“It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry ‘Monster!’ and looked behind him.” Karou fills her sketchbooks with stories of monsters, that may or may not be real. She disappears on errands and can speak…
Tag: Trigger Warning: War
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
“What do we mean when we say survivor? Maybe a survivor is the last one to come home, the final monarch that lands on a branch already weighted with ghosts.” On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in…
Rules of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
“This is what love does. In the stories, love healed your wounds, fixed what was broken, allowed you to go on. But love wasn’t a spell, some kind of benediction to be whispered, a balm or a cure-all. It was a single, fragile thread, which grew stronger through connection, through shared hardship and trust.” As…
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
“Our whole lives, we’ve been taught to make ourselves smaller, weaker than me. That’s what the Infinite Wisdoms teaches — that being a girl means perpetual submission.” In Otera, every sixteen-year-old girl lives in both fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village or…
The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown
The Unwanted, is a graphic novel that looks at the harsh realities facing the Syrian refugee crisis. Starting in 2011, refugees started to flood out of war-torn Syria, making the dangerous journey to places like Lebanon, Turkey, and Greece. Some of the times they are welcomed with open arms to their new homes, but more…
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung
“I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it.” As one of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Luong Ung lived a privileged life in Phnom Penh until the age of five. In April of1975, her and her family were forced out of…
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
“Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.” Fang Runin, an orphaned shop girl, managed to ace the countries most prestigious academic exam,…
How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee
In 1942, Japanese forces ransack a small Singaporean village, leaving only two survivors and one tiny child. In a neighboring village, the young Wand Di is taken from her home and shipped off to a military brothel where she is forced into sexual slavery. In the year 2000, young Kevin is trying to figure out…
Cherry by Nico Walker
“This book is a work of fiction. These things didn’t ever happen. These people didn’t ever exist.” Cherry, a debut novel by Nico Walker, follows an unnamed narrator through his life from when he drops out of college and joins the military to when he gets caught for bank robbery. It’s narrated in a gritty…
The Great Book Wyrm 