12 Nonfiction Books That Challenged and Changed Me In 2021

It has been a year. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Is there any other way to put it?

In 2021, we dipped our toes back into the world and tried to make sense of the new rules. I spent most of the year in practice mode. I figured out a lot about myself in 2020, and emerging back into the world in 2021, I needed to practice bringing my newly-unleashed authentic self into every avenue I stepped back into in person.

One major realization of 2020 was that I had somehow ended up on a track that I wasn’t loving. I’d let so many of the things that used to bring me joy fall into the category of “unnecessary.” I’d stopped prioritizing my joy, my peace, and my learning. I struggled with the enormous responsibility of being a mother, and said “yes” to any creative projects that came my way, whether I thought they would bring me real joy or not.

No longer.

I brought reading back into my life in a big way in 2021, and I promised myself that I would never let it go again. Reading, to me, falls under essential self care. Sitting down and getting swept up in a book for hours isn’t always possible in the life of a busy working toddler mom. But the addition of audiobooks helped me to get through more books in 2021 than I’ve probably read in the last 10 years.

This year, I truly feel like I’ve found my calling(s) in life. I’ve been committed to learning all I can when it comes to antiracism work and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. I’ve also been coming to terms with and healing from old traumas, and practicing self-care, self-compassion and mindfulness to help keep me intact while I do all of that work. And I’ve been pursuing creative endeavors that I can’t wait to share. The books I chose to read this year were the perfect companions along my continuing journey.

I’ll be sharing insights on all of these things in the new year, but to close out this wild year of self-exploration and growth, I thought this would be the perfect time to share the nonfiction books that have challenged me, changed me, stretched me, comforted me, and made me feel the most seen in 2021. Perhaps they can do the same for you.

1. The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

by Dolly Chugh

If you want to know how to be a champion for equity, diversity and inclusion, stand up against injustice, and open up to unlearning and learning and relearning, you need to read this book. This is a wildly empathetic, evidence-based book that I feel is key to making real change for all people. Too many people get hung up on being a “good person”, but as author Adam Grant wrote in the NYT: “Dolly Chugh makes a convincing case that being an ally isn’t about being a good person—it’s about constantly striving to be a better person.”

I loved learning the research that the book provided, but even more so appreciated the practical advice. From talking politics with family, to being a better ally to people who don’t look like you, to when it’s worth engaging in conversation and when it’s not. For anyone who wants to get started with being a better ally, or is looking to dive into antiracism work, I would suggest this book first.

2. What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey

We all have stories, and often times traumas, that led us to become the people we are today. If you, like me, are on a journey toward learning more about yourself, and why you are the way that you are, read this book. So often, we approach other people, and ourselves, with the mentality of “What’s wrong with you?” Instead, Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah, drawing from personal experience, urge readers to shift the question to “What happened to you?”

I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in healing on any level. I loved this book and got so much out of it.

3. Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life

by Emily Nagoski

I would never have expected a book about sex to be among the best books I read this year, but this book was a total eye-opener, and not in way I expected. I wasn’t told much about this book when a friend recommended it to me — I was just told to “READ IT. NOW.”

I understand now. All women, and all people who are intimate with women, absolutely need to read this book. I don’t know that I can say more than that. Just read it.

4. You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience and the Black Experience

by Tarana Burke (Editor) and Brene Brown (Editor)

These incredibly moving stories about Black humanity from Black authors, in collaboration with Brene Brown’s work on shame resilience, make for pure magic. Being knee-deep in antiracism work can be taxing, so reading this book of essays that gave breathing room to the full scope of Black humanity was just good for my soul. All of the essays stand alone, but the threads are vulnerability (when vulnerability doesn’t always feel accessible or safe), love and possibility.

Tarana Burke says it best:

That’s another reason why antiracist work is important. You have to engage with Black humanity, because the expansiveness of our humanity is so great that it reaches to other people. I don’t want to sound all kumbaya and “we’re all just human beings” but we’re all just human beings whose experiences and environments and these systems have affected in different ways. But we must tear away the layers to reveal the core, then work our way back from that.

5. Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity and the Truth About Where I Belong

by Georgina Lawton

I am so grateful for this book, and I somehow managed to devour it in just two days. I didn’t want it to end. As a Black, biracial woman who grew up in a Black household and a white town, and who struggled (and struggles) with identity, and with race being a taboo topic within the family, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more seen while reading a book. This book should be required reading for everyone, but especially for mixed race people, parents of kids of a difference race, adopters and adopted people, and those who have had their lives thrown into chaos by DNA testing. It’s just a brave and beautiful story with unflinching truth and lots of light as well.

6. Just As I Am

by Cicely Tyson

I read this shortly after Cicely Tyson died at the age of 96, and I was just so enthralled and so moved by her story. There was so much I didn’t realize about her — how she didn’t even start acting until she was 32 years old, how she had a child before that (a daughter she never names in the book) and how she struggled at the intersection of ambition and motherhood, and so much more over the course of her illustrious career. She also dives deeply into her tumultuous relationship with Miles Davis, which I found fascinating and also knew nothing about.

Born to immigrant parents, and with nearly a century of experience as a Black woman in America, I can’t imagine there are many other people’s memoirs that are richer and more full of wisdom than Cicely Tyson’s.

7. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

by Heather McGhee

Every American needs to read this book. Every single person. This is the book about racism that needs to be taught in schools. McGhee gets at the route of why people don’t fight against racism, or simply deny the existence of racism. It always comes back to the zero sum theory that has been engrained in the American psyche — that any gains by another group must come at white people’s expense. She spends the entire book explaining, with empathy and extensive research, how the opposite is true. When one group fails, we all fail. Racism has a cost for everybody.

I am truly in awe of Heather McGhee and the extraordinary care she took in writing this book. And it’s hopeful too. if only every American would read it, we might get somewhere.

8. Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself

by Kristin Neff

I read some majorly important books this year, but this one might have been the most important one. Because at the end of the day, if I can’t take care of myself, I can’t follow through on any of the things that I learned from the other books. Being kind to yourself seems like a no-brainer, but I’m telling you, this book is revolutionary. From the author:

Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment?
Kristin Neff

How many of us actually speak to ourselves like that? How many of us actually treat ourselves with the same compassion we treat those we love? Now that I’ve read Self-Compassion, I’m actively working on these things every day.

This book isn’t new, but it was new to me this year. And it absolutely changed my life.

9. How to Be an Antiracist

by Ibram X. Kendi

This has been on my list for quite some time, and I finally read it in the early part of 2021. My biggest takeaway from this book was the idea that there is no such thing as a non racist. There is only antiracist or racist:

“The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.”
Ibram X. Kendi

This book is the answer to the phrase I’ve heard far too often and cringe at every time I hear it: “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”

10. A Promised Land

by Barack Obama

Oh, Barack. If I could choose two people in the whole world to have dinner with, I would choose Barack and Michelle Obama in a heartbeat. I read and loved Michelle Obama’s book Becoming last year, and I loved A Promised Land just as much. While I connected with Michelle so hard on motherhood, I connected with Barack in the same deep way on race. He’s also just a natural storyteller with incredible insight, so while this book is reeeeeaaaallly long, it’s engaging all the way through.

11. One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race

by dr. Yaba Blay

I needed this book a long, long time ago, but I’m glad I have it now. This photography book is filled with the perspectives of biracial, multiracial and light-skinned Black people who’ve struggled to make sense of who they are, and how to define themselves in the world. It’s fascinating to read the various viewpoints, and the different reasons why people identify in certain ways racially.

This book, more than any others I’ve read, really focuses on the question of what it means to be, and to identify as, Black. What does it take to claim Blackness, and why? According to the author:

“It is not my goal to tell people how to identify. I am not the Blackness Whisperer, nor am I the Blackness Hunter. However a person chooses to identify is just that — their choice. My aim here is to challenge narrow yet popular perceptions of what Blackness is and what Blackness looks like.”
dr. Yaba Blay

12. Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

by Tarana Burke

For anyone who ever posted #metoo on social media, or anyone who has whispered “Me too” in a quieter way, this book about the actual creator of the Me Too movement is an important and powerful read. Unbound is a raw, brave memoir that’s ultimately about how healing others begins with healing ourselves, and how a powerful calling can find you when you free yourself.

I Like Fiction and Poetry Too

I tried not to completely oversaturate myself with learning from non-fiction, so here are the fiction novels I enjoyed throughout the course of the year. I’m hoping to escape into more fiction in 2022.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

An Incomplete List of Names by Michael Torres

The Trouble With My Aunt by Hedi Lampert

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Books I Finally Read On Writing

As a writer, I know I am late to the game on these. But I finally read some of the most important books there are about writing, and they certainly helped me this year as I pursued more writing endeavors. If you love to write, whether you want to do it professionally or not, I think all three of these books are essential reading.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron

What were some of the books that changed and challenged you in 2021? I’d love to hear your picks!

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