Slavery & Indentured Servitude – Page 26

The First by Katherine Applegate

The First by Katherine Applegate

To learn if she truly is the last dairne in the world—the endling—Byx and her friends must travel into the snow-covered mountains of the country of Dreyland, where they hope to uncover the truth behind the legend of a hidden dairne colony. But the threat of war across the lands continues to grow with each passing day.

As the group confronts untold dangers at every turn, they will ultimately uncover a treacherous plot that involves the other powerful governing species. With both her dreams and all the creatures of Nedarra on the brink of extinction, Byx and her friends are determined to never give up hope.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Enslavement
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a family member recounted
Drowning
Imprisonment
Genocide recounted

Human by Diego Agrimbau

Human by Diego Agrimbau and illustrated by Lucas Varela

Planet Earth: 500,000 years in the future. Humans have been extinct for millennia. Two scientists, Robert and June, have been orbiting the Earth, waiting for the planet to become habitable once more. With the help of a team of robots, they plan to start over from scratch: a new Adam and Eve who won’t make the same mistakes as their ancestors. But first Robert has to find June, who seems to have landed somewhere else in this vast jungle—their Eden—full of grotesque creatures and strange primates…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slavery
Rape, implied
Attempted genocide

The Girl King by Mimi Yu

The Girl King by Mimi Yu

Sisters Lu and Min have always understood their places as princesses of the Empire. Lu knows she is destined to become the dynasty’s first female ruler, while Min is resigned to a life in her shadow. Then their father declares their male cousin Set the heir instead—a betrayal that sends the sisters down two very different paths.

Determined to reclaim her birthright, Lu goes on the run. She needs an ally—and an army—if she is to succeed. Her quest leads her to Nokhai, the last surviving wolf shapeshifter. Nok wants to keep his identity secret, but finds himself forced into an uneasy alliance with the girl whose family killed everyone he ever loved… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slavery
Sexual assault
Parental abuse
Domestic abuse
Alcohol consumption
Smoking mentioned
Blood depiction
Murder
Knife & sword violence
Animal death

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit. Men lie dead in the streets of Boston, and in the backwoods of North Carolina, isolated cabins burn in the forest.

With chaos brewing, the governor calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence — with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie’s death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slavery
Rape
Sexual assault
Sexual harassment
Attempted suicide
Suicidal ideation
Death of a pregnant woman
Murder
Torture
Kidnapping
Arson

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader’s wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel – the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slavery
Colonialism
Racism & racial slurs
Rape
Arranged marriage
Substance addiction
Drug abuse
Death of a child
Kidnapping
Fire
War themes

The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah

The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah

Based on true events, a story of courage, forgiveness, love, and freedom in precolonial Ghana, told through the eyes of two women born to vastly different fates.

Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court. These two women’s lives converge as infighting among Wurche’s people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Slut shaming
Slavery
Rape
Suicide

Future Girl by Asphyxia

Future Girl by Asphyxia

Piper’s mum wants her to be ‘normal’, to pass as hearing and get a good job. But when peak oil hits and Melbourne lurches towards environmental catastrophe, Piper has more important things to worry about, such as how to get food.

When she meets Marley, a CODA (child of Deaf adult), a door opens into a new world – where Deafness is something to celebrate rather than hide, and where resilience is created through growing your own food rather than it being delivered on a truck… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Abusive relationship
Animal death

The Only by Katherine Applegate

The Only by Katherine Applegate

In the beginning, Byx’s original quest was to discover if there were more of her kind, or if she was destined to become an endling—the last dairne alive. She did indeed find more dairnes, and along the way she also created allies among other creatures in her world, including humans, felivets, raptidons, and wobbyks.

But Byx and her new friends soon learned that it wasn’t just dairnes in jeopardy of extinction, but that everyone was at risk. With the world in unprecedented danger, Byx must rally creatures of all kinds to lead a revolution.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slavery
Murder
Knife violence & stabbing
Hostage situation
Battle scenes
Animal attack
Animal death

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy’s regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians’ fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racist slurs
Slavery
Alcohol consumption
Recreational drug use
Autopsy
Murder
Physical assault
Flogging
Animal death
Animal experimentation

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

As the United States celebrates the nation’s “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status–much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & racial slurs
Slavery discussed
Drug abuse
Incarceration (theme)