Reflecting Racism and Police Brutality in Tochi Onyebuchi’s riot baby

Abstract

The need to present a new future or a vision that defies all stereotypes and questions how things are structured and told has grown due to historical slavery, current police brutality, and prejudice against African Americans. Afrofuturism may be the solution to seeing a different future and a new course that is established, created, and explained by African Americans. Although it aims to give black people in the future a better alternative, it also captures all of the problems that African Americans confront in daily life. An important artistic and cultural trend that has a big impact on modern civilization is Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism, which is based on the experiences of Black people, combines science fiction, fantasy, and technological aspects to imagine alternate worlds that subvert established myths and give underrepresented voices more power. In addition to providing a forum for artistic expression, this movement also helps to reimagine the past and the present in order to create a future that values equality, justice, and freedom for Black communities. The goal of the essay is to use Afrofuturism to analyze contemporary themes in Tochi Onyebuchi's novella Riot Baby. Beginning in Compton, California, USA, Riot Baby explores issues like racism, police violence, gang banging, and many others. The thing Ella has. She observes a former classmate blossom into a kind nurse. A drive-by gunshot killed the neighbor's son. Things that have not yet occurred. Ella has a Thing. She sees the future of her classmates and neighbors, Things that haven't happened yet. Kev, born while Los Angeles burned around them, wants to protect his sister from a power that could destroy her. But when Kev is incarcerated, Ella must decide what it means to watch her brother suffer while holding the ability to wreck cities in her hands. Rooted in the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is as much an intimate family story as a global dystopian narrative. It burns fearlessly toward revolution and has quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience. Ella and Kev are both shockingly human and immeasurably powerful. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by racism. Their futures might alter the world.