SJPL Recommends: Antiracist Fiction for Grades 9-12Like this list

22 items

• We Deserve Monuments

  Hammonds, Jas,

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  When seventeen-year-old Avery moves to rural Georgia to live with her ailing grandmother, she encounters decade-old family secrets and a mystery surrounding the town's racist past.

• You Truly Assumed

  Sabreen, Laila,

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  "After a terrorist attack rocks the country and anti-Islamic sentiment stirs, three Black Muslim girls create a space where they can shatter assumptions and share truths." Amazon

• All the Yellow Suns

  Kannan, Malavika, 2001-

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  Sixteen-year-old queer Indian American, Maya, who falls for her white, wealthy, and complicated female classmate, Juneau, is asked to join a secret society of artists, vandals, and mischief-makers who fight for justice at their school.

• True True

  Hooper, Don P.,

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  When Gil, a Black teen from Brooklyn, struggles to fit in at his primarily white Manhattan prep school, he wages a clandestine war against the racist administration, parents, and students, while working with other Black students to ensure their…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen

  Blum, Isaac,

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  The people of Tregaron aren't happy that so many Orthodox Jews are moving in at once, but that's not Hoodie's problem. That is, until he meets and falls for Anna-Marie Diaz-O'Leary - who happens to be the daughter of the obstinate mayor trying to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Silence That Binds Us

  Ho, Joanna,

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  In the year following their son's death, May Chen's parents face racist accusations of putting too much pressure on their son and causing his death by suicide, and May attempts to challenge the racism and ugly stereotypes through her writing, only…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Wander in the Dark

  Emill, Jumata,

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  Amir doesn't know what Chloe wants and he never finds out, because when he wakes up, Chloe is dead—stabbed while he was passed out on the couch. And in no time, Amir becomes the only suspect. A Black teenager caught fleeing the scene of a rich white…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Shut Up, This Is Serious

  Ixta, Carolina,

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  Belen Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But nothing is normal in East Oakland. Her father left her family. She's at risk of not graduating. And Leti, her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• All My Rage

  Tahir, Sabaa,

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  Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding.

• The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School

  Reyes, Sonora,

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  Sixteen-year-old Mexican American Yami Flores starts Catholic school, determined to keep her brother out of trouble and keep herself closeted, but her priorities shift when Yami discovers that her openly gay classmate Bo is also annoyingly cute.

• Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim

  Park, Patricia (Fiction writer),

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  Alejandra Kim doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere. At her wealthy Manhattan high school, her super Spanish name and super Korean face do not compute to her mostly white "woke" classmates and teachers. In her Jackson Heights neighborhood, she's…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• An Impossible Thing to Say

  Shahi, Arya,

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  Omid is ready. Ready to show the world what he's capable of. Ready to step out of his best friend's shadow. Ready to tell his own story. All he needs are the right words. Words to connect with a grandfather he just met and his distant Iranian…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Ain't Burned All the Bright

  Reynolds, Jason,

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  Reynolds’s introspective narrative poem, with a young man at home during quarantine as its speaker, shares the stage with Griffin’s emotive collagelike illustrations done in Moleskine notebooks and reproduced on the pages to make it look like a real…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• We Are Not Free

  Chee, Traci,

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  Grades 7-12. Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook. "Growing up together in the community of Japantown, San Francisco, four second-generation Japanese American teens find their bond tested by widespread discrimination and the mass incarcerations…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Dear Justyce

  Stone, Nic,

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  Grades 9-12. Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook. Related to "Dear Martin", also by Nic Stone. "Incarcerated teen Quan Banks writes letters to Justyce McCallister, with whom he bonded years before over family issues, about his experiences in…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• On the Come Up

  Thomas, Angie,

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  Grades 8-12. Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook. "Aspiring rapper Bri records "On the Come Up " to protest the racial profiling and assault she endured at the hands of white security guards at her high school. The song goes viral, and Bri…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Slay

  Morris, Brittney,

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  Grades 7-12. Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook. "Seventeen-­year-old gamer Kiera Johnson finds that being Black leaves her largely ostracized from the larger gaming community. As a result, she ingeniously creates SLAY , her own online…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Don't Ask Me Where I'm From

  De Leon, Jennifer, 1979-

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  Grades 7-10. Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook. 'Reinventing herself at a privileged white suburban high school to get by in the face of escalating racial tensions, a first-generation American-LatinX teen is forced to take a stand when she…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Displacement

  Hughes, Kiku,

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  Grades 6-12. Also available as an eBook. "Kiku’s exploring San Francisco with her mother when she first travels back in time, but her longest displacement occurs when her grandmother, Ernestine, is imprisoned first at Tanforan and then Topaz, in…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Hate U Give

  Thomas, Angie,

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  Grades 9-12. Also available as an eBook and eAudiobook. " Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two very different worlds: one is her home in a poor black urban neighborhood; the other is the tony suburban prep school she attends and the white boy she…Read moreRead more of this annotation