Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
The thing Ella has. She observes a former classmate blossom into a kind nurse. A drive-by gunshot killed the neighbour’s son. Things that have not yet occurred. Kev wants to shield his sister from a force that could kill her. He was born when Los Angeles burnt everything around them. Ella will have to determine what it means to see her brother suffer while having the power to destroy cities when Kev is put behind bars.
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
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Riot Baby is a global dystopian novel that is also rooted in the idea that hope can exist in fury. It has quietly terrible things to say about love, wrath, and the black experience in America as it burns fearlessly toward revolution. Ella and Kev are both incredibly flawed yet enormously strong. Racism defines and ruins their formative years. The world may be changed by them in the future.
The book Riot Baby by Nigerian-American author Tochi Onyebuchi is incredibly potent. It is incredible. It is, in some ways, a superhero tale that literally expresses strength, helplessness, and rage and enables us to see and view racial injustice in America in a way that, in my opinion, few other works have been able to do.
The amazing and seemingly unlimited nature of Ella’s Thing, her superpowers, prevents them from being clearly defined. Ella is capable of almost anything; if she so chooses, she could burn entire towns to the ground. She can’t or doesn’t truly DO anything beyond viewing other people’s history and future because she is imprisoned in a mental prison of her own, fuelled by the rage she feels and the injustice she witnesses and experiences. But given her level of influence, I would have expected her Thing to have some bearing on the story’s development. Instead, it serves only to zoom out of the otherwise intensely personal perspective and demonstrate to the reader that unfair treatment of other families is a widespread problem.
Additionally, there are many time jumps and occasionally quick POV switches between Ella and Kev. In order to understand Ella’s Thing, I spent a lot of time attempting to determine whether what was happening was a vision of the past, present, or future or something that was truly happening to Ella or Kev.
This slightly futuristic and parallel universe is portrayed as ruthless and unforgiving. The words are frank and loaded with feelings. It definitely captures Ella’s wrath and transfers it to the reader because so many situations are exceedingly vivid and painful. And even though it hurts, it’s amazing.
