Ordinary Hazards

Content Warning: This book contains references to and descriptions of child abuse, substance use and addiction, sexual assault, and trauma. The book also contains outdated and stigmatizing language and descriptions surrounding mental health conditions. Additionally, this study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Ordinary Hazards is a memoir about how Nikki Grimes survives the difficult experiences in her early years and comes out the other side. Being a memoir, its contents rely heavily on the author’s memory; however, the trauma from the experiences Grimes recounts in the book have, in turn, affected her ability to remember events and details accurately. Grimes weaves this experience into the narrative of the book and thematically explores the interaction between memory and trauma.

Throughout the book, the difficult years of Nikki’s life are accompanied by Grimes’s connections about how different experiences have impacted her memory. In the earliest years of her life, Nikki sees her parents separate, and Carol and her are negatively impacted by this and the resultant addictions, absences, and neglect. Without parental figures actively involved in and aware of their lives, Nikki experiences abuse from multiple quarters: babysitters; foster homes; Clark.