From Tochi Onyebuchi, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” published June 1, 2020 on tor.com:
On my back porch, I held my phone in my lap and I watched that precinct burn and I saw those fireworks light up the night sky and I thought, “good.”
And something of this is in my book, I remember thinking at the time. A book where a black boy can hurt and get older and be smart and be sad and want to escape occupation and fail and have a family, and where having written it felt less like writing and more like paying witness. And this boy had a sister and she was be capable of unimaginable things. She wanted to save him from this. And she was able to fly.
On Minnehaha Avenue South, bounded by Interstates 35 W and 94 on the west and north respectively and by the Mississippi River to the east, beneath a flowerhead of fireworks was a police precinct ablaze.
I knew that image. It was in my book.
I read this book and watched a world burn, and thought, good. I look at the news and watch a world burn, and think, good.
It’s time.