Riot Baby is the tale of siblings Ella and Kev who are gifted with tremendous powers. The book jumps back and forth across America, beginning on the West Coast where Kev is born amidst the 1992 Los Angeles riots, granting him the nickname “Riot Baby.” Although his sister is young, these riots and the atmosphere of the surrounding community are powerfully impactful for her.
The narrative next resumes with Ella and Kev after their mother has moved them across the country to Harlem, where they face similar issues of discrimination, just in a different community. Kev attempts to balance the draw of the street life which has engaged so many of his peers with his innate interest in learning and his future goals. Gifted with visions of the future (which are not gifts at all, rather premonitions of the horrors to come), Ella becomes increasingly withdrawn and angry. Her powers begin to manifest in unexpected and dangerous ways, ways that scare even her family, culminating in a series of events that forever changes the course of both siblings’ lives.
It is difficult to share too much more about the storyline without spoiling the twists and turns which lie within. Kev ultimately ends up incarcerated and is buoyed through this trying time by conversations with Ella during visiting hours as well as her magical appearances in his cell. Meanwhile, Ella faces her own struggles, absorbing the weight of so much hate and violence through her ability to hear the thoughts of others, to see the past and the apocalyptic future. Both siblings are also burdened with the fight for freedom, the conflict between rising above the hate and considering the action which may be necessary to fight the injustice.
Onyebuchi packs a lot into this little book. Riot Baby directly confronts decades of police violence by building upon real life events like the well-known beating of Rodney King, as well as nodding to perhaps lesser known, but no less important, events such as the Watts Riots of 1960s Los Angeles and the shooting of Sean Bell in 2006. The use of magical realism has been a popular device in recent fiction that aims to tackle such difficult and important subjects, yet Onyebuchi approaches this in a way all his own. By weaving together history and fantasy, he adroitly demonstrates how racism has been, and continues to be, embedded in the culture of the United States. This technique works quite well to emphasise and sharpen his commentary, while also allowing a glimpse into a not-so-distant dystopian future. A future full of warnings, a sense of imposed control housed inside a beautifully misleading veneer, which will make your skin crawl.
Onyebuchi is a truly skilled world-builder and his juxtaposition of the real and the fantastic, the present and the possible future, is impressive. In relatively few words, he creates such realistic images in the mind of the reader, immersing them in each scene. The narrative builds and builds, digging its claws in ever sharper, drawing the reader to the edge of their seat. The only drawback to this novella is that I wanted more! I could have easily inhaled a book twice as long, as I found myself wanting to know much more about the brave characters he created and the multiple worlds they inhabit.
Riot Baby is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of January 21st 2020. Many thanks to Tor.com Publishing for gifting me this galley. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.
Tochi Onyebuchi is a writer who also works in the tech industry. He has a B.A. from Yale, an MFA in Screenwriting from Tisch, a Masters degree in Global Economic Law from L’institut d’etudes politiques, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. He is also the author of the recently published popular novels Beasts Made of Night and War Girls.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience.
Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella—through visits both mundane and supernatural—tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down.
