BIPOC Lit – Page 29 – Trigger Warning Database

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw. The Mage… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Slavery
Rape recounted
Alcohol consumption
Hospitalisation
Emesis
Physical injuries
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a mother in a car accident
Loss of autonomy (possession, mind control & memory manipulation)

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

Obasan is the moving story of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, told through the eyes of a child. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, five-year-old Naomi’s life is changed forever. Separated from her mother, she watches bewildered as she and her family become enemy aliens, persecuted and despised in their own land.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Paedophilia & child sexual abuse

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

Kyuri is a beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a “room salon,” an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood. Her roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea’s biggest companies. Down the hall in their apartment building… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Cheating*
Parental abandonment
Body dysmorphia
Suicide & suicidal ideation
Alcoholism
Mutism
Pregnancy
Miscarriage
Cancer
Emesis
Surgery recounted & discussed
Murder of sex workers discussed
Physical assault, on- & off-page

*Context : Miho’s boyfriend is engaged to another woman and cheats on her with a sex worker.

Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang

Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang

It’s 1966, and twelve-year-old Ji-li Jiang has everything a girl could want: brains, friends, and a bright future in Communist China. But it’s also the year that China’s leader, Mao Ze-dong, launches the Cultural Revolution—and Ji-li’s world begins to fall apart. Over the next few years, people who were once her friends and neighbors turn on her and her family, forcing them to live in constant terror of arrest. When Ji-li’s father is finally imprisoned, she faces the most difficult dilemma of her life..

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Classism
Depression
Suicide & suicidal ideation
Torture
Home invasion
Bullying

The Best Man’s Problem by Sera Taíno

The Best Man’s Problem by Sera Taíno

His sister’s wedding isn’t the ideal place for Rafael Navarro to reconnect with the man he kissed in a moment of reckless abandon. But it’s impossible to avoid best man Étienne Galois! The gorgeous Haitian photographer hasn’t forgotten the intimate moment they shared, even if Rafi is the most maddening person he’s ever met. Can the two find common ground, proving opposites not only attract—they can become lovers for life?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Alcohol consumption

Fever by Deon Meyer

Fever by Deon Meyer

Nico Storm and his father Willem drive a truck filled with essential supplies through a desolate land. They are among the few in South Africa–and the world, as far as they know–to have survived a devastating virus which has swept through the country. Their world turned upside down, Nico realizes that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father’s protector, even though he is still only a boy. But Willem Storm, though not a fighter, is both a thinker and a leader, a wise and compassionate man with a vision for a new community that survivors will rebuild from the ruins. And so Amanzi is founded… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Child abuse
Suicide
Medical epidemic
Death of a parent
Murder
Gun violence
War themes
Animal cruelty

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon is on trial for murder. A Harlem drugstore owner was shot and killed in his store, and the word is that Steve served as the lookout. Guilty or innocent, Steve becomes a pawn in the hands of “the system,” cluttered with cynical authority figures and unscrupulous inmates, who will turn in anyone to shorten their own sentences. For the first time, Steve is forced to think about who he is as he faces prison, where he may spend all the tomorrows of his life. As a way of coping with the horrific events that entangle him, Steve, an amateur filmmaker, decides… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Rape
Drug use
Dead body mentioned
Murder

Tags by Walter Dean Myers

Tags by Walter Dean Myers

Four New York City teens are shot down in the prime of life. They move through limbo, re-creating their distinctive tags in a Harlem walk-up so that they can “live” forever. But what’s the point? How can you think of living forever if you’re already dead? From Walter Dean Myers, the New York Times bestselling author of Monster, comes an all-new 20-page one-act play. Tags is a look at life and death in New York City, complete with a shocking end.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism & racial slurs

Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

Escaping Exodus is a story of a young woman named Seske Kaleigh, heir to the command of a biological, city-size starship carved up from the insides of a spacefaring beast. Her clan has just now culled their latest ship and the workers are busy stripping down the bone work for building materials, rerouting the circulatory system for mass transit, and preparing the cavernous creature for the onslaught of the general populous still in stasis. It’s all a part of the cycle her clan had instituted centuries ago—excavate the new beast, expand into its barely-living car… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Slavery
Body horror

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the evil Obsidian gods at bay. Ten semidioses between the ages of thirteen and eighteen are selected by Sol himself as the most worthy to compete in The Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all―they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body used to fuel the Sun Stones that will protect the people of Reino del Sol for the next ten years. Teo, a 17-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of Quetzal, goddess of birds, has never worried about… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Blood & injury depiction
Death of a parent
House fire
Bullying