Nonfiction Taught Me How to See the World Differently

If you’ve taken writing classes or read just about any book, one thing you might hear over and over is that you need to read (and write,) nonfiction.

As a reader who has basically received a master’s degree in Reading Faerie Fiction, courtesy of Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass), Holly Black (The Cruel Prince), and Heather Fawcett (Emily Wilde), I used to think this was ridiculous. I didn’t need to read about someone else’s life; I had my own to worry about! It’s not that I don’t believe reading is political or rooted in real life, no matter the genre, because it absolutely is, but I didn’t see the need to discolor my fantasy reading with the heartbreak, loss, and sorrows of a real person’s experiences. 

Plus, it’s not like the novels I enjoy aren’t about those things. They just approach them in whimsical, adventurous ways. Before appreciating nonfiction, I’d have much preferred to read Nesta from A Court of Thorns and Roses overcome addiction and depression via house arrest in a home carved from a mountainside rather than an actual person’s battle with these things through whatever measures they acknowledge in a memoir. 

I’ll admit it now, almost every nonfiction book or essay I’ve read this year has made me cry. From Annie Ernaux’s The Years and Stephanie Fairyington’s Ugly to Sheila Heti’s Motherhood and Michelle Zauner’s acclaimed Crying in H Mart, there’s something so tender about reading someone else’s life laid bare for you. They seem to warn us not to make the same mistakes they did, while also saying that, in some ways, all of their decisions were worth it. 

However, nonfiction doesn’t have to be someone’s memoir or a recollection of grief or another one of those market-shattering self-help books; I’m just a sappy reader most interested in others’ ways of moving about the world. In truth, nonfiction is the news you consume, the reviews you Google while looking for a new restaurant to try, and the travel vlogs you watch every spring and summer break. Nonfiction is everywhere. Just not in the way(s) you might think. 

But why should you consciously read the genre, hundreds of pages printed and bound into an entire book? Why aren’t your favorite influencers’ YouTube videos and the occasional New York Times news headlines enough?

It might be because you’re too far removed from those things. You view everyday—mandatory—nonfiction with horror or desire, completely centered on your own experiences and relative to yourself. For example, when you see a heartbreaking headline or a gorgeous view of a faraway beach: Oh, what a terrible thing that happened to that person! I can’t imagine! or Ooh, I’d like to go there this summer! 

These responses are wildly different, but they encompass the average approach to the nonfiction most people don’t even register as “nonfiction”. Nonfiction is too embedded in the world, in living itself, that it’s difficult to extricate ourselves from it and seek it out in book form. 

Though that’s the reason why we have to actively pursue nonfiction as a reading genre. There’s so much to be learned about the world and our peers in it. Remember, countries and regions are human constructs: people live globally, in different ways, with different religions and languages and food and legal systems and social structures. We don’t have to venture to learn them all, but by taking the time to investigate others’ ways of life, we gain clarity when attempting to live out our own. How can we change our lives, if we don’t feel like we fit in our communities and systems? Who might we emulate?

Nonfiction is also tightly knit within history. When you read enough nonfiction, you’ll notice an overlap. Eventually, familiar names will greet you: Audre Lorde, Annie Ernaux, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison. These giants’ names are large for a reason: their work intersects the arts, race, society, and the power of a life lived.

Nonfiction authors afford us the precious lessons they learned while living through the human condition, something that just doesn’t compare to our favorite fictional protagonists. Sure, they’re human—but that doesn’t mean we can easily contextualize ourselves in their world and recognize proximity between what we know and what they glean from their hero’s journeys. I find myself removed from them, sometimes, because there’s no way my life could ever look like theirs, rife with evil faeries and immortality and daggers-to-the-throat.

So, pick up a nonfiction book. It won’t just make you well-read. It’ll make you well-lived.