Nightcrawling
Leila Mottley · 2022
A 17-year-old Black girl in Oakland becomes entangled in a sex work sting involving corrupt police. Mottley's debut was written when she was 17 and published when she was 19; its rage and precision are unlike any debut of the decade.
The case against
Kiara narrates in metaphors no exhausted seventeen-year-old would reach for; the lyricism is Mottley's, and it keeps upstaging the character carrying it. Miseries stack without relief (eviction, abandonment, the police ring, the grand jury) until the book feels engineered to wound. Prodigy is the right word, and prodigies overwrite.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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