Can you believe it’s Nonfiction November Week 4 already? Thank you so much to all my co-hosts and to all the people who contributed to my week of Pairings last week!

Week 4 (11/20-11/24) Worldview Shapers: One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction is learning all kinds of things about our world which you never would have known without it. There’s the intriguing, the beautiful, the appalling, and the profound. What nonfiction book or books have impacted the way you see the world in a powerful way? Is there one book that made you rethink everything? Do you think there is a book that should be required reading for everyone? (Rebekah at She Seeks Nonfiction the post will go live at 1pm UK time so do pop back then; the linkz is already live here)

I’ve kept this to my books read since the beginning of last November.

Here are some books which have taught me something really new and I suggest people have a look at to do some serious learning and the theme would be social justice.

Chelsea Watego – “Another Day in the Colony“, Anita Heiss (ed.) – “Growing up Aboriginal in Australia“, Claire G. Coleman – “Lies, Damn Lies” These books all educated me on the current lives of people of Aboriginal and Pacific Islander heritage in Australia and their communities’ troubled histories once the colonialists invaded.

Alison Mariella Desir’s “Running While Black” and Gina Yashere’s “Cack-Handed” and Lenny Henry’s “Who Am I Again?” brought home the challenges of being a Black runner (the first one) and a Black person in the British entertainment industry respectively.

Riva Lehrer’s “Golem Girl” gave much-needed insight into lives lived with a disability, activism and attitudes, and Travis Alabanza’s “None of the Above” continued my education in transgender studies.

It’s interesting that all of these are effectively memoirs, however none of them are JUST memoirs, all of them drawing on other people’s experiences and sharing and highlighting histories that have been lost or suppressed over the years. If you want a course of reading in social justice and different kinds of people’s lives, these might be a good place to start (my social justice categories will give you more).