The holidays are filled with grief for me. I wish that they weren't. I wish I was an out-of-sight out-of-mind kind of person, but I'm not. I am the kind of person who holds onto dates and memories and faces. The kind of person who never forgets a moment that made me feel something, whether good or bad.

I remember someone in my life once looking at me with exasperation and asking why I can't listen to a song, or watch a movie, without tying it to some emotional moment in my life. And the truth is, I just can't. Those moments didn't just impact me when they happened. They implanted themselves into my brain forever. And all it takes is for the right song, the right phrase, the right smile...and I am right back in that moment, thinking about emotions that are no longer relevant to anyone but me.

As you can imagine, that makes the holidays very overwhelming. I am not just anticipating the joy on my children's faces as they open their gifts, or even reliving my childhood bliss. I am also vividly reliving my last Christmas with my mother, and remembering every Christmas that was wasted with every person I've ever loved. For me, holidays are a mixture of overwhelming joy and equally overwhelming grief.

And I know I'm not the only one who experiences the holiday blues. In fact, I am pretty sure it is a regular experience for many of us. Because loss is a part of life, the moments that are meant to celebrate togetherness and family can be painful for those of us who have struggled to ever feel like we belonged.

Which is why I wanted to take a moment to recommend a couple of books that I feel tackle grief really well. These are all fiction, and none of them are directly talking about what I am describing here. But they are centering characters who come from similar backgrounds and stories to a lot of us. Marginalized people who are wrestling through loss and trying to live their lives despite the crushing weight of it. And my hope is that, like me, these stories will bring you some hope as you attempt to wrestle with those feelings yourself.

LEGENDBORN BY TRACY DEONN

Legendborn is a YA fantasy series following a young Black girl on her own for the first time at a residential program for gifted highschoolers. Not only is she younger than everyone around her, but she is one of very few Black students as well. So when she accidentally uncovers a secret society of magic-wielding demon-hunters who seem to be connected to the death of her mother, she convinces herself that the only way she will ever get answers is to infiltrate their ranks. A task that becomes even more complicated once they accidentally unlock her own dormant magic.

While this is a story about magic and warfare and demons and Arthurian legend, at its core, Legendborn is an exploration of a young girl's grief as she faces the fact that she feels alone in the world and her journey to allowing herself to accept that maybe she doesn't have to be.

BEFORE I LET GO BY KENNEDY RYAN

This was a more recent read for me but it had me in my feelings just as strongly as any other story on this list. Before I Let Go is a second-chance romance about a woman who ended her marriage in the midst of a season of massive loss in her life. Overwhelmed by her grief, she lost herself for a while, and that led to a lot of new suffering. Hurt relationships, an ended marriage, struggling mental health. And now she has the hardest task in front of her: watch her husband try to move on like she asked him to, or face that unbearable grief and open the door she closed in order to give herself space to breath.

Sometimes the way that we fight to survive our grief leads us places that we struggle just as hard to live with.

CRY, VOIDBRINGER BY ELAINE HO

You are likely familiar with this title. Cry, Voidbringer is the first book that was published by this community. It follows a conscripted warrior who was taken from her home as a child and raised by a neighboring nation to fight in their war against the fading colonial power that fractured their empire a generation ago. And when she comes across a small child with devastating supernatural power, she decides she is going to do whatever she has to in order to protect that child from becoming a weapon in the same war that stole her childhood.

If I could boil this book down into one word, it would be grief. Hammer, the main character, has lost everything. Her family, her culture, her home, even her name. She is nothing bust a masked warrior in a country that doesn't even quite recognize her humanity. She has been reduced to a liberator for her oppressor and now she is risking what little freedom, or life, she has in order to save a little girl she knows she doesn't have the power to actually rescue. From the first page, we are following as she grieves the life she knows it is too late to fight for. And that resonated with me in ways I don't know that I have words to explain.

A BROKEN BLADE BY MELISSA BLAIR

This is one of the best series' I have read in recent years. It follows a halfling several decades after her people (the fae) have been successfully colonized by the human king. Now she, along with many other halflings, have been turned into weapons against their own kind by the crown. When a mysterious figure nicknamed "the Shadow" starts causing trouble, she is tasked with tracking him down and stopping him. A task that leaves her with a lot of complicated feelings and decisions to make.

Kiera is a 70-something year old descendant of a people who have been conquered and nearly irradiated, and she has spent the last few decades being forced to police and execute her own people. She is nothing but grief. Grief for what she lost. Grief over what shes been forced to do. Grief over every person she tried to save and couldn't. While this story finds its way to hope, it does so honestly, and without pulling any punches.

DEVIL OF THE DEEP BY FALENCIA JEAN-FRANCOIS

Devil of the Deep is a lighter story than the last few we discussed, but it is just as focused on wrestling through feelings of grief and loss. Lu is the very first trans man to ever be promoted to captain in the navy, and his very first assignment is to track down a powerful talisman that was taken by a runaway mermaid. Meanwhile, that mermaid is being protected by the most notorious pirate alive...who just so happens to be the love of Lu's life, who he thought had died years ago. But that is not even the grief I want to highlight in this story, because it goes deeper. This story highlights the way that imperialism uses colonial religion as a tool of control, stripping marginalized people of their culture, heritage and spiritual practices. It follows three marginalized people as they deconstruct the tools their oppressors use to control them and re-embrace who they were born to be.

Far too many people today are grieving culture, heritage and identity that has been robbed from us. This story is for all of us.

THE NAMEBEARER BY NATALIA HERNANDEZ

This is a YA fantasy following a young girl who was taken from her home as a baby and raised by the crown for one purpose: To go to the flowers of prophesy on the day of the next heir's birth to receive their name. Only when the day comes, instead of giving her the prince's name, they tell her that he will not be the kingdom's next ruler and if she wants to save her people, she needs to find the unnamed prince.

This story is so unique in it's exploration of grief because our main character has been stripped of her entire identity before the very first page. She was raised without family, without culture, without any sense of belonging. In fact, she was not even granted a name. Since the day she was born, she has been known as the namebearer. That has been all she was allowed to be. Which means that, as she pursues her destiny, we are also watching as she does the work to find herself.

Now, I am sure most of us cannot relate to being stripped of our names. But many of us can understand the feeling of being expected to fight for a people that has absolutely no interest in knowing us. In fact, I suspect a lot of us can understand the devastating feeling that comes with being born into a country that needs us but doesn't care to know us.

FIFTH SEASON BY NK JEMISIN

You will find this book on many best-of lists. And it has been for years. Because The Fifth Seasons is one of the best books ever written. It follows three women as they navigate the end of the world. The final end of the world. Centuries before the start of our story, a cataclysmic tragedy launched the planet onto a cycle of apocalyptic events. Every few generations, another apocalypse happens and the world is left reeling, trying to recover. Only this time, all of the signs suggest it is going to be the final end of the world. And we are watching as these three women attempt to navigate the end of everything they know, while following their efforts to save the people they love and put a stop to the final apocalypse.

THE BERRY PICKERS BY AMANDA PETERS

The Berry Pickers is one of the most haunting books I have ever read. Decades after a little Indigenous girl goes missing while her family is in Maine for the summer, her older brother has still not moved on. In fact, losing her threw him onto a path that he never quite recovered from. Meanwhile, while he reminisces about the life he forgot to live after losing his little sister, we watch a young girl in Maine grow up under the thumb of her overprotective mother who is determined to help her forget the dreams that have plagued her since she was a small child. Dreams that she is worried might be more memory than nightmare. This book is an exploration of grief, loss, and fractured family and it will leave you weeping, just like it did me.

I know I just threw a lot of recommendations at you and I don't expect you to read them all! But I hope that if you came here for a story about grief, something jumped out at you! I will post links below for all of them. If you grab one, consider using my link. Thanks! And in the meantime, make sure you are a part of this community. If you are not already subscribed, please do so. You can subscribe for free, or for the next few days, you can subscribe to a paying tier for 50% off and invest in this content and our efforts to champion Black and brown authors.

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