Leila Mottley on Jesmyn Ward, 'Song of Solomon,' and The Books That Everyone Should Read

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Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

She wrote her Booker Prize-longlisted debut novel, Nightcrawling, at 16, and now Leila Mottley is out with her first collection of poetry, woke up no light (Knopf). The NYT-bestselling Nightcrawling, a PEN/Hemingway Prize for debut novel nominee, Oprah Book Club pick, and bid on by 13 publishers, was inspired by the 2016 Celeste Guap case, in which members of the Oakland Police Department were investigated for sexually exploiting a teenaged sex worker. Her next novel, The Girls Who Grew Big (Knopf), about three teen mothers in the Florida panhandle, will be published in 2025.

The former Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, where she was born, raised, and is currently based, wrote two unpublished novels by 16; stayed in the same MacDowell colony studio that Tayari Jones did; worked in preschools and trained to become a doula; went to Smith College for a semester and a half before COVID hit and sold her book, signing her publishing contract for Nightcrawling on her 18th birthday). Mottley left Smith after three semesters (half of them online), to focus on writing and move to her hometown; she doesn’t understand how social media works and has to squint to look at her phone.

Likes: dog-earing pages in books, Red Bay Coffee, jazz music, acknowledgements sections. Dislikes: e-books, leaving California, walking in a straight line. Turn to her book picks below.

The book that…

...has the best opening line:

I’m a Jesmyn Ward fan first and a writer second. The opening line from her latest novel, Let Us Descend, blew me away: “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.”

…should be on every college syllabus:

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson as a collection is a vivid, meticulously rendered collage of stories I’m in complete awe of. Then Johnson turns around and presents the title story, which is actually a novella, and it leaves you stunned. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before and deserves to be dissected again and again.

...everyone should read:

The Street by Ann Petry, a novel published in 1946 about Harlem in the 30s and 40s and a single mother’s attempts to protect herself and her son while grappling with poverty, predators, and a sometimes beautiful yet consistently cruel world. This book should be grouped with Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Toni Morrison’s Jazz as masterpieces by and about Black women. It’s a classic and should be regarded as such.

...has the best title:

Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong is a title so good it can’t be beat or replicated. Titles can be so difficult to come up with, especially for poetry collections, and Vuong skillfully balances conveying exactly what he means and leaving the reader with more questions that each poem works to answer.

…helped me become a better writer:

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison is the epic of a century. Every time I read this book, I catch new references, images, and lines that remind me again and again that writing a brilliant book is about constructing layers, and nobody does that better than Toni Morrison. If you’ve only ever read The Bluest Eye or Beloved, Song of Solomon is an equally necessary read in the Toni Morrison canon.

…has a sex scene that will make you blush:

It’s incredibly hard to write sex well, particularly in literary fiction. Cleyvis Natera does it with ease, passion, and just the right amount of detail in her debut novel. While sex is hardly the focus of Neruda on the Park, it’s steamy and will have you blushing while you read.

….I brought on my first book tour:

For book tour, I got a Kindle, knowing I wouldn’t have space for enough physical books to last me for several weeks. The first book I downloaded was Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow, which is about a man’s two families and the friendship that begins between two of his daughters, one from each of the families. I was engrossed by this story, and it was a perfect thing to fall into on planes, trains, and hotel rooms. Jones is incredibly talented at telling a story through multiple voices and points of view and making each perspective unique.

…I swear I’ll finish one day:

I started Those Bones Are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara several years ago, and it is so exquisitely done but very haunting. I love books that explore themes of motherhood and forgiveness, but reckoning with a mother’s loss, even in literary form, can be a lot to swallow at once so I pick up this marvelous novel edited by Toni Morrison once a year and get a little bit further.

…I’d like turned into a TV show:

The Trees by Percival Everett is dynamic and darkly funny. I enjoyed American Fiction, the adaptation of Everett’s novel Erasure, and I believe that Everett’s humor, nuance, and unusual concepts translate beautifully to the screen and deserve a larger audience.

…currently sits on my nightstand:

I have been meaning to read The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras for a long time. Her writing style is so lush, and I love a beautifully written memoir, so as soon as I’m finished reading a few books for research, I plan on diving into this one.

…made me weep uncontrollably:

I’m not a big crier when it comes to books, so it takes a lot to make me sob. I finished Solito by Javier Zamora while I was traveling for a conference and cried myself to sleep that night. It’s told from a child’s perspective and does it with such precision that it is simultaneously stunning and heart-wrenching.

If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:

My dad’s side of the family is from Detroit and when I was 16, I went to visit my family and we all went to the University of Michigan for a college tour. It was the first college I ever toured and when we got to the law library, I never wanted to leave. Not for the books themselves, but for the feeling the building cultivated, and I would happily live amongst the books and those tall, majestic ceilings.

The literary organization/charity I support:

Freedom Reads is an organization that works to get books into prisons and increase the access incarcerated folks have to a wide spectrum of books. They say it best: “Books become essential when you want to imagine a new life for yourself.”

Let Us Descend

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Jazz

Song of Solomon

Those Bones Are Not My Child

Silver Sparrow

Night Sky With Exit Wounds

My Monticello

The Trees

The Street

Neruda on the Park

The Man Who Could Move Clouds

Solito

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