Acceptance by Emi Nietfield

A luminous, generation-defining memoir of foster care and homelessness, Harvard and Big Tech, examining society's fixation on resilience--and its cost

As a homeless teenager writing college essays in her '92 Toyota Corolla, Emi Nietfeld was convinced that an elite school was the only path away from her dysfunctional childhood. But upward mobility required crafting the perfect resilience narrative, proving that she was an "overcomer," made stronger by all that she had endured.

The truth was far murkier. 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's departure from her life was tied up in a gender transition that few in the mid-2000s understood. Her own past was filled with facts that she needed to hide: mental health struggles, Adderall addiction, and the unbecoming desperation of a teenager fending for herself. The obstacles Emi claimed she had transcended still defined her life; even though she would go on to graduate from Harvard and become a software engineer at Google, she found that success didn't necessarily mean safety.