Trauma and Liberation in YA Speculative Fiction

by Deanna Richards

Speculative fiction offers YA writers something that realistic fiction cannot: the freedom to craft worlds with fantastic, supernatural, or technologically or scientifically enhanced elements that serve as a protective container for catharsis—allowing young readers to safely explore trauma and experience individual and collective liberation.   

Transmuting Trauma Through Genre 

Before diving in, let’s start with a few definitions. Traumatic events are often described as frightening or dangerous experiences, and can include natural disasters, physical or emotional abuse, neglect, experiencing or witnessing crime, violence, death, or war. An overwhelming emotional and somatic response to a traumatic event, which can oftentimes contribute to long-lasting distress, is defined as trauma. Liberation, in this context, means the act of release—which may result in freedom from physical imprisonment, oppression, or harmful psychological states.

Young readers are bound to encounter challenging topics in books, and while some may be comfortable or even prefer exploring those topics in realistic, contemporary fiction, speculative fiction offers readers the chance to experience difficult content in a way that may feel less directly threatening. It also allows for the inclusion of liberatory outcomes that would not be possible in a non-speculative work.

Tomi Adeyemi is one of many writers who has intentionally used speculative fiction to expose, explore, process, and combat trauma with historical roots, such as colonization, the legacy of slavery, and racism. In the Author’s Note at the close of Children of Blood and Bone (2018), she names her intentional choice to use fantasy as a way of transmuting the sense of helplessness and grief into a liberatory experience:

Although riding giant lionaires and performing sacred rituals might be in the realm of fantasy, all the pain, fear, sorrow and loss in this book is real. Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women, and children being shot by the police. I felt afraid and angry and helpless, but this book was the one thing that made me feel like I could do something about it.   

Authors A. S. King, Tracey Deonn, and Justina Ireland also use speculative fiction as a vehicle to explore trauma within interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, as well as in systemic structures. King’s Dig (2019) addresses family trauma alongside gender-based violence and employs a supernatural element—the spirit of a murdered girl—to exact justice. Deonn’s Legendborn Cycle (2020–2025) tackles traumatic grief alongside racial trauma and allows characters liberation through the reclamation and harnessing of ancestral magical powers. Ireland’s Ophie’s Ghosts (2021), exposes racial injustices in the aftermath of slavery, and justice and freedom are brought about by an unlikely partnership between the living and the dead. These works are a few examples of texts that successfully create a safe space for readers, transform instead of vicariously traumatize, and turn trauma into triumph. 

Empowerment and Liberation

As SF writers, you are uniquely positioned to provide young readers safe passage during the exploration of trauma and to allow them to experience release in new and creative ways. While YA texts may include realistic representations of extreme violence, loss and suffering, life in poverty and war zones, or impacts of generational trauma, the liberation characters can achieve is confined only by the imagination of the writer. Whether by spells, claws, uncanny physical prowess, or with the aid of deceased ancestors, fairies, or divine entities, you possess endless opportunities to empower your characters, devise innovative strategies to break down oppressive structures and disrupt destructive family patterns, and forge paths toward justice, healing, and catharsis. 

If you want to explore trauma and liberation in your work, consider these questions as you craft your story: 

1. In what ways is your hero empowered? What have they learned to do to survive within their deeply flawed and destructive society and/or family? 
2. Ask this of your hero: What parts of themselves can they embrace to turn the traumatic wound into a source of strength? Into a weapon?  
3. How are SFF elements—the fantastic, the supernatural, the technologically advanced, the magical, the alternative histories, or the secondary world—being used to aid your characters in healing themselves, freeing others, achieving justice, or dismantling oppressive structures and disrupting trauma cycles?

Keeping Your Young Reader Safe 

Although speculative fiction inherently offers a layer of protection by being outside of our reality, the genre alone cannot protect a reader; a made-up world containing traumatic events can still become unsafe. However, you can avoid unintentionally harming the young reader by reflecting on the areas below:  

1. Violence: What is the purpose of violence or cruelty in your work? How does what’s happening shape the character’s psyche?  
2. Pacing: When do your characters have space to breathe, even among the traumatic moments? Where are there moments of lightness? Of joy? Of calm? 
3. Empowerment: Are your characters constantly being acted upon? Are they perpetually disempowered?

By wisely using the tools that speculative fiction offers, you can care for your young reader while grappling with difficult subjects.  

Difficult Worlds, Safe Journeys

All fiction, to some degree, can offer the kind of distance that makes reader engagement with trauma feel safe and empowering. Speculative fiction, however, can push the boundaries of resistance and resilience beyond what is possible in real life (or realistic stories). And for younger readers especially, both those reimagined possibilities and the safety of the fantastic world can provide the chance to safely accompany characters on their complex journeys, experience new ways to challenge oppressive structures and patterns in society, and achieve liberation.

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Deanna Richards is a queer-identified writer and licensed mental health counselor of Jamaican descent. D has participated in several writing workshops, including the Tin House YA Novel Workshop and the Whole Novel Workshop for SFF genre at Highlights Foundation, and graduated in June 2025 from Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, Writing for Young People track.