Why is Nonfiction Rare on TikTok?

This is a memoir to read if you feel like you’re bumbling through your 20s (or 30s or 40s, I don’t judge). It’s a funny and heartwarming look at love and loss and life and all that big stuff. Think of it as a catch-up with that friend who’s a little self-destructive and a little self-indulgent. Her stories, though? Can’t be matched. It’s also great if you’re feeling nostalgic for a time when parties and dates were your biggest concerns.

I’m always glad to come across this singular and thought-provoking memoir on the app ostensibly used to make everybody’s brains shut off. Machado’s memoir of an abusive relationship is told in fragments that adopt many different styles and genres. The storytelling tropes and themes invoked are familiar to us. The twist? The subject matter itself—abuse within a queer relationship—is a story rarely told.

This book knocked me flat. There have been multiple genocidal regimes in recent history that made a practice of disappearing people, an act that leaves loved ones in an unbearable state of despair. But there are people working to find and identify human remains from these fairly recent atrocities with the goal of giving a measure of peace to victims’ families, as this book details. Here comes a little soapbox moment: Sometimes, people with morbid interests indulge in too much true crime and end up with a very toxic mindset. They might become overly suspicious of their fellow humans or detached from the suffering of victims and their families. This kind of book is perfect for people who have morbid interests but want to use them for good. Books like this help readers gain new perspectives, learn important history, and connect to our shared human nature that finds death-related rituals important.

This book has been around for a while, so the fact that it comes up in TikToks by the morbid nonfiction girlies truly delights me. Mary Roach has a wonderfully conversational way of writing, and her interest in regular people and their lives is genuine and charming. While this book about what happens to a human body in death is, at times, very funny, it’s also very touching and respectful. Oddly enough, it’s one of the most lighthearted books on this list.

In 2023, many people found themselves woefully undereducated about the history of Palestine. Many Booktokers have been curating lists of books that will help people understand what events led to the current conflict, what daily life is like for Palestinians, and what Palestinian culture offers. You can find books that take views over millennia or over very short time spans, but this book will catch you up on the last 100 years.

This book, written by a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary writer, looks at the ways anti-fatness and anti-blackness layer to devastating effect. This is an important book for people wishing to learn more about both police violence and anti-fat bias, as stories like Eric Garner’s are foregrounded. It’s not a very long book, but it is deeply researched and very thought-provoking, which I think are all factors contributing to its prevalence on TikTok.

Disability justice is obviously a very urgent matter and more relevant than ever in the wake of COVID as a mass disabling event. This collection of essays from disabled writers is brash and heartfelt, a perfect jumping-off point for people new to reading about disability. As with any book about marginalized people, you may have your eyes opened to others’ realities. At the same time, you may witness someone putting words to your own feelings.