Riot Baby

The book had two main characters, Ella and Kevin, who grow up while black in the USA. Ella has special powers that Onyebochi called the "Thing". Kevin goes to prison at Rikers, gets thrown into solitary confinement a few times and then eventually moved to a community. This is where the book gets a bit futuristic because the community's members are all out on parole with no human parole officer. Instead they have chips in their thumbs that act as a GPS, keycard to their house and a bio-regulator that can give them medications if their readings are not in the normal parameters. Dispersed in between Kevin's prison sentence is Ella learning how to use her powers and she also visits him from time to time.

I found the book a bit confusing because the transitions are not smooth and I had to go back a couple of times in order to realise that there was a jump in the story or that the characters had move into a new setting.
Ella's powers seem to be used to describe the events of the past that have lead to the discontentment that Blacks have with being black in a country that is racist at its core. The book is sci-fi but touches on real race disparities that exists today. For example,

Ella shows me the doctors who looked down on Mama, this woman they were supposed to care for, with such disdain. With such disgust. Feeding her the wrong medicine. They didn't care whether she lived or died.

There are plenty of statistics that show minority mothers' pains and concerns being ignored or dismissed. In one scene, Ella sees black prisoners used as entertainment in a rodeo where they get mauled to death. Ella sees/feels many different events because her "thing" makes her able to see/feel other people's thoughts. This collective memory that Ella has of all these different stories build the narrative of how unfair and unjust it is to be black in America.

A big theme in the book was structural racism. It was shown how it leads to over policing of minorities therefore more of the minorities are the ones who end up in jail. It highlights how frustrating it is to attempt to change the system that at its foundation biased. One quote states,

"As the police board tries in vain to explain upgrades to the algorithm that has been powering their policing, the algorithm developed in conjunction with extremely smart people in Silicon Valley, and that has helped reduce crime in the South Side by 19 percent, 'But that's raised the number of black boys you lock up with pretext by 200 percent,' another black woman shouts back."

The board tries to hide behind the science and doesn't want to address the human element to the problem. In Riot Baby, there's vivid descriptions of how what it's like to deal with all of the aggressions minorities face. I think it can be the springboard of discussions that can lead to greater social change in the future.

4 Stars
I feel like I would have read this much quicker if adulting did not get in the way.
This was a really interesting dystopia with a magical twist.

Welp, that was intense.