Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a steady increase in the popularity of non-fiction, with 2023 being another banner year for the genre.
2023 was also a challenging year for the publishing industry. The efforts of three conservative advocacy groups (Moms for Liberty, Citizens Defending Freedom, and Parents’ Rights in Education) made it another record-breaking year in censorship and book-banning attempts. The American Library Association reported a 20% increase in documented book challenges since 2022, the highest number of recorded challenges at the time. Likewise, PEN America recorded a 33% year-over-year increase in book bans in American public school classrooms and libraries in 2023. As the year continued, news leaked that publishing houses responded to bans by censoring content, such as Scholastic allowing schools to opt out of its book fair catalog with diverse books, many of which are non-fiction (after all, knowledge is power).
Due to these attacks, choosing the best non-fiction of 2023 felt like a monumental task, so I came up with some criteria. What the best non-fiction has in common is readability, meaning you don’t need to be an expert in the book’s topic to understand it; enjoyability, meaning the prose isn’t dry like an academic text; novelty, meaning new information is presented or new perspective argued; and necessity, whether we believe that it should be added to your library immediately.
On The Mary Sue‘s best non-fiction of 2023 list, you’ll find titles that meet the above requirements across various genres, arranged chronologically by release date, not ranked. Read on to see our picks.
Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton’s memoir about the troubled teen industry and how she dealt with the trauma to become the OG celebrity influencer both surprised me and confirmed my long-held suspicions that she’s a total badass, maybe even a genius. Say goodbye to Sheryl Sandberg and Nell Scovell’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (a problematic novel encouraging women to assert themselves), and say hello to Hilton’s honest and surprising memoir about dealing with trauma, listening to your gut about the quality of your own ideas, and knowing there’s value in those ideas even if others don’t always see them.
Published: March 14, 2023
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
In some ways, Claire Dederer’s exploration of Art Monsters is a book about heartbreak. An idea popularized in a Literary Hub essay by Rebecca Solnit, Art Monster describes a cis male artist given an extrajudicial pass to explore his creative genius by acting on his worst impulses. Dederer argues, “Genius is the name we give our love to when we don’t want to argue about it, when we want our opinion to become fact, when we don’t want to hold our heroes accountable.” Monsters isn’t about how we consider the art of those who do bad things, but about who gets to decide which heroes we hold accountable—and the racist, sexist, and classist language used to enforce those opinions of genius as fact.
Published: April 25, 2023
The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths by Brad Fox
Brad Fox tells the story of naturalist William Beebe’s 1930 to 1934 deep sea voyages in the bathysphere, a four-and-a-half-foot steel sphere, and his discovery of Bathysphaera intacta, a six-foot-long “giant dragonfish” said to resemble a large barracuda, off the coast of Nonsuch Island in the Bermuda archipelago. There are no photographs from this early discovery, only an image drawn by Else Bostelmann, who accompanied Beebe on his expedition but never descended into the ocean’s depths. By turns philosophical and elegiac, The Bathysphere Book is an alternative history of Beebe’s deep ocean exploration.
Published: May 16, 2023
Pageboy: A Memoir by Elliot Page
2023 was the year of the celebrity memoir. Constance Wu, Matthew Perry, Sir Patrick Stewart, Prince Harry, and more decided to memorialize their own stories with groundbreaking memoirs about the challenges they’ve experienced in the public eye. But as a trans critic and journalist with an eating disorder history, Elliot Page’s moving story about the prejudice he faced as a young, queer actor in Hollywood stood out. With there being little information about the unique aspects of EDs in trans patients available and easily accessible online, Pageboy is an important resource for trans men in ED recovery. Although it’s a resource that I wish I had when I was treatment, instead of 10-plus years after my official diagnosis, I’m glad it’s available now.
Published: June 6, 2023
When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era by Donovan X. Ramsey
One of my favorite things about non-fiction is that it provides an intimate forum to confront your own biases. Except I’m a writer, so I will publicly admit that When Crack Was King forced me to confront my own biases about the crack epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s. I will also admit that I did not know that the “crack baby” phenomenon was a myth, and I have a master’s degree in criminology! Ramsey’s book is a masterclass in disrupting a stubborn narrative.
Published: July 11, 2023
The Jewish Deli: An Illustrated Guide to the Chosen Food by Ben Nadler
Why do Jewish people love deli food so much? What is Jewish delicatessen food, anyway? What makes it unique, and where can you get it? Author and illustrator Ben Nadler went around the U.S. to talk to the owners of some of America’s most famous delis to learn more about the American Jewish community’s unique culinary inheritance. In this book, Nadler isn’t talking about traditional foods eaten at holiday potluck feasts, like gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, hamantaschen, and challah, but the distinct fusion cuisine that arose out of the Jewish immigrant experience, a.k.a. the deli.
Published: July 11, 2023
Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy by Bill Griffith
One of the masters of this generation of comic strip cartoonists offers his perspective on one of the masters of the last generation of comic strip cartoonists. From Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody’s Fool creator Bill Griffith, Three Rocks is a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy, about the nature of comic strips. At the time of Bushmiller’s death in 1982, the strip ran in almost 900 daily newspapers—a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve. The book’s title refers to the three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape—just enough to communicate the environment to the reader—and a favorite trope of Griffith in his own work.
Published: August 29, 2023
We Are Not Strangers by Josh Tuininga
Josh Tuininga’s graphic novel is about a Seattle-based Sephardic Jewish immigrant’s efforts to help neighbors whose lives were upended by World War II’s Executive Order 9066, a U.S. law authorizing the incarceration of nearly all Japanese Americans and residents of Japanese ancestry (unfortunately, although the Supreme Court had a chance in 2018, the 1944 case Korematsu v. U.S. upholding the EO has never been overturned). While Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market is best known for its delicious seafood, Tuininga fills the pages of his graphic novel with the stories of the people behind the market and their shared experiences of discrimination.
Published: September 12, 2023
Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion by Sowmya Krishnamurthy
Titled after the A$AP Rocky song “Fashion Killa,” Krishnamurthy unpacks 50 years of hip-hop’s influence on fashion. Moving beyond the iconic mages of Run-DMC in their Adidas tracksuits, the long-time music journalist tells the story of hip-hop’s influence on high fashion and traces how hip-hop style evolved during the art form’s first half-century: from rappers emulating luxury brands, with LL Cool J and Big Daddy Kane sporting Dapper Dan “knock-up” designs; to serving as inspiration for said brands, with Chanel’s 1991 Fall/Winter ready-to-wear line.
Published: October 10, 2023
Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista
Trauma journalist and documentary filmmaker Patricia Evangelista’s memoir is titled after a conversation she once had. Named one of Barack Obama’s best books of 2023, Some People Need Killing explores the aftermath of the war on drugs in the Philippines, Evangelista’s home country, and reflects on the press’s role during that difficult period in the country’s history. After Rodrigo Duterte was elected president in 2016, people working for the state carried out thousands of extrajudicial killings. In her memoir, Evangelista tells the stories of lives lost during that period and interrogates the language we use to describe violence.
Published: October 17, 2023
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
In June 2021, the world listened as Britney Spears spoke in open court, revealing the abuse the Princess of Pop suffered while under the conservatorship managed by her father, James Spears, court-appointed attorney Andrew M. Wallet, and former business manager Lou M. Turner, CEO of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment Group. In the aftermath of the dispute, Spears became a symbol of conservator law reform. Now, in her groundbreaking memoir, she discusses the power of rediscovering her voice and telling her own story, illuminating how that can change countless lives. Mine included. While in Sin City (where the tabloid’s favorite “sinful” songstress couldn’t even sin) in 2008, I was involuntarily committed and misdiagnosed with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder the same night of the singer’s highly publicized breakdown. Always feeling a deep kinship with Spears because of this, I was an early adopter of the #FreeBritney movement and found myself in tears reading that we saved her, just like she saved many of us.
Published: October 24, 2023
The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power by Courtney B. Vance and Robin L. Smith
Silence isn’t golden; it’s death. In America, Black men have long struggled with the burden of living up to white expectations about the proper way to express invisible pain, which arises from dealing with racism daily. According to The Invisible Ache, Black men’s desire to rise above white stereotypes and prejudices about Black masculinity, along with their distrust of an American medical community, long responsible for callously using them as test subjects in deadly experiments, has kept Black men from admitting their own mental health challenges and seeking appropriate care.
Published: November 7, 2023
Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir (November 14, 2023)
Eyeliner isn’t just make-up; it’s rebellion. As told by Lebanese-British journalist Zahra Hankir, eyeliner’s cultural history isn’t something I knew I needed. Still, I needed it: almost every chapter taught me something new about different groups’ histories with eyeliner, from modern-day Iranian women to Japanese Geishas to Amy Winehouse—exactly what I want from non-fiction.
(featured image: Balance / Dey Street Books / Abrams Books / Gallery Books / Penguin Random House / Chronicle Books / Knopf Doubleday / One World)
