Leila Mottley — The Girls Who Grew Big - with Renee Bracey Sherman

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother's home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone's red truck.The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends' secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley's promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593801123?ic_referral=SsWODnelQ0cbtBELDTOIaVb-SLfXNHzA2EjVmVdnukgwM6TDJXIBgBIEjXx6KCM9kL0SU-A_m4a3axIBlEKmMDumOl2cCCflA_6i9reY6_l81p8xeISS2kcgzhmoMgFIFUeXBNgLeila Mottley is the author of the novel Nightcrawling, an Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller, and the poetry collection woke up no light. She is also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live.Mottley is in conversation with Renee Bracey Sherman. Sherman is the co-author of LIBERATING ABORTION: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve, co-host of the podcast The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion, and the founder of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership of people who have abortions. She has been hailed as the ‘Beyoncé of Abortion Storytelling.’ She’s a Chicago-born, midwest-raised activist, writer, and reproductive justice activist committed to the visibility and representation of people who have abortions in media and pop culture with a particular focus on the intersection of race, class, and gender identity. Her work is so influential that the right-wing website Twitchy recognizes her as “the queen of all abortions” and once wrote that Renee “never met an abortion she didn’t love.”*recorded 6/29/2025