The Girls Who Grew Big
An interview with sophomore author Leila Mottley about motherhood, growing up and female friendship.
Adela is a pregnant, 16 year-old banished from her cushy upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s house in Padua Beach, a town in the Florida Panhandle so small it doesn’t appear on maps, to carry her baby to term. Emory is determined to graduate high school, attend college and find herself–all while facing the challenges of being a new mother. Simone is pregnant again and seeks an abortion to provide the best life possible to her four-year-old twins.
Emory introduces Adela to the “Girls,” a group of castaway teen moms sheltering themselves and their children from the heat of the Florida sun and the scorn of the town in the bed of Simone’s red truck. Though abandoned and often mistreated by their loved ones, the band of outcast mothers are rarely alone and never lonely. The Girls find strength, hope and wisdom in supporting each other.
The Girls Who Grew Big is by Leila Mottley, a 23 year-old native of Oakland, California. At age 16, Mottley was named Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, and her debut novel Nightcrawling was Oprah’s Book Club pick in June 2022 and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Abigail Charak interviewed Mottley to learn more about her sophomore novel, a stunning and layered story that evades cliches and empathetically portrays the struggles and joys of motherhood, growing up and female friendship.
Abigail Charak: My first question is because Deep South Magazine is a publication that celebrates Southern writers and literature, what moved you to write a novel set in the South, and specifically in the Florida Panhandle?
Leila Mottley: I knew that the novel had to be set in the South, because a lot of it is about reproductive care and abortion access, and so I knew that it needed to be in a state where obtaining an abortion is challenging, but not impossible.
And then specifically Florida, and this part of Florida. I wanted the setting to mirror the Girls and the way that they’re perceived in the world. Florida is a place we have a lot of jokes about, and is, in some ways, misunderstood—particularly the Panhandle. Culturally it is the South, but it’s also Florida. It’s a place people go to escape to, but it’s not very respected in its existence.
AC: Did your perception of the South, or specifically of the Florida Panhandle, evolve or change while you were writing?
LM: Definitely. Before I started writing the book, I’d been to a lot of places in Florida, but not the Panhandle. And I’d been to some other places in the South, so I thought I had more context than I did. I wrote about the first third of the book before I went on a research trip to this specific part of the Panhandle. And a lot of the book then had to be rewritten, because so much of the lived experience of it was just different being on the ground than it was from what I could obtain from books and Google Maps.
A lot of the parts of the Panhandle that I went to [have] almost an early 2000s quality to it. It’s kind of hard to access some parts of technology; there aren’t as many cell phone towers. There are a lot of strip malls with technology centers in them that we don’t often see anymore in cities. Part of it was also just exploring what it was like to live in a town where there isn’t a lot of access, including to prenatal care. [I saw] a lot of crisis pregnancy centers. And [also] seeing the way that nature is so close and tangible and kind of integrated into the landscape of a place.
I’ll put it this way: teen moms, like Florida, are the country’s favorite scapegoat. Your favorite niece got addicted to fentanyl and is living with her boyfriend’s grandpa? At least she’s not a teen mom. You got laid off and have to move back to your parent’s house in Colorado? At least its not the hellhole they call Florida. Your daughter’s a lesbian? But she’s not pregnant! Got hate-crimed? But it’d be worse in Florida!” – Chapter 6
AC: Your Instagram bio mentions that you are a birth worker in Oakland. I would love to hear more about what that role involves and how it influenced the novel.
LM: I trained as a doula in 2021, and I’ve been supporting births for over a year now. I kind of have always had an obsession with pregnancy and birth, but it was heightened through being in birth work circles and actively supporting people in the transition into parenthood. A lot of that was on the top of my mind and influenced writing the book in the first place.
I wanted this book to be about the way that we can care for young parents and parents in general and the transition into parenthood—and all of the self-doubt and need to re-evaluate life that happens in that transition. I think as a culture, we don’t know what it looks like to show up for parents. We have moved so far away from collective care around parenthood that, a lot of times, people just don’t even know what to do when their loved one has a baby. This can lead to a lot of isolation for new parents, particularly for young parents who have already been dismissed and removed from even the category of motherhood. These girls create their own little village and community to support each other through that; I hope that they’re a representation of what that can look like.
AC: The novel alternates between the point-of-views of three different characters. Was there one voice that came easily to you? Was one particularly tough to pin down?
LM: When I decided to write this book, I knew I wanted to write it from three, first-person perspectives, and particularly three girls who are in similar stages of life and come from similar places, but show that they actually are their own distinct people and create their own version of what parenthood looks like.
Simone was easiest for me in a lot of ways, because she has more perspective, more hindsight and is a little more reflective. By nature of [her] being the oldest and being the one who’s leading them all, she often came easiest. Adela was probably the hardest, because she comes in with much judgment. We’re supposed to dislike her to a certain extent, but we’re also supposed to understand that she comes from a world in which judgment is the primary form of connection. She is also the youngest and has been sheltered very much, so she looks at the world differently than the other girls and has less compassion and less perspective.
AC: My favorite aspect of this book is how it challenged so many common stereotypes and beliefs surrounding teen motherhood. The Girls face a lot of hardship, but the story is oftentimes light, joyful and even positive. I came out of it feeling very optimistic about womanhood, girlhood, pregnancy and life. Was this balance something you prioritized from the outset, or was it something that emerged as you wrote?
LM: I knew from the beginning that it was not going to be a story of tragedy. I think we’re often taught about teen pregnancy as either tragic or immoral; I think both of those place this idea of young pregnancy as a failing, when it is actually just a circumstance that has happened forever and will happen forever.
As teen pregnancy rates decline, we see only more judgment and scrutiny of young parents. In reality, it is hard to be a parent in any and all circumstances. Our world doesn’t cater to mothers or children, and we only make it harder when we remove resources and support from young parents.
I wanted this book to not just be about all of the things that we don’t do for young parents and the struggles they face, but also the ways community and care can help balance that out. [There are] some positive aspects of young parenthood too that we often don’t talk about: having so much perspective and closeness to your children’s experience of childhood and powerlessness, and maybe heightened empathy because of that. During the transition from teenage-hood into adulthood we all are coming to terms with our families and the way that we were raised. I think that there’s a lot of perspective that can come from being so in the middle of it. [The Girls] really think about their children and the choices that they’re making and what impact that’s going to have on them.
AC: What were your literary influences for the book? Specifically, were there any Southern writers that really inspired you or that you gleaned from while you were writing?
LM: Jesmyn Ward was one of the big ones. I read Salvage the Bones when I was 15, and it is still one of my favorite books, and was one of the first times I saw teen pregnancy represented in a way that was complex. I reread that in the writing and revision process of this book. Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone is another one that I reread during this book’s writing process. I reread Their Eyes Were Watching God, too, thinking about complex relationships, abusive relationships and unapologetic women.
AC: Is there something in the novel—maybe a specific chapter, page or paragraph— that you’re particularly proud of?
LM: There’s a scene where one of the Girls—her name is Crystal—her daughter CeCe bites other kids at the playground, and the Girls kind of collectively come together and march down to the playground and defend her. [That scene] felt important to me because of the act of them coming together as a community and unapologetically defending their right to be parents and their kids’ rights to be children. There’s also a lot of judgment among mothers, and in this way, we internalize the shame and then put it on each other. That’s been also partly true around things like biting and hitting—normal kid behavior that we kind of placed so much extra judgment on. I ended up trimming [the scene] way down at a certain point and moving it like three different times, but it’s a clear representation of the way that they care for each other.
AC: What’s next for you? Any upcoming projects, events anything else in life that you’re looking forward to?
LM: I’ll be doing a couple of festivals in the fall and then I am currently writing a new book, but I’m still in the early stages of it.
The Girls Who Grew Big is one of our 2025 Summer Reading Picks. This interview with author Leila Mottley has been edited for length and clarity.
