No Trauma No Drama: A Black YA Research Study

Growing up, I had a lot of interest in Black books, movies, and media. Something that I noticed was that Black Trauma was very central to most of the content that I had seen growing up. I wanted to know why. Why do Black characters have to go through so much racial-related struggle to find joy? Why is there hardly any positive representation of Black people in any form of media? And so many other questions.

Now when I say Black trauma, I mean trauma specifically related to black people and I put that into four main categories.

Oppression: This would be poverty (welfare, section 8), systematic oppression, etc.

Racism: Do I have to explain that one?

Police Brutality: Black people (mostly men) are killed or badly beaten at the hands of police for being black. Crimes are not being taken seriously because of skin color. Being wrongfully detained based on race.

Slavery: Mentions of abuse in slavery such as rape of black women, lynching, whippings, etc.

I broke these up into four categories because these seem to be the most common themes and there could be so many scenarios and situations that can happen under these four main categories.

I had grown deeper in Young Adult novels seeing as though I am an aspiring young adult novelist myself and decided to conduct most of my focus on YA Novels written by black people. My reasoning for this is if the children are the future why are there not many positive depictions of black life, love, and community for them? I had done a twenty-five-plus page research paper on my findings, my new literary term, etc. But that’s for a different article.

For this research, I want to see how Black trauma is central to not only the plot but the characters themselves. I want to look at the characters specifically to see how the trauma is defining the blackness of the character. For the plot, I want to see how trauma is central to the amount of joy received by the character at the end of the book after going through such a struggle.

Each book will be evaluated under three categories of trauma.

Trauma as a plot point: Used for character development. May not be the main conflict but is central to how the character moves through the story.

Trauma as the focus: The conflict is based on black trauma.

Trauma absent: There is no black trauma that affects the characters or the conflict of the story.

During my undergrad research, I only found one book that was trauma absent (crazy right) and I’m hoping that in all the books I read for 2023, I can find more than one.

I had criteria for the books that I was researching in undergrad:

1. Books written by black authors.
2. Books published in the last ten years.
3. Books categorized as YA.

But for this research, my criteria are as follows.

1. Books written by black authors.
2. Books published in the year 2023.
3. Books categorized as YA.

Once I read all the books, I will be dividing the books into categories which are genres and publishers to assess the content that I see in each genre (Contemporary, Romance, Mystery, Thriller, etc.) and specifically what are the “kinks” that each publisher likes their black books to have.

I hope that I can spread awareness and assess what is being published for Black people and hope that there can be more positive voices for us.

More on my positive approach to Black literature and my in-depth undergrad research later, now that you got the quick rundown, let’s get on to the books!