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 of1960s Los Angeles and the shooting of Sean Bell in 2006 ... 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 ...
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.
... a damn good story ... To call Riot Baby 'dystopian' is to undersell it ... For BIPOC in a white supremacist society, the dystopia is past, present, and future. And that’s what makes Riot Baby so impressive. Onyebuchi shows a world that is frightening only if you’ve been exempt from mass oppression. For those of us dealing with it every moment of every day, Riot Baby isn’t so much of a warning about what might happen if we aren’t more vigilant and more of a thinkpiece about where we’re already headed ... Onyebuchi could have ended the story on a note of desperation and cynicism; instead he opts for hope. Well, it’s hopeful if you’re BIPOC. Maybe not so much if you like being in power ... With an eviscerating and eloquent style, Tochi Onyebuchi tells a profound story about resistance. The narrative moves from South Central to Harlem to Rikers to Watts and jumps between Ella and Kev as they grow up. This allows Onyebuchi to tell two vast stories with the same concise theme. It’s a clever trick that manages to give this novella a novel-like breadth ... As much as I love his young adult fiction, I hope this is not Tochi Onyebuchi’s only excursion into adult fiction. Riot Baby left me gasping for air and ready to take to the streets.
... a novella that shimmers with Ella’s frustration and desire for justice. Onyebuchi expertly weaves supernatural elements through an all-too-realistic, thrilling story.
Past, present and future clash in this ambitious novella inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and the continuing institutional violence toward young Black men ... The story flows through history, from slavery and the civil rights movement to the modern-day issues of discrimination and mass incarceration. There is a richness and depth to Onyebuchi’s prose that delivers an intricate and textured world at once rife with violence and teeming with familial love. Dystopian stories normally depict an untenable near or future society, but Onyebuchi demonstrates that dystopia for African Americans in the U.S. resides in the recent past and continues today.
... a good book, an angry book, a useful book. It drenches the reader in cold fire: fury and clarity at once, directed not at individuals but at the systems that make life unfair and treacherous for Black people in America. It wobbles a little when it must create and maintain the alternate near-future reality in which its characters abide – the excellent slipperiness of Tochi Onyebuchi’s storytelling means he can’t quite convince the reader that any concrete details are for real – but it remains firm when characterizing people, mood, and events of national significance ... The book performs like a loose collection of vignettes rather than a novel with a linear plot, and thus its novella length works in its favor. Nearly every scene is breathless, immediate; Onyebuchi’s sentences carry power and activity along with their atmosphere and insight ... Without tolerance for this kind of velocity, a reader will not enjoy Riot Baby. But without this kind of velocity, Riot Baby would not have the power it has to communicate accumulated Black anger ... a fiery fictional version of Between the World and Me: a chronicle of injustice, woven through with a deeply personal story about family and strength ... Sometimes the novel’s lyric runs cause confusion ... a phenomenal, explosive little novel, one that folks of all races ought to read and consider. In the widest view, Riot Baby speaks the truth of Black oppression and injustice; in the smallest view, it uses compression and craft to render the reader breathless.
Onyebuchi... paints a grim, dystopian portrait of contemporary America shot through with elements of the supernatural in this urgent, brutal work ... Onyebuchi’s unexpectedly hopeful ending is just as powerful as his unflinching, heartbreaking depictions of racism and cruelty. This staggering story is political speculative fiction at its finest.