Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy by Emmanuel Acho

Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Boy by Emmanuel Acho

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy is an accessible book for children to learn about systemic racism and racist behavior. For the awkward questions white and non-black parents don’t know how to answer, this book is an essential guide to help support communication on how to dismantle racism in our youngest generation.

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy creates a safe, judgment-free space for curious children to ask questions they’ve long been afraid to verbalize. How can I have white privilege if I’m not wealthy? Why do Black people protest against the police? If Black people can say the N-word, why can’t I? And many, many more

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Slavery
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Police brutality
  • Gun violence
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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.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Hate crimes
  • Slavery
  • Physical abuse
  • Police brutality
  • Gun violence
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Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.

But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Attempted suicide
  • Depression
  • Heroin addiction
  • Death by overdose
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The Boy from the Mish by Gary Lonesborough

The Boy from the Mish by Gary Lonesborough

It’s a hot summer, and life’s going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It’s almost Christmas, school’s out, and he’s hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson’s Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city – but this time a mysterious boy with a troubled past comes with them… As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret – a secret he thought he’d locked away for good

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Homomisia, internalised homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Coming out themes
  • Outing
  • Parental abandonment
  • Physical child abuse recounted
  • Domestic violence recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Recreational drug use
  • Emesis
  • Minor physical injuries, including broken bones & snake bite
  • Police violence & racial profiling
  • Incarceration
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The Sky Blues by Robbie Couch

The Sky Blues by Robbie Couch

Sky Baker may be openly gay, but in his small, insular town, making sure he was invisible has always been easier than being himself. Determined not to let anything ruin his senior year, Sky decides to make a splash at his high school’s annual beach bum party by asking his crush, Ali, to prom—and he has thirty days to do it.

What better way to start living loud and proud than by pulling off the gayest promposal Rock Ledge, Michigan, has ever seen?

Then, Sky’s plans are leaked by an anonymous hacker in a deeply homophobic e-blast that quickly goes viral. He’s fully prepared to drop out and skip town altogether… Read more

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Racism & racial slurs
  • Emesis
  • Death of a parent recounted
  • Car accident
  • Bullying
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Yesterday Is History by Kosoko Jackson

Yesterday Is History by Kosoko Jackson

Weeks ago, Andre Cobb received a much-needed liver transplant.

He’s ready for his life to finally begin, until one night, when he passes out and wakes up somewhere totally unexpected…in 1969, where he connects with a magnetic boy named Michael.

And then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he slips back to present-day Boston, where the family of his donor is waiting to explain that his new liver came with a side effect—the ability to time travel. And they’ve tasked their youngest son, Blake, with teaching Andre how to use his unexpected new gift… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Homomisia
  • Racism discussed
  • Familial estrangement
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Physical injury
  • Hospitalisation
  • Organ transplants & surgery mentioned
  • Terminal cancer
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The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.

Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government’s new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Rape
  • Suicide
  • Medical experimentation
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Poverty themes
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The Giver of Stars by Ann Napolitano

The Giver of Stars by Ann Napolitano

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Attempted rape
  • Incest
  • Domestic abuse
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal cruelty
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The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

In the quiet streets of Prague all manner of otherworldly creatures lurk in the shadows. Unbeknownst to its citizens, their only hope against the tide of predators are the dauntless lamplighters – a secret elite of monster hunters whose light staves off the darkness each night. Domek Myska leads a life teeming with fraught encounters with the worst kind of evil: pijavice, bloodthirsty and soulless vampiric creatures. Despite this, Domek find solace in his moments spent in the company of his friend, the clever and beautiful Lady Ora Fischerová– a widow with secrets of her own.

When Domek finds himself stalked by the spirit of the White Lady – a ghost who haunts the baroque halls of Prague castle – he stumbles across the sentient essence of a will-o’-the-wisp, a mischievous spirit known to lead lost travellers to their death, but who, once captured, are bound to serve the desires of their owners… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Antisemitism
  • Racism
  • Classism
  • Misogyny
  • Suicide
  • Blood & gore depiction
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What They Always Tell Us by Martin Wilson

What They Always Tell Us by Martin Wilson

James and Alex have barely anything in common anymore—least of all their experiences in high school, where James is a popular senior and Alex is suddenly an outcast. But at home, there is Henry, the precocious 10-year-old across the street, who eagerly befriends them both. And when Alex takes up running, there is James’s friend Nathen, who unites the brothers in moving and unexpected ways.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Homomisia & homomisic slurs
  • Attempted suicide
  • Car accident
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