AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 2015, when I was a young teenager in Oakland, a story broke describing how members of the Oakland Police Department, and several other police departments in the Bay Area, had participated in the sexual exploitation of a young woman and attempted to cover it up. This case developed over months and years and, even as the news cycle moved on, I continued to wonder about this event, about this girl, and about the other girls who did not receive headlines, but nonetheless experienced the cruelty of what policing can do to a person’s body, mind, and spirit. For this one case that entered the media, there were and are dozens of other cases of sex workers and young women who experience violence at the hands of police and do not have their stories told, do not see court, and do not escape these situations at all. Yet the cases we know about are few.
When I began writing Nightcrawling, I was seventeen and contemplating what it meant to be vulnerable, unprotected, and unseen. Like many black girls, I was often told growing up to tend to and shield my brother, my dad, the black men around me: their safety, their bodies, their dreams. In this, I learned that my own safety, body, and dreams were secondary, that there was no one and nothing that could or would protect me. Kiara is an entirely fictional character but what happens to her is a reflection of the types of violence that black and brown women face regularly: a 2010 study found that police sexual violence is the second most reported instance of police misconduct and disproportionately impacts women of color.
As I wrote and researched this book, I drew inspiration from the Oakland case and others like it, as I wanted to write a story of my city, but I also wanted to explore what it would mean for this to happen to a young black woman, for this case to be put in the narrative control of a survivor, for there to be a world beyond the headline, and for readers to have access to this world. The stories of black women, and queer and trans folks, are not often represented in the narratives of violence we see protested, written about, and amplified in most movements, but that does not erase their existence. I wanted to write a story that would reflect the fear and danger that comes with black womanhood and the adultification of black girls, while also recognizing that Kiara—like so many of us who find ourselves in circumstances that feel impossible to survive—is still capable of joy and love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, I am abundantly grateful for Lucy Carson and Molly Friedrich and the rest of The Friedrich Agency for being my best advocates and cheering me on every step of the way. Thank you to Ruth Ozeki for your peerless wisdom and for introducing me to the lovely Molly and Lucy. Thank you to my editor, Diana Miller, for your constant insight and thoughtful notes through unforeseen circumstances. Thank you to the entire team at Knopf for championing Kiara’s story. Thank you to Niesha for giving me insight to ground Nightcrawling in an authentic sex-work experience.
Thank you to Samantha Rajaram for being my Pitch Wars mentor and friend. Pitch Wars was such an incredible opportunity that gave me what I needed to revise this novel and, most important, your friendship and support. A special thank-you to Maria Dong for the generous and brilliant editing help.
Thank you to Jordan Karnes for being a reader when I desperately needed one and for years of workshops and writing that prepared me to write this in the first place. To Oakland School for the Arts, for allowing me the first space where I could exist as a writer, and to the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program for nurturing the poet in me. To all the children I have loved and cared for, thank you for filling my days with joy so I could spend my nights with these words.
Daddy, thank you for giving me your love of writing and for all the jazz. Mama, thank you for giving me a house full of books and teaching me the value of reading. Logan, thank you for being the first person I call when I’m stuck and the best listener and brother I could ask for. Magda, thank you for being my best friend and first reader of almost everything. Thank you to Zach Wyner, for your early mentorship, writing sessions, and constancy in my life. To all my friends and family, you have given me a rich world worth writing about and a community I am endlessly thankful for.
To Oakland, for raising me and giving me the cafés, libraries, apartments, and skies to write this book inside. You will always be home.
And lastly to Mo, my love, thank you for being by my side from that first read to hours of editing to the final touches. You are my biggest support, my anchor, my solace after a day’s work. Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to make this book what it is. You are the Alé to my Kiara and I cannot express to you how lucky I feel to come home to your arms, your food, and your words. You are my everything.