Welcome to The Book of the Month! Y'all... no need to explain the long absence from here. See previous post for an explanation. Alright, let's dive in. The book of this month is Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley.
I am going to give extraordinary grace to this book because I honestly believe it suffered from the curse of being read after two Chimamanda Adichie novels—I recently reread Americanah and Purple Hibiscus. Listen, once you’ve experienced the ease and delicious smoothness of Chimamanda's work, everybody else just seems like they are trying too hard. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In sum, the book is about Kiara, steeped in abject poverty and neglect, who has to scrap by on the streets of Oakland, and who, one night, mistakenly stumbles into the failure of America's justice system. For a longer version of the preceding sentence: Kiara and her brother, Marcus, live in a rundown apartment in Oakland called Regal-Hi. Both had to drop out of high school and their family has been fractured by death and prison. Meanwhile, rather than find a way to care for his sister, Marcus is too consumed by his dream of rap stardom; leaving Kiara to hunt for work to pay their rent and take care of them. At the same time, she has to keep the nine-year old boy next door (whose mother has abandoned) fed. In any case, as a minor and high school dropout, her options for work are limited and thanks to a misunderstanding on a drunken night, she turns to a job she never wanted but definitely needs.
