Racebook

- A successful and groundbreaking author in the science fiction space now delivers a smart, incisive, and innovative nonfiction book exploring the evolution of the Internet and its impact on his own identity and other people of color.- Incisive commentary on the evolution of the Internet. Mining his own personal experiences, Onyebuchi critically examines the history of the Internet—from the false promise of Web 1.0 and its utopic vision of a democratic online space to now in Web 3.0 when everything is a selling point and data being farmed by a large corporation.- Cultural criticism for a wide readership. The essays are in conversation with Gene Demby and contemporary journalism on race and racial violence while also engaging with literary greats like William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, and August Villiers, and expanding our conception of the “Internet novel” via Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler and Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This. It will also appeal to fans and readers of Zadie Smith, Jia Tolentino, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Phoebe Robinson.- A fascinating and nuanced examination of gaming: Looking at some of the most popular and successful video games of the last thirty years—from The Last of Us, Pokémon Go, Call of Duty, and GTA III, to Gears of War, and FromSoft—as well as movies like Blade Runner 2049, Onyebuchi explores the sociocultural discourse that surrounds video games and their perceived impact, arguing that they foster solidarity and create online spaces that build friendship and community. - Onyebuchi is an award-winning writer: Riot Baby was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Awards and winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction, the Ignyte Award for Best Novella, and the World Fantasy Award.- Offers valuable insight into digital communities: Joining the conversation begun in Everything I Need I Get From You by Kaitlyn Tiffany's, Racebook also explores the positive aspects of fandoms and online communities, while simultaneously examining the megalomaniacal impulses of the technological giants who own the platforms that make these communities possible, most notably Mark Zuckerberg at Meta. - An unflinching examination of being a Black American online: Onyebuchi adds literary nuance and expands on existing ideas of online identity development, with an emphasis on how the Internet impacts racial identity and the unseen labor of writers of color in the online world that builds on Taylor Lorenz's Extremely Online. Without taking on a journalistic tone, Onyebuchi interacts with contemporary journalism to humanize and illustrate the people behind the data we take for granted.- Racebook explodes the idea of the “race writer”: the idea that Black writers have a responsibility to speak for their race and portray it only positively has been with us as long as Black authors have been publishing. Onyebuchi examines this concept in light of digital culture and the weaponization and market exploitation of identity. - Onyebuchi authored Marvel Comics' 2022-2023 comic book, Captain America: Symbol of Truth.- The longform nonfiction fans have been waiting for: Onyebuchi has a nonfiction monograph from Fiction Advocates' “Afterwords” series titled (S)kinfolk, which details his journey of racial identity self-actualization through a mix of memoir and cultural criticism to find connections between Africans and Black Americans. His short nonfiction has previously been published in the New York Times, NPR, the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, and Tor.com, a key destination online for the core audience.- Tochi Onyebuchi is a well-connected author: he has previously received blurbs from R.F. Kuang, Leigh Bardugo, Marlon James, Daniel José Older, Hanif Abdurraqib, Kiersten White, Mark Oshiro, Elizabeth Bear, Fran Wilde, and K.B. Wagers and we expect this book to be well-received as well.- This is the third nonfiction book published by Roxane Gay Books, one of the most talked-about new imprint launches of recent years. Roxane will be putting her support behind every book she publishes, and is the author of several books, including the national bestseller Bad Feminist and the New York Times bestseller Hunger. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda. Roxane has over 900k followers on Twitter, 320k followers on Instagram, and 110k followers on Facebook.

Tochi Onyebuchi is the Hugo and NAACP Image Award finalist and author of Goliath, Riot Baby, the Beasts Made of Night series, and the War Girls series. He was the writer on Marvel Comics' “Captain America: Symbol of Truth” series (2022-2023) and the Black Panther Legends run (2021-2022). He was also part of the writing team behind Activision's Call of Duty: Vanguard. His nonfiction includes the book (S)kinfolk and has appeared in the New York Times, NPR, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among other places. He has earned degrees from Yale University, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia Law School, and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. He currently resides in Connecticut.