Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Inspired by the true story of a shocking scandal underpinning a police department.
Night Crawling
What you need to know before your trail
Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an 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. 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.
Locations
Reset- America/USA - California - Oakwood
- A: Oakland police department
- B: High St
- C: Airport
- D: Yerba Buena Island
Travel Guide
Oakland California
The author mentions that this is a shocking true story which she discovered when a teenager and she read a story about the abuse of a young girl by policemen in the Oakland police force in California and a few others in the bay area.
Sexual exploitation was covered up and it became a national scandal but even when the worst of the press had died down, the author of this novel remembered it and wanted to give the young girls in question a voice they had never had before. She put ‘the narrative control of a survivor’.
She started writing this novel at 17 and states that she wanted to represent the violence and danger that women, especially black and brown women face regularly.
The run down apartment in the novel is aptly entitled Regal-Hi Apartments, where the only thing high about it are some of the tenants. There is a pool, which we learn is filled with bags of dog poop floating on the surface.
This is Kara’s broken home. Her parents are no longer there and her and her brother live in poverty.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Night Crawling
Destination/Location: Oakland, California Author: Leila Mottley Departure:2000s
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