Cemetery Boys
by Aiden Thomas
He summoned a ghost to prove himself. The ghost won't leave.
For you if
you want a ghost story where the trans boy gets the magic and the romance and the family recognition he deserves
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Yadriel is a trans boy from a Mexican American brujo family — he can summon the dead, but his family won't perform the ritual that would confirm his power because they still see him as a girl. When he summons the ghost of the school's most notorious bad boy to prove himself, the ghost refuses to leave. Thomas writes Latinx brujo mythology and trans identity with equal warmth and specificity — neither is a metaphor for the other, both are simply true. A romance, a mystery, a ghost story, and a book about a trans boy fighting to be recognized by the people who are supposed to love him. Joyful and necessary in equal measure.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Mexico • Latin America
- Voice
- Written by a Mexican author
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Like Water for Chocolate(1992)
dir. Alfonso Arau
Forbidden love, served through food.
In early-1900s Mexico, Tita is forbidden by family tradition from marrying the man she loves, so she pours her longing into the food she cooks — food that carries her emotions, sometimes literally, into everyone who eats it. Adapted from Laura Esquivel's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in making a kitchen the site of rebellion — Tita's cooking becomes the one language her mother can't control or silence. Pedagogical in showing how inherited "duty" polices women's desire generation after generation, and what it costs to break that chain.
Pedro Páramo(2024)
dir. Rodrigo Prieto
A ghost town where the dead won't stop talking.
A man travels to his late mother's hometown to find the father he never knew, only to discover Comala is a ghost town in the most literal sense — populated by the dead, still narrating the tyranny of the cacique who once ruled it. Adapted from Juan Rulfo's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in blurring the line between the living and the dead until power and guilt outlast the man who held them — Pedro Páramo's tyranny haunts Comala long after his death. Pedagogical in showing how one man's greed can hollow out an entire town's future.
Same pattern, different era
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For the family bookshelf
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