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vintagejesskuh 's review for:
Riot Baby
by Tochi Onyebuchi
A deeply unsettling book because the issues within—racism, generational trauma, police brutality, mass incarceration—are so pervasive, largely unavoidable, and have no end in sight. All you can do as you see our protagonist fall victim to those issues and fall into that chasm is scream "no!" and hope he'll be able to somehow claw his way out of it. The magical realism somehow adds both a thread of lightheartedness (if our black protagonists could actually wield power against the societal wrongs that persecute them) and darkness (if that power is untrained, unfocused, and fueled by rage). Perhaps in the end the only thing you can control is the way you view yourself and those around you. "When you have purpose that doesn’t involve hurting someone else, it changes the way you walk."