The Girls Who Grew Big

by Leila Mottley ★★★★★

Having experienced Leila Mottley's gritty prose and challenging situations in her debut novel Nightcrawling, I knew a bit of what to expect from one of her books. But that still didn't prepare me for the opening scene of The Girls Who Grew Big. In it, lead character Simone Turner gives birth at age 16 to twins in the back of a pickup truck. With no medical support, no pregnancy classes prior to the birth, and no one with her but the mostly useless father known as "Tooth", she's left to figure everything out for herself. The scene crescendos when Simone realizes they have to cut the umbilical cords; Tooth only has a dirty pocketknife, and Simone takes matters into her own hands (and teeth):

"This was the moment I became a mother, when I was the only person in the world that knew what needed to be done to keep my babies safe, to excavate myself just to feed them.

“I’ll bite it,” I said.

Tooth’s face twisted up like I’d just said I was gonna eat my own shit. “The fuck you talking ’bout? I’ll go find another knife, just stay here and—”

Before he could do nothing, I had one cord in my mouth and I was gnawing. It didn’t take much work before my teeth found each other and then I tied it and moved to the next cord and my teeth ripped through that too."

It's gritty and pure Mottley, and it sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

The novel takes place four years after that scene, with Simone and her twins living out of the back of that same pickup truck. Simone has become a bit of a touchstone for other teen moms in the fictional town of Padua Beach in the Florida Panhandle. She's a de facto matriarch (at age twenty), who helps provide advice and community as other newer mothers struggle to raise their children with limited support from family or a public that is united in their collective dismissal of the Girls (this is always capitalized when talking about their small community) and their choices. "I’ll put it this way: teen moms, like Florida, are the country’s favorite scapegoat," Simone narrates.

The novel follows Simone and two other Girls in Simone's orbit: Emory Reid, the lone white girl (all the others are Black or mixed race), and Adela Woods, a competitive swimmer whose Olympic dreams were derailed when she found out only a few months prior that she was pregnant. Emory is nine months removed from having a son with Simone's brother Jayden, and so she's something close to family for Simone. Adela is the newcomer who was shipped by her parents to Florida to live with her grandmother and hide the reality of her pregnancy from the judgment of her community at home in Indiana.

The trio provide contrasting points of view of a shared experience. All got pregnant during high school; some did so intentionally, and some did not. Through the lens of each Girl, Mottley explores the myriad of challenges a young teen mom can face: balancing school and motherhood, familial disapproval, financial concerns, and more. It's not a happy book, but it is one focused on the perseverance and grit of the young mothers, and how they share enough support for each other to continue to provide a life for their children. As Simone puts it, "We found each other from our singular aloneness, made family out of a truck bed and the milky delight of watching our babies grow through the fog of distant shame."

Like with Nightcrawling (my #7 book of 2022), Mottley lays bare the challenges that a subset of the population deal with that most of those buying and reading her books probably don't encounter frequently, if at all. It drips with authenticity, and it pulls no punches. It doesn't apologize, or blame, or create victims; instead, Mottley does quite the opposite. She creates fierce and determined (and at times, broken) characters who find ways to do what it takes to survive, and who support each other through that process. The Girls Who Grew Big is a compelling exploration of characters living on the edge, who find ways to survive and even leave enough room for happiness and joy despite the daily grind of their lives. It's another strong effort from Mottley.