Category Archives: BIPOC Lit

How to Say Goodbye in Cuban by Daniel Miyares

The year is 1957. Carlos lives with his family in Ceiba Mocha, a small town in the Cuban countryside. He loves to play baseball with his best friend, Alvaro, and to shoot home-made slingshots with his abuelo. One day, a miracle Carlos’ father, his papi, wins the lottery! He uses the money to launch his growing furniture business and to move the family to a big house in the city. Carlos hates having to move – hates leaving Abuelo and Alvaro behind – and hates being called country kid at his new school. But the pains of moving and middle school turn out to be the least of his… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Gun violence
  • Cuban Revolution (theme)
  • Bullying

The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze by Derrick Barnes

In the small town of Great Mountain, Mississippi, all eyes are on Henson Blayze, a thirteen-year-old football phenom who many have wondered if he was super-human. The predominately white townsfolk have been waiting for Henson to play high-school ball, and now they’re overjoyed to finally possess an elite Black athlete of their own. Until a horrifying incident forces Henson to speak out about injustice. Until he says that he might not play football anymore. Until he quickly learns he isn’t as loved by the people as he thought. In that moment, Henson’s town is divided in… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Hospitalisation & medical content
  • Police brutality & lynching

All the Fighting Parts by Hannah V. Sawyerr

Sixteen-year-old Amina Conteh has always believed in using her tongue as her weapon—even when it gets her into trouble. After cursing at a classmate, her father forces her to volunteer at their church with Pastor Johnson. But Pastor Johnson isn’t the holy man everyone thinks he is. The same voice Amina uses to fight falls quiet the night she is sexually assaulted by Pastor Johnson. After that, her life starts to unravel: her father is frustrated that her grades are slipping, and her best friend and boyfriend don’t understand why the once loud and proud girl is now quiet and… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape of a minor by a member of the protagonist’s church community 
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother by immolation discussed

Truth Is by Hannah V. Sawyerr

Seventeen-year-old poet Truth Bangura begins senior year unsure of life after graduation, but when she learns she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, she makes one decision she is sure about—an abortion. When Truth performs a poem about her decision and her emotionally turbulent home life, the performance is recorded and posted online for everyone to see—including her mother.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Emotional child abuse
  • Familial estrangement
  • Teen pregnancy & abortion
  • Emesis

Age 16 by Samuel Teer & Mar Julia

Sixteen-year-old Roz is preoccupied with normal teenage navigating high school friendships, worrying about college, and figuring out what to wear to prom. When her estranged Por Por abruptly arrives for a seemingly indefinite visit, the already delicate relationship between Roz and her mother is upended. With three generations under one roof, conflicts inevitably arise and long suppressed family secrets rise to the surface. Told in alternating perspectives, Age 16 shifts seamlessly between time and place, exploring how this pivotal year in adolescence… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Sexism & racism
  • Domestic abuse recounted
  • Fatphobia & body-shaming
  • Eating disorder (anorexia) & disordered eating. including starvation & binge-eating
  • Teen pregnancy

Brownstone by Samuel Teer & Mar Julia

Almudena has always wondered about the dad she never met. Now, with her white mother headed on a once-in-a-lifetime trip without her, she’s left alone with her Guatemalan father for an entire summer. Xavier seems happy to see her, but he expects her to live in (and help fix up) his old, broken-down brownstone. And all along, she must navigate the language barrier of his rapid-fire Spanish—which she doesn’t speak. As Almudena tries to adjust to this new reality, she gets to know the residents of Xavier’s Latin American neighborhood. Each member of the… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & lesbophobia
  • Parental abandonment
  • Minor physical injury
  • Gentrification

Tall Water by S.J. Sindu and Dion MBD

Ever since she turned sixteen, Nimmi has wanted to see her mother. Though she has a loving but overprotective father and a budding relationship, she yearns to travel to Sri Lanka to confront the mother who refused to leave the island during a war, not even for Nimmi’s sake. Her father is going back for the first time as a reporter on assignment, but he refuses to take her, deeming Sri Lanka too dangerous. But then Nimmi’s mother appears to her in a dream, asking her to come find her, and Nimmi knows she must go. Her father is livid when he sees her at baggage claim, but by then… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment
  • Tsunami (on-page)

This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki & Nicole Goux

At Wilberton Academy, few students are more revered than the members of the elite Wilberton Theatrical Society—a.k.a. the WTS—and no one represents that exclusive club better than Elizabeth Woodward. Breathtakingly beautiful, beloved by all, and a talented thespian, it’s no surprise she’s starring as Juliet in the WTS’s performance of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy. But when she’s found dead the morning after opening night, the whole school is thrown into chaos. Transfer student Abby Kita was one of the last people to see Elizabeth alive, and when local authorities… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Sexual assault of a minor & grooming
  • Suicide
  • Bullying

Halfway There by Christine Mari

Christine has always felt she is just Half American, half Japanese. As a biracial Japanese American who was born in Tokyo but raised in the US, she knows all too well what it’s like to be a part of two different worlds but never feeling as though you belong to either. Now on the brink of adulthood, Christine decides it’s time to return to the place she once called home. So she sets forth on a year abroad in Tokyo, believing that this is where she truly belongs. After years of feeling like an outsider, now she will finally be complete. Except…Tokyo isn’t the answer she thought it… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Depression (protagonist) & panic attacks
  • Suicidal ideation &attempted suicide
  • Self-harm

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

On a hot day in 1960s Maine, six-year-old Joe watches his little sister Ruthie, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of the blueberry fields, while their family, Mi’kmaq people from Nova Scotia, pick fruit. That afternoon, Ruthie vanishes without a trace. As the last person to see her, Joe will be forever haunted by grief, guilt, and the agony of imagining how his life could have been. In an affluent suburb nearby, Norma is growing up as the only child of unhappy parents. She is smart, precocious, and bursting with questions she isn’t allowed to ask – questions about her… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Miscarriage (late term)
  • Cancer