Riot Baby

I have to confess: I liked it better when the story centered around Ella as in the very beginning. Still, if your title is Riot Baby, it is good to base your story on the person who was born during the riots following the Rodney King verdict.This book can be unsettling at times. Besides the raw emotion it contains (I was not raised to be comfortable with the F-word and it still takes me out of the story when I encounter it), I also felt somewhat displaced in time. It starts in the past in what is definitely our past but when the characters are adults, it feels too futuristic and technologically advanced to be our world. I also found the shifts in writing somewhat off-putting. I don't mind change of POV between characters, but when chapters are suddenly in present tense instead of a more typical narrative-style past tense, it clashes for me.So Ella is the big sister of Kev (Kevin), the riot baby. Ella is special. She has powers - powers which seem pretty endless in parts of the book. They're mostly mind-based. We see her as a young girl whose secret must be hidden, then suddenly we see both her and her brother as adults.We don't get much of the story of Kevin's childhood, but we can piece together pieces. Their mother worked herself ragged trying to provide for them. Ella seemed able to take care of herself, but Kev evidently fell in with young men who got him involved with illegal activities and he wound up in prison.The prison section is hard to read as Onyebuchi writes of the treatment of the prisoners. This isn't quite our earth, but it's still a place where black lives don't seem to matter. It's probably Ella which keeps Kev sane through all of this - although Ella by now is almost a hallucination. I wasn't always clear when she was visiting him in the flesh and when she was visiting astrally projecting.I'm rambling. This is a book to ponder. Onyebuchi's writing is compelling - he draws you in. His characters feel very real as do the emotions he portrays. It won't ever be my favorite book, but I think it's one I'm going to need to come back to and revisit from time to time.

As someone who grew in a unhealthy environment I can say that this book is a great representation of the trials and ordeals that someone from a "unsavory" neighborhood endures. There is a clear and present vision of the trials black society has endured through the eyes of a super powered individual; however there isn't a clear prose. The story consistently left me wondering why I was reading about the ordeals of the past instead of about the characters in this story. More consistently then I care to admit I was left wondering who the narrator of this chapter was and more importantly why I should care about these characters at all. While very vivid in it's clear and focused depiction of our most horrid American history the relevance of history to our main characters seems to me no more than agitprop at it's finest.

“Riot Baby” isn’t really about Ella and her magical “Thing”, nor is it about, as the synopsis suggests, the revolution for racial equality in this barely alternate and vaguely more futuristic version of America. I say that because the events that define Kev—the actual Riot Baby—like the LA riot of 1992, and the police brutality aimed primarily at Black communities is all very real, and in Ella and Kev’s world, only taken to a slightly bigger level by the futuristic technology and weaponry the police use to terrorize these communities. This book is really about the anger felt with structural racism and brutality shown through the lens of an intimate family view of those who suffer under such conditions. Ella, her mom, and brother Kev are all just trying to live, but that becomes almost impossible with how America treats its Black citizens. This book is written in such a beautiful, raw, and angry tone which demands readers to confront systematic racial injustice head on. This novella evokes so many emotions and is crafted in really a magnificent way—Onyebuchi is a masterful writer! But story wise? I had a really hard time connecting.Ella’s Thing, her super powers, are incredible and seem pretty limitless, and because of that, they aren’t really defined. Ella can kind of do anything—she can burn cities to the ground if she wants to. But she’s trapped in her own kind of mental prison fueled by the anger she feels and injustice she sees and experiences, that she can’t/doesn’t really DO anything beyond seeing other’s past and future. But with that kind of power I’d expect her Thing to impact the plot of the book in some way, but it doesn’t, not really, outside of being used to zoom out of this otherwise very personal view to show the reader it’s not just this family that is treated unfairly. Plus the timeline jumps around a lot and the POV shifts pretty rapidly sometimes between Ella and Kev. So I spent a lot of this book trying to interpret Ella’s Thing, and figure out if what was happening was a vision of the past, present, future, or something that was actually happening to Ella or Kev.The portrayal of this slightly alternate and futuristic world is brutal and unyielding. The language is raw and full of emotion. So many scenes are incredibly detailed and extremely uncomfortable, that it really encapsulates Ella’s rage and passes it on to the reader. And while painful, it’s incredible. The way the author structures these long, run on sentences to capture the raw emotions of the characters, even of those that Ella sees the future for, is an important gut-punch to be sure. But this novella is more a collection of experiences loosely tied together by Ella and Kev. The story is their survival in a system meant to tear them down, lock them away, and kill them. Ella’s Thing is a bit unnecessary to the plot and while really cool, detracted, I felt, from the authentic experiential aspects of the book.The messages in this book are important, and the care and craft that the author uses to bring them about are great, but I think I was expecting more of a “traditional” story when I first started reading this, something more science-fiction and fantasy like some of the authors other books, then the literary fiction this turned out to be. Which probably means I wasn’t in the correct headspace to maybe enjoy or grasp everything this novella packs within its pages. So don’t let my 3.5 star rating fool you, I would absolutely recommend this to literary fiction fans, the subject matter is as timely as it is poignant and powerful. But I personally had a hard time connecting and I was always left wanting more from Ella’s Thing, and was struggling at times with how often the story jumped and moved around from POV’s and timelines. However, I’ll be keeping this novella in my mind and on my shelves as it may be one of those books that I read again later, however, and can then enjoy a great deal more.

This book took my breath away. Imagine if the pain and rage of a typical Black American family in the late 20th century could find a supernatural outlet through the eyes of a child -- would it destroy worlds or build them? Save a family or devastate it? Perhaps both? This book pulls no punches. Imagine if Octavia Butler had tried to write "Raisin in the Sun" and you might approach the impression this book made on me.(The only change I would wish for is a glossary to the slang used early in the book. Kev's conversations with his friends were almost incomprehensible to me, and I'd really like to understand more of what they were talking about.)I look forward to reading more by this author!