Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Acceptance: A Memoir

Acceptance: A Memoir

Nietfeld, Emi

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralCriminology

Publisher Price: $27.00

ISBN10: 0593489470
ISBN13: 9780593489475
Publisher: Penguin Pr
Published: Aug 2 2022
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.34
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.39 Depth: 9.62
Language: English
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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