When Tochi Onyebuchi realized his acclaimed science fiction and fantasy career had been centrally preoccupied with race, it prompted him to consider his responsibilities as a Black writer in the internet age. In brilliantly crafted essays, Onyebuchi excavates the internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, tracing his online persona back to its origins to explore how both evolved in the ensuing decades. Brimming with voracious curiosity and razor-sharp wit, Racebook is a penetrating meditation on how identity and race are forged in the crucible of being online.

Beginning with the current moment when everything is a matter of dispute, back to Web 1.0’s promises of greater equality and a bright digital future, Onyebuchi deftly examines internet culture and its role in shaping our perception of ourselves, our world, and the potential realities we can envision. From the ever-changing nature of personal writing and free expression, to gaming, manga, fandom, and virtual reality, Racebook considers the internet alongside works of literature both classic and new, asking if our vision for what is possible has really broadened. And given the inequities Black people still face, on and off the page, does the internet only amplify our failures of imagination?

An original investigation of race through the lens of the modern internet age and an affecting journey into the heart of community online, Racebook argues for recognizing the individual behind the binary code that shapes our digital lives. As Onyebuchi asks, “Is this a race book or is it not? Is it either-or? Can it be both-and? Can I?”

Praise for Racebook:

“Poetic and insightful . . . This is a must-read.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Racebook’s essays are filled with nostalgic gaming references, musings on the current state of the internet, social media follies, and a surprising amount of German. Onyebuchi uses his fascinating life story as the backbone for this book, and readers learn as much about his background as they do about how the internet has changed and grown. Recommended for readers who want to examine the internet as it was, is, and will be, and how one person’s unique perspective can elucidate universal truths.”—Booklist, starred review

“Wide-ranging . . . A trenchant essay collection about race and identity online . . . Onyebuchi’s cultural vocabulary is impressive, weaving together references to, among others, Graham Greene, Nas, and Walter Mosley . . . this is a lively and astute read.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Beginning with the adulation of Black cosplayers seizing physical and intellectual properties long coded as white spaces, [Onyebuchi] writes a memoir that contemplates his life online . . . There is personal history throughout, but the essays are global reflections on internet culture more than traditional memoir. Onyebuchi captures several universal moments of a generation growing up online but pushes the narrative further to encompass how it intersected with his offline world.”—Library Journal

“A riotous history of the internet from a nostalgic fan and passionate critic. Tochi Onyebuchi knows that when you enter a world that turns friends into followers, and authenticity into performance, speaking the truth is the only way out. He does it beautifully in this memoir-in-essays, which looks at the pressure of data capitalism on our inner lives and future identities.”— Laila Lalami, author of The Dream Hotel

“Starkly original, provocative and brilliantly executed, Racebook warrants our undivided attention. Onyebuchi is a sage observer of this fractured moment and among the internet’s keenest interlocutors.”—Jelani Cobb, author of Three or More is a Riot and New Yorker Staff Writer

“A love letter to the broken internet: Onyebuchi’s prose glitters and his insights cut in this smart tour through the key junctures at which the internet’s terrible promise and peril revealed themselves.”—Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification and Red Team Blues

“A masterful (auto)biography of imaginative labor in the digital age, spanning his own family histories, Pokémon Go, the Internet’s capacity for psychic injury, Palestine, multiplayer videogames, virtual reality, blogs, global instability and the online social movements they’ve birthed, Tochi Onyebuchi reveals just how thin the veil is between the lives we live IRL and our online worlds. In eleven prodigious essays, Racebook returns us to those early years of the Internet, where everything seemed possible: community, belonging, ways to survive and thrive. Or as he writes, “to take the Internet seriously, is to recognize the parts of it that don’t hurt.” An audit of the faces we project and the reflection the Internet draws of us, Onyebuchi offers a trenchant account of where we’ve been, alongside a roadmap of possibility for where we might go.”—Hafizah Augustus Geter, author of The Black Period

“We are in the best, most absolute trouble, y’all, because Tochi Onyebuchi writes as well as he understands the internet, which means he writes as well as humans run from accountable desire. Racebook is absolutely singular in the history of book-making, and the love shown to Black folks and our internet here is as textured as anything Morrison made. We are in trouble, the best, most uprooting trouble, and I am thankful.”—Kiese Laymon, bestselling author of Long Division and Heavy