It took me awhile to get into Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, or really, to figure out what was going on. But once I did get into this novella, it was a look at life for African Americans in recent decades through the experiences of a single family, united by a sort of magic/psychic power that allows them to see scenes from the past.
It's hard to really summarize, though, because reading it is a big part of the experience. For instance, the bits of narrative alternate between times and places in a way that feels jarring at first, but I think Onyebuchi's deeper point is that the past is never just the past.
As we continue tiresome Culture War disputes about how to teach US history (most recently around the bogeyman of "critical race theory"), stories like Riot Baby remind us that the past lives within us, and it's up to us to figure how how to respond to the injustices of the past without ignoring or downplaying them.
Some reviewers have remarked that this is an angry book. I suppose it is, but as the author says in his acknowledgements he learned from N. K. Jemisin how to write "angry that still leaves room for love."
As a white American it's most definitely not my place to tell African Americans whether to be angry. I would be surprised if African Americans weren't angry given the past and present of the US. But this novella gives a lot to think about when it comes to what to do with anger, the past, the present, and the future. This is not always an easy novella to read, but the questions it asks are difficult questions.
I'm still not sure how I'll vote in the Hugo novella category, but this one is definitely in the running.
See also my Goodreads review.
No comments:
Post a Comment