Tag: Tochi Onyebuchi

Each year, the Alex Award committee works to select ten titles published for adult readers that might have special appeal to young adults, ages 12-18. One of the 2021 selections is Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi.

Riot Baby is a slim novel, but it is loaded with powerful references, images, and questions centered around Ella and her younger brother, Kev, born during the 1992 riots in L.A. following the acquittal of the officers involved in the beating of Rodney King. Employing plenty of magical realism, Onyebuchi builds fully-fleshed characters with the barest of strokes – an art and a magic all its own. As Ella grapples with her Thing (unexplained powers that she works to harness through the book) and Kev grapples with the distance between who he is and who the world thinks he will be, we see through them glimpses of our past and visions of a possible future, one where freedom means something for all. 

This book will leave readers reeling (in the best ways), and this incredible interview with author Tochi Onyebuchi is likely to do the same. We are indebted to Tochi for his words and work.

THE HUB: A drumbeat making itself heard underneath the whole book is anger – who feels it, who’s allowed to show it, how it might manifest. And in your acknowledgments, you write of the gift you received from N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, saying “I did not know how to write angry, the type of angry that still leaves room for love.” What does anger offer you as a writer? And what do you hope it offers your readers?