BIPOC Lit – Page 80 – Trigger Warning Database

Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson

Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson

All Amara wants is to visit her father’s family in Harlem. Her wish comes true when her dad decides to bring her along on a business trip. She can’t wait to finally meet her extended family and stay in the brownstone where her dad grew up. Plus, she wants to visit every landmark from the Apollo to Langston Hughes’s home.

But her family, and even the city, is not quite what Amara thought. Her dad doesn’t speak to her grandpa, and the crowded streets can be suffocating as well as inspiring. But as she learns more and more about Harlem—and her father’s history—Amara realizes how, in some ways more than others, she can connect with this other home and family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Pregnancy
Miscarriage recounted

Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli & Aisha Saeed

Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli & Aisha Saeed

Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed book cover

Jamie Goldberg is cool with volunteering for his local state senate candidate—as long as he’s behind the scenes. When it comes to speaking to strangers (or, let’s face it, speaking at all to almost anyone), Jamie’s a choke artist. There’s no way he’d ever knock on doors to ask people for their votes…until he meets Maya. Maya Rehman’s having the worst Ramadan ever. Her best friend is too busy to hang out, her summer trip is canceled, and now her parents are separating. Why her mother thinks the solution to her problems is political canvassing—with some awkward dude she… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Misogyny
Racism, islamophobia & antisemitism
Hate crimes (off-page)
Alcohol consumption
Emesis recounted
Death of a grandfather recounted
Cyberharassment

Context : A secondary character takes pictures of the protagonists almost kissing and posts them online without their consent. This is discussed in-depth.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Period-typical misogyny & racism
Eugenics
Sexual assault & attempted rape (on-page)
Incest
Forced breeding mentioned
Alcohol consumption & smoking
Drugging
Hallucinations
Infertility & miscarriages mentioned
Medical treatment for tuberculosis discussed
Blood & gore depiction including body horror & cannibalism
Death of an infant mentioned
Death of a father discussed
Murder & attempted murder
Knife violence

All of Us With Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil

Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rock-star family in one of the city’s storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas’s live-in governess and quickly finds her place in their household, which is relaxed and happy despite the band’s larger-than-life fame. But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas accidentally… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism
Sexism
Rape recounted & sexual assault
Child sex trafficking, implied
Adult-minor relationship*
Child abuse & neglect
Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use

*Context: The main characters is a seventeen-year-old girl whose love interest is her twenty-eight-year-old male employer.

Love, Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

American-born seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz is torn between worlds. There’s the proper one her parents expect for their good Indian daughter: attending a college close to their suburban Chicago home, and being paired off with an older Muslim boy her mom deems “suitable.” And then there is the world of her dreams: going to film school and living in New York City—and maybe (just maybe) pursuing a boy she’s known from afar since grade school, a boy who’s finally falling into her orbit at school. There’s also the real world, beyond Maya’s control. In the aftermath of a horrific crime perpetrated hundreds of miles… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism & Islamophobia
Hate crime (physical assault)
Disownment
Suicide bombing mentioned
Hospitalisation for physical injuries due to physical assault
Bullying

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Antiziganism (g slur)
Colourism
Coming out themes recounted
Dubious consent scene discussed
Teen pregnancy & motherhood (theme) with mentions of childbirth mentioned
Alcohol consumption
Death of a mother, husband & grandfather recounted
Hurricanes & severe storms recounted
Bullying recounted

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighbourhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism
Misogyny & slut-shaming
Fatphobia & body shaming
Sexual harassment
Child abuse & abandonment mentioned
Cheating
Panic attacks
Recreational drug use
Alcohol abuse recounted
Minor physical injuries
Infertility & difficult childbirth mentioned
Bullying

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

I masquerade in makeup and feathers and I am applauded. A boy comes to terms with his identity as a mixed-race gay teen – then at university he finds his wings as a drag artist, The Black Flamingo. A bold story about the power of embracing your uniqueness. Sometimes, we need to take charge, to stand up wearing pink feathers – to show ourselves to the world in bold colour.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Racism & racial slurs
Sexism discussed
Homomisia, internalised homomisia & homomisic slurs
Lesbomisia & internalised lesbomisia discussed
Coming out themes
Dubious consent situation*
Parental abandonment
Physical parental abuse (single act)
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Emesis
Physical assault (minor fight scenes)
Bullying
Poverty themes

Context : The sixteen-year-old protagonist meets an adult man on a dating app and agrees to meet with him for sex. The man offers him drugs which cause the protagonist to lose consciousness and his memory of the event.

Aya, Vol. 3: The Secrets Come Out by Various

Aya, Vol. 3: The Secrets Come Oute by Marguerite Abouet & Clément Oubrerie

Aya has captured the hearts of North American readers of all ages for the rare portrait it paints of a vibrant, happy, bourgeois Ivory Coast in the 1970s, based upon Marguerite Abouet’s youth in Yop City. Not only is Aya complemented with Clément Oubrerie’s gorgeous artwork, but the volumes also offer a slice-of-life peek into African culture: complete with recipes, glossaries, and wardrobe instructions for turning one’s pagne (brightly colored fabric) into a skirt, head wrap, or baby carrier..

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Graphic attempted rape & sexual assault

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

Queerphobia & mentions of disownment from queerphobic parents
Transphobia, internalised transphobia, misgendering & deadnaming
Biphobia & internalised biphobia
Coming out themes
Racism & racist microaggressions
Parental abandonment
Emotional parental & domestic abuse mentioned
Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use
Top surgery recounted & Hormone Replacement Therapy
Needles & injections (on-page)
Scars
Bullying
Cyberbullying, cyberharassment, catfishing & doxxing