BIPOC Lit – Page 52 – Trigger Warning Database

Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao

Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao

Zachary Ying never had many opportunities to learn about his Chinese heritage. His single mom was busy enough making sure they got by, and his schools never taught anything except Western history and myths. So Zack is woefully unprepared when he discovers he was born to host the spirit of the First Emperor of China for a vital mission: sealing the leaking portal to the Chinese underworld before the upcoming Ghost Month blows it wide open… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism
Murder
Genocide
Blackmail
Loss of autonomy (possession)
Bullying

Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi

Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi and illustrated by Noa Denmon

Okoye is a new recruit for T’Chaka’s royal guard: the Dora Milaje. Known for their loyalty and warrior abilities, the Dora are respected and revered in Okoye’s home country of Wakanda. But when Okoye is sent on her very first mission—to America—she’ll learn that her status as a Dora means nothing to New Yorkers and her expectations for the world outside of her own quickly fall apart. Chosen to accompany King T’Chaka on a humanitarian mission, Okoye finds herself trying to help teens dealing with addiction and gentrification in a forgotten neighbourhood in Brooklyn.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Arson

The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of the millions trapped by a secretive and brutal totalitarian regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”?… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Human trafficking
Forced sex work
Suicide mentioned
Famine & starvation
Executions
Imprisonment
Fire
Refugee experience
Death of a pet

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Suicide

Dear Girls by Ali Wong

Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong

In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, an eight-month pregnant Ali Wong resonated so heavily that she became a popular Halloween costume. Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Miscarriage

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo,

Kim Ji-young is the most common name for Korean women born in the 1980s. Kim Ji-young is representative of her generation: At home, she is an unfavoured sister to her princeling little brother. In primary school, she is a girl who has to line up behind the boys at lunchtime. In high school, she is a daughter whose father blames her for being harassed late at night. In university, she is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships by her professor. In the office, she is an exemplary employee who is overlooked for promotion by her manager. At home, she is a wife who has given up her career to take care… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Alcoholism
Depression
Pregnancy & childbirth
Miscarriage mentioned
Abortion mentioned
Bullying

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Nikki lives in cosmopolitan West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she’s spent most of her twenty-odd years distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood, preferring a more independent (that is, Western) life. When her father’s death leaves the family financially strapped, Nikki, a law school dropout, impulsively takes a job teaching a “creative writing” course at the community centre in the beating heart of London’s close-knit Punjabi community… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Homomisia
Murder

One Piece, Volume 1 by Eiichiro Oda

One Piece, Volume 1: Romance Dawn by Eiichiro Oda

A new shonen sensation in Japan, this series features Monkey D. Luffy, whose main ambition is to become a pirate. Eating the Gum-Gum Fruit gives him strange powers but also invokes the fruit’s curse: anybody who consumes it can never learn to swim. Nevertheless, Monkey and his crewmate Roronoa Zoro, master of the three-sword fighting style, sail the Seven Seas of swashbuckling adventure in search of the elusive treasure “One Piece.”

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Dead body
Amputation (loss of an arm)
Attempted murder by drowning
Physical assault

The Baby is Mine by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The Baby is Mine by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle’s house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib. At night Bambi is kept awake by the baby’s cries, and during the days he is disturbed by a cockerel that stalks the garden. There is sand in the rice. A blood stain appears on the wall. Someone scores tribal markings into the baby’s cheeks. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Sexism
Child neglect
Cheating
Alcohol consumption, on-page
Recreational drug use, on-page
COVID-19 (theme)
Emesis
Physical illness & tribal marking disfigurement of a baby
Blood depiction
Grief & loss depiction
Death of an uncle & husband recounted
Animal slaughter, on-page

Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Fleur Bradley

Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Fleur T. Bradley and illustrated by Xavier Bonet

When JJ Jacobson convinced his mom to accept a surprise invitation to an all-expenses-paid weekend getaway at the illustrious Barclay Hotel, he never imagined that he’d find himself in the midst of a murder mystery. He thought he was in for a run-of-the-mill weekend ghost hunting at the most haunted spot in town, but when he arrives at the Barclay Hotel and his mother is blamed for the hotel owner’s death, he realizes his weekend is going to be anything but ordinary.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Death of a child
Death of a parent
Poisoning