Category Archives: Representation

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

Out on Good Behaviour

Out on Good Behaviour by Dahlia Adler

Frankie Bellisario knows she can get anyone she sets her sights on, but just because she can doesn’t mean she should—not when the person she’s eyeing is Samara Kazarian, the daughter of a southern Republican mayor. No matter how badly Frankie wants to test her powers of persuasion, even she recognizes some lines aren’t meant to be crossed. But when Frankie learns she’s been on Samara’s mind too, the idea of hooking up with her grows too strong to resist. Only Sam’s not looking for a hookup; she wants—needs—the real thing, and she’s afraid she’ll never find it as long… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Coming out themes
  • Slut-shaming

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

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie

To regain a throne he never wanted, Prince Yarvi first must survive cruelty, chains and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea itself. And he must do it all with only one good hand. Born a weakling in the eyes of his father, Yarvi is alone in a world where a strong arm and a cold heart rule. He cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so he must sharpen his mind to a deadly edge. Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast and the lost, he finds they can do more to help him become the man he needs to be than any court of nobles could. Will the usurped become the usurper?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Ableism, internalised ableism & slurs (theme)
  • Arranged marriage
  • Child abuse recounted
  • Death of a brother, father & husband
  • Murder
  • War themes
  • Bullying

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

The Lines We Cross by Randa Abdel-Fattah

The Lines We Cross by Randa Abdel-Fattah

This title is also known as When Michael Met Mina.

Michael likes to hang out with his friends and play with the latest graphic design software. His parents drag him to rallies held by their anti-immigrant group, which rails against the tide of refugees flooding the country. And it all makes sense to Michael. Until Mina, a beautiful girl from the other side of the protest lines, shows up at his school, and turns out to be funny, smart — and a Muslim refugee from Afghanistan. Suddenly, his parents’ politics seem much more complicated. Mina has had a long and dangerous journey fleeing her besieged home in Afghanistan, and now faces a frigid reception at her new prep school, where she is on scholar… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Islamophobia
  • Racism
  • Death of a brother & father