What We're Reading: Acceptance by Emi Nietfeld

I just finished the memoir, “Acceptance," by Emi Nietfeld, in which she recounts her difficult childhood and adolescence, bouncing in and out of psychiatric institutions and the foster care system, often ending up homeless.  But she always had a desire to prove herself and ultimately went to Harvard and then landed a highly coveted job in Silicon Valley. She describes her college admission essay as a story that tied her chaotic life into a neat bow, using the ribbon of now in-vogue psychological concepts like “grit” and “resilience.” Yet the book is really a challenge to this popular “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, shedding light on its ugly underbelly. If you are to be praised for overcoming, are you also to be blamed if you can’t? Does an emphasis on individual resilience place the responsibility of many of society’s biggest problems like racism, child abuse, and poverty in the hands of the innocent victims? Neitfeld lets us into the mind of a teenager who does not realize the tragedy of her own situation. In so doing, her memoir sparks both a sense of compassion and anger that may be what both our broken society, and the traumatized individuals it creates, need to heal and grow.