Category Archives: BIPOC Lit

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi and translated by Cathy Hirano

Elin’s family has an important responsibility: caring for the fearsome water serpents that form the core of their kingdom’s army. So when some of the beasts mysteriously die, Elin’s mother is sentenced to death as punishment. With her last breath she manages to send her daughter to safety.

Alone, far from home, Elin soon discovers that she can talk to both the terrifying water serpents and the majestic flying beasts that guard her queen. This skill gives her great powers, but it also involves her in deadly plots that could cost her life. Can she save herself and prevent her beloved beasts from being used as tools of war? Or is there no way of escaping the terrible battles to come?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent
  • Fire
  • Animal abuse

The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros

The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros

Beckett, If you’re reading this, well, you know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know if there was any chance you could have saved me, you would have. I need one thing from you: get out of the army and get to Telluride. My little sister Ella’s raising the twins alone. She’s too independent and won’t accept help easily, but she has lost our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much for anyone to endure. It’s not fair. And here’s the kicker: there’s something else you don’t know that’s tearing her family apart. She’s going to need help.

So if I’m gone, that means I can’t be there for Ella. I can’t help them through this. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family. Please don’t make her go through it alone. Ryan

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Pediatric cancer (theme)
  • Death of a child

Full Measures by Rebecca Yarros

Full Measures by Evangeline Parsons Yazzie

Twenty years as an army brat and Ember Howard knew, too. The soldiers at the door meant her dad was never coming home. What she didn’t know was how she would find the strength to singlehandedly care for her crumbling family when her mom falls apart.

Then Josh Walker enters her life. Hockey star, her new next-door neighbour, and not to mention the most delicious hands that insist on saving her over and over again. He has a way of erasing the pain with a single look, a single touch. As much as she wants to turn off her feelings and endure the heartache on her own, she can’t deny their intense attraction. Until Josh’s secret shatters their world. And Ember must decide if he’s worth the risk that comes with loving a man who could strip her bare.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death of a parent

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

.Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Self-harm
  • Graphic blood & gore depiction
  • Dead bodies and body parts
  • Blood-drinking
  • Murder & attempted murder
  • Gun violence
  • Poisoning
  • Torture
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal death
  • War themes

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her path, Adunni never loses sight of her goal of escaping the life of poverty she was born into so that she can build the future she chooses for herself – and help other girls like her do the same.

Her spirited determination to find joy and hope in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable will “break your heart and then put it back together again” (Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show) even as Adunni shows us how one courageous young girl can inspire us all to reach for our dreams…and maybe even change the world. 

.Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape of a minor
  • Sexual assault
  • Domestic violence

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

His life was like a recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be running the world, and the upshot is another singular masterpiece from Japan’s finest novelist.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Suicide

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting sex worker… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Incest
  • Adult-minor relationship
  • Murder
  • Animal death
  • Animal cruelty

Her Land, Her Love by Evangeline Parsons Yazzie

Her Land, Her Love by Evangeline Parsons Yazzie

The first novel, in a sweeping epic of one determined Navajo family’s efforts to persevere during the Long Walk, blends history, romance, conflict, culture, and family in a finely crafted story that is a true work of passion.

The story begins in Black Mesa, Arizona in 1865 at the start of the Navajo Long Walk. The woman at the heart of the story is Ninaanibaa’ (The Woman Warrior who Came Home Once Again) and her husband, Hashke Yil Naabaah (The Warrior Who Fights with Anger). When two of their daughters are kidnapped, they set out on a journey in search of their missing children.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Sexual assault

The Rise of Kyoshi by FC Yee

The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee with Michael Dante DiMartino

F. C. Yee’s The Rise of Kyoshi delves into the story of Kyoshi, the Earth Kingdom–born Avatar. The longest-living Avatar in this beloved world’s history, Kyoshi established the brave and respected Kyoshi Warriors, but also founded the secretive Dai Li, which led to the corruption, decline, and fall of her own nation. The first of two novels based on Kyoshi, The Rise of Kyoshi maps her journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar. 

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Slavery
  • Child neglect
  • Starvation
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Murder & mass murder
  • Torture

Séance Tea Party by Reimena Yee

Séance Tea Party by Reimena Yee

After watching her circle of friends seemingly fade away, Lora is determined to still have fun on her own, so when a tea party leads Lora to discovering Alexa, the ghost that haunts her house, they soon become best friends.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Death themes
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child from illness recounted