Acceptance: A Memoir -- Emi Nietfeld - Hardcover

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.


Author: Emi Nietfeld
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: 08/02/2022
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.34lbs
Size: 9.62h x 6.39w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780593489475

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/01/2022 pg. 25
Publishers Weekly 04/25/2022
Library Journal 06/01/2022 pg. 155
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2022
Booklist 07/01/2022 pg. 2