Racism – Page 97 – Trigger Warning Database

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.

Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept separate but equal.

Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism (theme)
Internalised lesbomisia
Child abuse
Bullying

Pulp by Robin Talley

Pulp by Robin Talley

In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet Jones keeps the love she shares with her best friend Marie a secret. It’s not easy being gay in Washington, DC, in the age of McCarthyism, but when she discovers a series of books about women falling in love with other women, it awakens something in Janet. As she juggles a romance she must keep hidden and a newfound ambition to write and publish her own story, she risks exposing herself—and Marie—to a danger all too real.

Sixty-two years later, Abby Zimet can’t stop thinking about her senior project and its subject—classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Between the pages of her favorite book, the stresses of Abby’s own life are lost to the fictional hopes, desires and tragedies of the characters she’s reading about. She feels especially connected to one author, a woman who wrote under the pseudonym “Marian Love,” and becomes determined to track her down and discover her true identity.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Homomisia
Transmisia
Outing mentioned
Suicide
Murder mentioned
Car accident mentioned

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg and something is wrong; a statue moves, his grandfather’s pines explode, and his brother accuses him of madness.

When the India Office recruits Merrick for an expedition to fetch quinine—essential for the treatment of malaria—from deep within Peru, he knows it’s a terrible idea. Nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who’s made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is desperate to escape everything at home, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for a tiny mission colony on the edge of the Amazon where a salt line on the ground separates town from forest. Anyone who crosses is killed by something that watches from the trees, but somewhere beyond the salt are the quinine woods, and the way around is blocked.

Surrounded by local stories of lost time, cursed woods, and living rock, Merrick must separate truth from fairytale and find out what befell the last expeditions; why the villagers are forbidden to go into the forest; and what is happening to Raphael, the young priest who seems to have known Merrick’s grandfather, who visited Peru many decades before. The Bedlam Stacks is the story of a profound friendship that grows in a place that seems just this side of magical.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist language
Racial slur
Miscarriage
Death of a friend

Forget Me Not by Ellie Terry

Forget Me Not by Ellie Terry

Astronomy-loving Calliope June has Tourette syndrome, so she sometimes makes faces or noises that she doesn’t mean to make. When she and her mother move yet again, she tries to hide her TS. But it isn’t long before the kids at her new school realize she’s different. Only Calli’s neighbor, who is also the popular student body president, sees her as she truly is—an interesting person and a good friend. But is he brave enough to take their friendship public?

As Calli navigates school, she must also face her mother’s new relationship and the fact that she might be moving, again, just as she starts to make friends and finally accept her differences.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Racism
Emotional parental abuse
Anxiety
OCD & intrusive thoughts
Death of a father mentioned
Bullying

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads.

When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past—both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Alcohol consumption
Mild blood depiction & physical injuries
Murder & attempted murder
Gun violence
Knife violence & stabbing
Kidnapping
Disappearance of a loved one

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shutoff notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Abeism & ableist language
Classism
Racism & racial profiling
Substance addiction
Drug use
Death of a parent
Gun violence
Incarceration
Police brutality mentioned

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control.

Until, that is, Maverick finds out he’s a father. Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Coming out themes
Bimisia
Child neglect & parental abandonment
Recreational drug use
Substance addiction mentioned
Postnatal depression discussed
Teen pregnancy (theme)
Abortion discussed
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a cousin
Death of a sister to sickle cell mentioned
Incarceration
Murder & attempted murder
Gun violence
Gang violence
Police brutality & violence mentioned

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

Racism
Physical child abuse & domestic abuse mentioned
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & nightmares
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use mentioned
Teen pregnancy recounted
Death of a friend & child (on-page & recounted)
Murder
Gun violence
Gang violence
Incarceration recounted
Police brutality & violence, including the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black teen

Songs That Sound Like Blood by Jared Thomas

Songs That Sound Like Blood by Jared Thomas

Roxy May Redding’s got music in her soul and songs in her blood. She lives in a hot dusty town and is dreaming big. She survives run-ins with the mean girls at high school, sings in her dad’s band and babysits for her wayward aunt. But Roxy wants a new start. When she gets the chance to study music in the big city, she takes it.

Roxy’s new life, her new friends and her music collide in a way she could never have imagined. Being a poor student sucks… navigating her way through the pressure of a national music competition has knobs on it… singing for her dinner is soul destroying… but nothing prepares Roxy for her biggest challenge. Her crush on Ana, the local music journo, forces her to steer her way through a complex maze of emotions alien to this small town girl.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Homomisia
Alcohol abuse

Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Tess Sharpe & Jessica Spotswood

Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Tess Sharpe & Jessica Spotswood

Toil and Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft by Jessica Spotswood and Tess Sharpe book cover

A young adult fiction anthology of 15 stories featuring contemporary, historical, and futuristic stories featuring witchy heroines who are diverse in race, class, sexuality, religion, geography, and era.

From good witches to bad witches, to witches who are a bit of both, this is an anthology of diverse witchy tales from a collection of diverse, feminist authors. The collective strength of women working together—magically or mundanely–has long frightened society, to the point that women’s rights are challenged, legislated against, and denied all over the world. Toil & Trouble delves deep into the truly diverse mythology of witchcraft from many cultures and feminist points of view, to create modern and unique tales of witchery that have yet to be explored.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Rape
Sexual assault
Abusive relationship
Substance addiction
Panic attacks
Drug use recounted
Alcohol consumption recounted
Childbirth
Dead bodies
Hospitalisation recounted
Death of an aunt
Death of a parent
Death of a friend
Fire
Bullying