Leila Mottley

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.

Nightcrawling

Lindsay

I look down, see a tent behind the basketball courts and an old man pissing by a tree, not bothering to look around and see who is watching. I aspire to be so reckless, so unassuming that I could take a piss in San Antonio Park at noon on a Thursday and not even look up.

It ain’t my place to have a problem with somebody else’s survival.

Mama used to tell me that blood is everything, but I think we’re all out here unlearning that sentiment, scraping our knees and asking strangers to patch us back up. I don’t say goodbye to Shauna and she doesn’t even turn around to watch me leave, to head back out to a sky that sunk into deep blue while my brother asked me to do the one thing I know I shouldn’t, the one thing Shauna cared enough to warn me about: hollow myself out for another person who ain’t gonna give a shit when I’m empty.

knowing he loves me enough to watch me survive, to give him my everything without worrying about him running.

“Just ’cause it ain’t simple don’t mean it gotta be complicated.”

Only thing worse than a man untamed is a man on the edge of it.

Ausrine Blazyte

So many ways to walk a street and I am still just girl with skin.

It ain't my place to have a problem with somebody else's survival.

eve 

„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.”

sarah perez

There is a membrane of pride that surrounds the heart and I found that when that area got damaged, it was hard to figure out what took the hit.

Sometimes it was the heart; often it was only the cellophane.

Nightcrawling quotes

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