Leila Mottley, who wrote her debut novel Nightcrawling at 17, discusses racist US policing, her Oakland, California home, and her historic Booker nod
was bought in a fierce bidding war a few years ago, Leila Mottley, the 20-year-old author, has already written – and discarded – two more novels. Mottley has been ferociously productive from a young age, with two novels already written before she even starteda month before her 17th birthday. “They were just practice.” Age 20 and five novels already under her belt. How does she do it?
Its protagonist Kiara is a 17-year-old black girl in Oakland, California , forced into sex work trying to meet rent hikes. Her father has died, her mother is in prison and her older brother is too busy trying to make music to take care of her, leaving Kiara with only herself to depend on. When the local police force abuse her instead of helping, she has nowhere to turn.
Mottley drew on the real-life 2015 case in which the Oakland police force was found to have sexually exploited a young black woman after pulling her off the streets. “I think any black child growing up in the US knows that fear. At least once a year my dad would tell us stories about what to do when you come into contact with the police, or you know, howto come into contact with the police. I grew up with that embedded fear. But I think those warnings are really interesting because they’re attempts to control something that we actually have no control over. It doesn’t really matter whether you wear a hood or a suit.