Content report card
Riot Baby parent’s guide: what’s inside
LGBTQ+ themes
What it offers
A note for parents
Riot Baby is a powerful speculative fiction novel centered on Black siblings navigating systemic racism and dystopian America. The book addresses police brutality, incarceration, and racial trauma directly and unflinchingly, with intense emotional weight rather than graphic detail. While its themes are mature and its language occasionally crude, the prose is literary and purposeful; it's best suited for mid-to-older teens capable of engaging with complex social commentary and grief.
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From the publisher
An award-winning speculative novel about Black siblings fighting to survive in a dystopian America. Winner of the World Fantasy Award, ALA Alex Award, New England Book Award for Fiction, Ignyte Award, and AABMC Literary Award Ella has a Thing. She sees a classmate grow up to become a caring nurse. A neighbor's son murd... An award-winning speculative novel about Black siblings fighting to survive in a dystopian America. Winner of the World Fantasy Award, ALA Alex Award, New England Book Award for Fiction, Ignyte Award, and AABMC Literary Award Ella has a Thing. She sees a classmate grow up to become a caring nurse. A neighbor's son murdered in a drive-by shooting. 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. " Riot Baby is as much the story of Ella and her brother, Kevin, as it is the story of Black pain in America, of the extent and lineage of police brutality, racism and injustice in this country, written in prose as searing and precise as hot diamonds." — The New York Times "Equal parts provocative and riveting, Riot Baby is what all speculative fiction should strive to be: wholly captivating." — Salon
Shelved under
- Fiction
- American literature
- Fiction, dystopian
- Fiction, science fiction, general
- Racism
- Families
- Revolutions
- Riots
- Nigeria
- United States
- Science fiction (form)
- FICTION / African American
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ISBN 9781250214768 · Macmillan + ORM