Tag Archives: Racism

I, Medusa by Ayana Gray

Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else’s story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents—both gods, albeit minor ones—she dreams of leaving her family’s island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home. In the colorful market streets of Athens and the clandestine chambers of the temple, Meddy flourishes in her role as Athena’s favored acolyte, getting her first… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & misogyny
  • Colonisation
  • Rape, grooming & child sexual assault (on-page)
  • Domestic abuse

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent–which has more than doubled–and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Child abuse & neglect and mentions of the foster care system
  • Statutory rape & sexual assault
  • Suicide & self-harm
  • Death of a child from drowning recounted
  • Police brutality
  • Incarceration of a parent

The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck. The town thinks the Girls have lost their way… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Adult-minor relationships discussed
  • Familial estrangement due to teen pregnancy
  • Racism
  • Pregnancy & childbirth (theme, on-page), including discussion of the stigma around teen pregnancy & parenthood
  • Abortion discussed

Context: One protagonist became pregnant and gave birth to her first daughter at age 16 when her boyfriend was 22. The other protagonists were sixteen & seventeen when they gave birth.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia & racism
  • Substance addiction & drug abuse
  • Dementia discussed
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Animal abuse & death (on-page)

Big Machine by Victor LaValle

Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & misogyny
  • Child abuse
  • Substance addiction
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn’t there. Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father’s head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic and earns the attention of things best left sleeping… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Death of a parent
  • Police brutality

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism, classism & homophobia
  • Transphobia, misgendering & gender dysphoria
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Graphic blood & injury depiction
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Animal death

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

When Apollo Kagwa’s father disappeared, all he left his son were strange recurring dreams and a box of books stamped with the word IMPROBABILIA. Now Apollo is a father himself–and as he and his wife, Emma, are settling into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Apollo’s old dreams return and Emma begins acting odd. Irritable and disconnected from their new baby boy, at first Emma seems to be exhibiting signs of postpartum depression, but it quickly becomes clear that her troubles go even deeper. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act–beyond any… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Domestic abuse
  • Child abuse
  • Suicide
  • Post-partum depression discussed (on-page)
  • Graphic pregnancy & childbirth scenes
  • Death of a child
  • Murder

War Games by Alan Gratz

War Games by Alan Gratz

Evie can’t believe she’s made it to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. After fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Evie’s family is still poor and reeling from devastating losses. She could have never guessed that the sport she took up to escape her reality would lead to this. Now, she’s competing in gymnastics on Team USA, with some of the greatest athletes in the world like track and field star Jesse Owens. But all is not as it seems in Berlin, a city now ruled by the Nazis and their tyrannical leader, Adolf Hitler. And Evie has secrets of her own. With two other Olympic athletes, who each have their own reasons for despising the Nazis, Evie has… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism, racism, homophobia, ableism & Nazism
  • Gun & knife violence
  • World War II including discussions of genocide, concentration camps and forced sterilization of disabled people (theme)
  • Homelessness & poverty (protagonist)

Miles Morales Suspended by Jason Reynolds

Miles Morales Suspended by Jason Reynolds

Miles Morales is still just your average teenager. He has unexpectedly become totally obsessed with poetry and can never seem to do much more than babble around his crush. Nothing too weird. Oh! Except, just yesterday, he used his spidey superpowers to save the world (no biggie) from an evil mastermind called The Warden. And the grand prize Miles gets for that is… Suspension. But what begins as a long boring day of in-school suspension is interrupted by a little bzzz in his mind. His spidey-sense is telling him there’s something not quite right here, and soon he finds himself in a fierce battle with an insidious… termite? His unexpect.. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism & classism
  • Infidelity mentioned
  • Fantasy violence
  • Emesis