Leila Mottley and Ayo Banjo in Conversation

Leila Mottley is the author of the novel Nightcrawling, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times best seller. She was also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live. Her debut poetry collection woke up no light was published on April 16, 2024. This event was made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Friends of the Capitola Library. Additional sponsors include the Resource Center for Nonviolence the NAACP Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz Black. Watch Leila Mottley's short documentary on PBS's POV. About Nightcrawling 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 has deeply perceptive commentary on gender, race and class that defies the comfortable assumptions readers might bring to a story like Kiara's. Two female police officers, one of whom is the interim police chief during an internal investigation, treat Kiara like a nuisance and attempt to silence her, demonstrating that there is no gender solidarity within the power structure of the police department. These women act to support the male officers that have harmed Kiara because maintaining the structural soundness of the police force is more important to them than supporting a woman who has been sexually abused. One female officer breaks the mold, giving Kiara vital information and the number of an attorney. However, Mottley presents her as naive in comparison to Kiara, who has been forced to learn how rotten to the core the system is. The attorney who preps Kiara for the grand jury trial is equally out of touch with reality, at one point telling Kiara that her decision to testify puts her in a class with Harriet Tubman and Gloria Steinem. In response, Kiara thinks, "In moments like these, I remember Marsha's just another white woman who's never gonna understand what I been through, who can't find anyone besides Harriet Tubman and Gloria Steinem to compare me to." About Ayo Banjo President-Researcher-Social Entrepreneur Ayo Banjo feeds off intense high-pressure quick decision-making situations that allows his big ideas and extensive network to successfully execute project goals. As the first undergraduate freshman in the history of the University of California to win the Office of the Student Body President, his first successful fundraiser at age 19 raised half a million dollars in housing support for low-income students. Banjo now intersects political technology to social justice work, giving human rights advocates access to advanced data to create changes in policies aimed at reducing homelessness, combatting redlined racial discrimination, and empowering young professionals of color to build a culture of leadership and opportunity in their community. Banjo arrives fresh from pioneering the PACE Admissions program at UC Santa Cruz, tripling access to Pan-Afro services available for prospective and current Black students and serving as a plug between the campus and larger Santa Cruz community. His 55-page published research, “Higher Education’s Black Agenda” led to the creation of a six-figure funded Black research grant program across the entire University of California system, and shifted the conversation around accessibility by using action-based research to identify best practices toward increasing the retention and recruitment of diverse student populations in higher ed. Working with governmental partners on renewable energy climate programs, overseeing statewide voter turnout efforts, and serving on the Executive board of the statewide NAACP, Banjo’s work has been featured in news publications such as KQED, GoodTimes, CalMatters, the California Report & public radio. He has been identified as an advocate for higher education policy advancement by the NAACP, worked on climate advocacy with the United Nations and City of Santa Cruz, and helped pass CA-SB 1004 to increase mental health resources to all CA public higher education institutions.

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