Acceptance

March 1, 2022

Currently president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Leahy gives us a sweeping view of U.S. politics as he tells his story as the country's longest-serving senator in The Road Taken (75,000-copy first printing). A leading light in film and television, also featured in four Broadway shows, Lewis (The Mother of Black Hollywood) recounts personal experiences encapsulating the vagaries of modern life while highlighting what she's learned about Walking in My Joy (125,00-copy first printing). In Deer Creek Drive, AWP Award-winning novelist/memoirist Lowry recalls the particularly vicious 1948 murder of society matron Idella Thompson near where she grew up in the solidly Jim Crow Mississippi Delta, with neighbors protesting the conviction of Thompson's daughter even though her claims about a fleeing Black man proved spurious. Proclaiming I'm Glad My Mom Died, actor/director McCurdy relates what it was like to be a child star (iCarly) wrestling with an eating disorder, addiction, and a controlling and aggressively ambitious mother (75,000-copy first printing). In a memoir rejecting the standard resilience trope, Nietfeld chronicles traversing a childhood encompassing a mother who put her on antipsychotics, icy foster care, Adderall addiction, and homelessness to arrive at Harvard, Big Tech, and Acceptance--crucially, of herself. Award-winning critic/novelist Tillman relates a life taken over by Mothercare after her mother was diagnosed with Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (after several wrong assumptions), leading to seven surgeries, memory loss, and total dependence on her daughters.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 25, 2022
Nietfeld debuts with a heart-pounding look at her path out of homelessness and the flawed systems she had to navigate along the way. Raised in Minneapolis in the early 2000s by a single mother, Nietfeld’s home was “filled to the top with garbage, and... covered with mouse and dog excrements.” Despite the glaring signs of abuse, Nietfeld’s mother convinced therapists her daughter was mentally unwell. “No one would listen to me. No one would trust me,” Nietfeld writes, describing in unsparing prose the revolving door of mental institutions she spun through before being put into foster care in her teens. Though her foster parents belittled her academic pursuits, she excelled in her studies and secured a scholarship to boarding school, where she spent school breaks alternating between prestigious academic camps and living in her car. After being accepted to Harvard, Nietfeld was sure her life would change, but as she reckoned with the school’s elitist culture and, later, the disillusionment that came from working in Silicon Valley, she realized the trauma “ingrained into my nervous system” couldn’t be eradicated by the fleeting thrills and rewards of finding “status” in America. It’s a sobering narrative, and Nietfeld’s raw resilience and candor will keep readers enthralled until the very last page. This hits hard.

Starred review from May 15, 2022
An account of growing up in institutions and foster care by a Harvard graduate and former Google employee. After her parents divorced, Nietfeld's father transitioned from male to female; her mother, who won custody, "was a hoarder with mental issues." The family home became uninhabitable. At 13, Nietfeld checked into a psych ward, "luxuriat[ing] in the endless hot water, the meals that came on trays," and later attempted suicide. After talking to a social worker, she entered a residential eating disorder program. Over the course of the narrative, the author shows how her various diagnoses (bulimia, psychosis) were reactions to her mother's inability to care for her. In fact, her mother's willingness to let the state take custody of her only daughter appears almost blithe; she appears chiefly in cameos. The turning point in the narrative comes when, while institutionalized, Nietfeld became obsessed with getting into an Ivy League college, a dream no one took seriously. She learned that her success would be determined not merely by her GPA or SAT scores, but also by how much she was willing to mine her family history for admissions-essay fodder. She had to learn how to play the game: to be a "good survivor" and "exemplify post-traumatic growth, not post-traumatic stress disorder." Though Nietfeld graduated from Harvard with a lucrative job offer from Google, this is not just a bootstrapping tale. The author offers a complex meditation on desperation, leveraging personal pain, and how the drive to achieve can be a gift and a pathology simultaneously. "All I'd wanted growing up was to read books and study, but instead I learned how few acceptable ways there were to need help," she writes. "You had to be perfect, deserving, hurt in just the right way....Everyone who dealt with disadvantaged kids, from ther-apists to college admissions officers, treated us as if we could overcome any abuse or neglect with sheer force of will." A powerful memoir of overcoming adversity that also effectively interrogates the concept of meritocracy.

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July 1, 2022
Nietfeld is a Harvard graduate, an award-winning essayist, and a software engineer. She also has spent most of her life trying to hide details about her family and upbringing from others. Her relationships with her parents were strained at best; one mother, after coming out as a transgender woman and losing custody, moved away and rarely spoke to the author, while Nietfield's other mother and full-time custodian struggled with hoarding and providing her daughter with the bare necessities. Nietfeld recounts the struggles of sleeping in cars and on couches, scraping together pennies, coping with self-harm and addiction, and trying to appear as though nothing were wrong. Driven to escape her situation, Nietfeld turned to writing and the arts, attending the prestigious Interlochen boarding school and eventually gaining acceptance to Harvard. Often surrounded by extreme wealth in these institutions, Nietfeld started hiding her background not just by choice but as a survival mechanism. Her impressive debut is a radical probe into our society's insistence on resiliency through unthinkable struggles, leading readers to reexamine long-held definitions of success.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2022

Nietfeld's captivating page-turner recounts her difficult Minnesota childhood. After her parents divorced, she writes that their own mental illness made them unable or unwilling to give their daughter even minimal care, and she experienced periods of homelessness and foster care. During her high school years, Nietfeld decided that excellence--achieving something great--would be her way out. She expertly describes the determined mindset with which she tackled seemingly unrealistic goals while also battling almost impossible setbacks; readers will find themselves rooting for Nietfeld to reach a successful adulthood (she eventually graduates from Harvard and becomes a software engineer). Her memoir effectively relates the experiences of a child forced to raise herself due to negligent parents and ineffectual social and psychiatric services. VERDICT A gripping firsthand account of a teenager navigating homelessness and the foster care system. It should appeal to many and may be of particular interest to school counselors, foster parents, psychologists, social workers, and others who work with children in difficult situations.--Kathaleen McCormick

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.