Riot Baby: A short, intense, emotionally draining novel

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby (2020), a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, and Hugo Awards for Best Novella, is a mind-expanding story about growing up Black in America. Kevin, the titular “riot baby,” was born in South Central Los Angeles during the riots of 1992 which were sparked by the acquittal of the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King after a traffic stop turned into a high-speed chase.

Before Kevin is born, Onyebuchi sets the scene by introducing Ella, Kev’s big sister. As a child, before the family moves to Harlem, we see Ella witnessing gang activity as she rides the school bus through South Central Los Angeles. On a day when it’s too hot to be inside, we see her watching a woman she calls her grandmother sweep bullet casings off the driveway as a pitbull barks next door and gangbangers loiter around the corner. Ella has a “Thing”: she has a vague sense of things that are going to happen to people in the future, and she knows that the future is not bright for boys who live in her neighborhood.

Next, we meet Kevin as a teenager – a smart, bookish boy who has a crush on a girl who works in a local market. Kev has plans to go to college and to develop a meaningful career, but it’s hard to stay on the right path when you live in a neighborhood where the cops are constantly monitoring you, questioning you, assuming you’re up to no good, and pushing you around. The resentment is palpable and the ensuing friction often leads to minor offenses which begin to accumulate and escalate.

Eventually Kevin ends up in jail on Rikers Island, an abusive, soul-destroying place where humans go to have their hopes for the future completely extinguished. After several years in prison, Kev is paroled to an experimental program that at first seems luxurious but turns out to be just another type of prison.

By this time Ella, who has spent years traveling, training, and thinking about all of the injustice she sees, has developed a bevy of supernatural powers, and she plans to use them to blow up the system that has ruined her brother.

Tochi Onyebuchi

Riot Baby is a short, intense novel that left me emotionally drained. The subject matter itself is challenging and so is the novella’s format. Onyebuchi uses multiple viewpoints, a non-linear narrative, and occasional sketchy, abstract scenes that evoke a feeling of impending doom.

I understand Onyebuchi’s purpose for Ella (she’s a Moses type of figure), and I loved her fierce protectiveness of her family, as well as her insights about race disparities in policing and the judicial system, but some of her scenes are confusing, and her immense power seems limitless. I would have preferred to read Kevin’s important story in a non-fantasy version.

Riot Baby is at its best when we’re with Kevin, seeing him and his friends being constantly monitored and hassled by the police and, because the assumption that they’re criminals makes them eventually become criminals, falling victim to the racism that inhabits all of the systems they encounter. As a white middle-aged soccer mom who has always lived either in a suburb or on/near a college campus, I know that black people have endured these indignities, threats, and crimes for hundreds of years, but the experience of feeling this harassment, objectification, and lack of empathy through Kevin’s POV was meaningful to me and something I’ll take away from Riot Baby.

Blackstone Audio’s edition of Riot Baby is narrated by Tochi Onyebuchi himself – an excellent decision by the author and publisher. It’s less than four hours long – a quick read that I recommend. Kevin’s all-too-familiar story is one that should be read, especially by those of us who have not lived it ourselves.