systems which exploit, abuse, traumatize, and spit them out as disposable entities at every turn.
A remarkable achievement for a young author who, at the time of writing, was barely a few years older than her unforgettable heroine.