Acceptance: A Memoir

Description

“Nietfeld’s gifts for capturing the fury of living at the mercy of bad
circumstances, for critiquing the hero’s journey even while she tells it, make
Acceptance a remarkable memoir.” —The New York Times Book Review A luminous,
generation-defining memoir of foster care and homelessness, Harvard and Big
Tech, examining society’s fixation with resilience—and its cost As a homeless
teenager writing college essays in her rusty Toyota Corolla, Emi Nietfeld was
convinced that the Ivy League was the only escape from her dysfunctional
childhood. But upward mobility required crafting the perfect resilience
narrative. She had to prove that she was an “overcomer,” made stronger by all
that she had endured. The truth was more complicated. Emi’s mom was a charming
hoarder who had her put on antipsychotics but believed in her daughter’s
brilliance—unlike the Minnesotan foster family who banned her “pornographic”
art history flash cards (of Michelangelo’s David). Emi’s other parent vanished
shortly after coming out as trans, a situation few understood in the
mid-2000s. Her own past was filled with secrets: mental health struggles,
Adderall addiction, and the unbecoming desperation of a teenager fending for
herself. And though Emi would go on to graduate from Harvard and become a
software engineer at Google, she found that success didn’t necessarily mean
safety. Both a chronicle of the American Dream and an indictment of it, this
searing debut exposes the price of trading a troubled past for the promise of
a bright future. Told with a ribbon of dark humor, Acceptance challenges our
ideas of what it means to overcome—and find contentment on your own terms.
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Features:

Product Details:

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press (August 2, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593489470
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 75
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.34 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.2 x 9.54 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #183,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #62 in Sociology Books on Abuse #1,843 in Women's Biographies #5,346 in Memoirs (Books)
• #62 in Sociology Books on Abuse
• #1,843 in Women's Biographies