Hate Crimes – Page 8 – Trigger Warning Database

Stay Gold by Tobly McSmith

Stay Gold by Tobly McSmith

Pony just wants to fly under the radar during senior year. Tired from all the attention he got at his old school after coming out as transgender, he’s looking for a fresh start at Hillcrest High. But it’s hard to live your best life when the threat of exposure lurks down every hallway and in every bathroom.

Georgia is beginning to think there’s more to life than cheerleading. She plans on keeping a low profile until graduation…which is why she promised herself that dating was officially a no-go this year.

Then, on the very first day of school, the new guy and the cheerleader lock eyes. How is Pony supposed to stay stealth when he wants to get close to a girl like Georgia? How is Georgia supposed to keep her promise when sparks start flying with a boy like Pony?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Acemisia
Homomisia
Lesbomisia, including slurs and internalised
Transmisia, including slurs and internalised
Deadnaming
Misgendering
Graphic assault against trans character, including physical assault
Parental abuse
Suicidal ideation
Forced and pressured outing
Hate crime
Bullying

Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes

Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes

September 1973: The beginning of Karl Shoemaker’s senior year in stifling Lightsburg, Ohio. For years, Karl’s been part of “the Madman Underground”- kids forced to attend group therapy during school. Karl has decided that he is going to get out of the Madman Underground for good. He is going to act-and be-Normal. But Normal, of course, is relative. Karl has two after-school jobs, one dead father, one seriously unhinged drunk mother . . . and a huge attitude. Welcome to a gritty, uncensored rollercoaster ride, narrated by the singular Karl Shoemaker.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Racism & racial slurs
Hate crimes
Child sexual abuse
Underage sex work
Physical & verbal abuse
Alcoholism
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Recreational drug use
Medical treatment
Needles
Physical assault
Animal death & death of a pet
Animal abuse

Not Your All-American Girl by Wendy Wan-Long Shang and Madelyn Rosenberg

Not Your All-American Girl by Wendy Wan-Long Shang & Madelyn Rosenberg

Lauren and her best friend, Tara, have always done absolutely everything together. So when they don’t have any classes together in sixth grade, it’s disastrous. The solution? Trying out for the school play. Lauren, who loves to sing, wonders if maybe, just maybe, she will be the star instead of Tara this time.

But when the show is cast, Lauren lands in the ensemble, while Tara scores the lead role. Their teacher explains: Lauren just doesn’t look the part of the all-American girl. What audience would believe that she, half-Jewish, half-Chinese Lauren, was the everygirl star from Pleasant Valley, USA?

From amidst the ensemble, Lauren tries to support her best friend. But when she can’t bring herself to sing anymore, her spot in the play and her friendship are in jeopardy. With the help of a button-making business, the music of Patsy Cline, and her two bickering grandmothers, can Lauren find her voice again?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexism
Racism
Hate crimes*

*Note: This book is set in the 1980s and discusses the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man who was beaten to death by white auto workers who mistakenly believed he was Japanese and blaming him for the loss of auto jobs in Detroit.

Criminal Past by Gregory Ashe

Criminal Past by Gregory Ashe

It all starts to go wrong at the shooting gallery. Emery Hazard and his boyfriend, John-Henry Somerset, just want to enjoy the day at the Dore County Independence Fair. At the shooting gallery, though, Hazard comes face to face with one of his old bullies: Mikey Grames. Even as a drugged-out wreck, Mikey is a reminder of all the ugliness in Hazard’s past. Worse, Mikey seems to know something Hazard doesn’t—something about the fresh tension brewing in town.

When the Chief of Police interrupts Hazard’s day at the fair, she has a strange request. She doesn’t want Hazard and Somers to solve a murder. She wants them to prevent one. The future victim? Mayor Sherman Newton—a man who has tried to have Hazard and Somers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Homomisic hate crime recounted
Graphic rape recounted
Graphic torture

Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander and James Patterson

Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander & James Patterson and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius’ family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training as an amateur boxer at age twelve. Before long, he won his first Golden Gloves bout and began his transformation into the unrivaled Muhammad Ali.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Hate crimes
Bullying
Mentions of the lynching of Emmett Till

Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho

Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho

In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask—yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and “reverse racism.”

In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader’s curiosity—but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racial slurs
Hate crimes
Slavery
Physical abuse
Police brutality
Gun violence

Boy Queen by George Lester

Boy Queen by George Lester

While his friends prepare to head off to university, Robin is looking at a pile of rejection letters from drama schools up and down the country, and facing a future without the people he loves the most. Everything seems like it’s ending, and Robin is scrabbling to find his feet.

Unsure about what to do next and whether he has the talent to follow his dreams, he and his best friends go and drown their sorrows at a local drag show, where Robin realises there might be a different, more sequinned path for him . . .

With a mother who won’t stop talking, a boyfriend who won’t acknowledge him and a best friend who is dying to cover him in glitter make up, there’s only one thing for Robin to do: bring it to the runway.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Hate crimes
Physical assault

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin

Sales are slow at Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, the only halal restaurant in the close-knit Golden Crescent neighbourhood. Hana waitresses there part time, but what she really wants is to tell stories on the radio. If she can just outshine her fellow intern at the city radio station, she may have a chance at landing a job. In the meantime, Hana pours her thoughts and dreams into a podcast, where she forms a lively relationship with one of her listeners. But soon she’ll need all the support she can get: a new competing restaurant, a more upscale halal place, is about to open in the Golden Crescent, threatening Three Sisters… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Misogyny
Racism
Islamophobia
Gentrification
Hate crimes
Pregnancy
Chronic illness
Bullying

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate

It’s an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.

He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he’s done before, it’s routine, a constant, like the tides.

Yet there’s something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air. Someone stalking the ship.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Antiziganism (g slur)
Homomisia & internalised homomisia
Hate crimes
Suicide
Blood & gore depiction

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Queermisia discussed
Racism & gentrification mentioned
Hate crimes, including the UpStairs Lounge fire, recounted (chp. 11)
Anxiety
Hurricane Katrina discussed
Alcohol consumption & recreational drug use
Minor mention of blood
Death of a grandparent mentioned (chps. 11 & 16)
Car accident mentioned (chp. 16)