Riot Baby (2019)

 

I often get really interested in what guests on The Daily Show are promoting, but it seems I only ever seek them out when they’re movies. I’m trying to branch out with that more, and I’m starting with Tochi Onyebuchi’s YA novel Riot Baby. This intense story of two siblings exploring their power in a world stacked against them is both engrossing and affecting (premise spoilers.)

From a young age, Ella is blessed/cursed with a Thing. It begins as visions, seeing how people are going to die someday (and as a little Black girl growing up in the hood, those visions are often brutal,) but it expands into telekinesis, telepathy, astral projection, and much more. As she grows up, she splits her time between developing/expanding her powers and trying to keep people from discovering them. But if she could use them, out in the open and without fear, she’d use them on behalf her younger brother Kev, who’s growing into a young Black man in a world that offers little safety or comfort for the likes of him.

First off, I like how the superhuman elements of the story are woven through the plot in such a non-comic-book way. The superpower stuff reminds me a little of the family in Fast Color. Ella doesn’t wear a costume or go around solving crimes, and her powers seem to get in her way as often as they help. Instead, her story is more about living with them, learning how to control them without accidentally hurting people, and feeling powerless to protect Kev despite her own incredible power. Likewise, the futuristic tech stuff in the second half is introduced so organically, it took me a second to sort out what was made up and what actually exists today.

As such, these superhuman elements then become vehicles through which to explore the characters and their relationships. Ella, Kevin, and their mother are all really well-drawn characters, even as the story takes place over decades and they all grow and change. I love scenes like Ella trying to use her powers to give Kev moments of respite amid a hard situation, or Ella’s mother making space to let Ella’s telepathy discover more about their family history.

This is a challenging book, one that resists easy resolutions or clear moral choices. The characters wrestle with what to do. They make plans, and they lose hope. They fight back, and they give up. They offer grace, and they fill with rage. And because the story weaves in superpowers without any sort of typical superhero storyline, it’s a book where real-world oppression is depicted in detail alongside imagined powers, rather than one where comic-book marginalized identities serve as a metaphor in a story inspired by real-world oppression.

Warnings

Violence (including racial violence,) language (including the N-word,) drinking/smoking/drug use, and strong thematic elements.