Acceptance: A Memoir

by Emi Nietfeld

A brilliant, generation-defining memoir of foster care and homelessness, Harvard and Big Tech, about the stories we tell about ourselves to succeed and survive

As a homeless teenager writing college essays in her '92 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'd endured.

The truth was far murkier. Emi's mom was a charming hoarder who got 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 no one in the early 2000s understood. Her own past was filled with facts she needed to hide: mental health struggles, Adderall addiction, and the unbecoming desperation of a teenager fending for herself. The obstacles Emi claimed she'd overcome still defined her life; even though she'd go on to graduate from Harvard and become a software engineer at Google, she found that success didn't necessarily mean safety.

Told with an incisive storyteller's eye, this searing memoir exposes the cost of trading a troubled past for the promise of a bright future. Having experienced the American Dream firsthand, Emi speaks truth to the high cost of upward mobility, the hypocrisy of elite spaces, and the harsh standards set by societal ideals of grit and overcoming. Candid and often harrowing, with a ribbon of dark humor, Acceptance is an electrifying read that challenges our ideas of what it means to overcome--and find contentment on your own terms.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Mental Health, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, LGBT

Kindle Edition

First published August 2, 2022

About the author

Emi Nietfeld is a writer and software engineer. After graduating from Harvard in 2015, she worked at Google and Facebook. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Rumpus, Vice, and other publications. She lives in New York City with her family.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked a lot of this memoir though also felt that it did not live up to its marketing. What I most appreciated: Emi Nietfeld’s honest, incisive retelling of growing up poor, in the foster care system, with mental illness and dysfunctional parents. I feel like her account destigmatizes mental illness while shedding light on several factors that make one’s mental and physical life harder, such as poverty, gendered violence (e.g., sexual assault), and transphobia and biphobia. I appreciated the underlying theme that external accomplishments do not make a person healthy or whole.

Yet, I felt that this memoir glossed over a lot of the actual questioning/interrogation of the American Dream, Harvard and Big Tech, and upward mobility in general. The book’s structure is pretty much like, 75% Nietfeld’s traumatic childhood, 20% her time at Harvard, and 5% an epilogue where she goes to therapy and physical therapy after having earned over six figures at Google. She does experience challenges at Harvard, though that segment of the memoir wraps up with her high salaried-job offer and her dating a privileged white man whose mother and grandmother went to Harvard too? Again, I enjoyed reading Nietfeld’s vulnerable recounting of her childhood, though the supposed interrogation of the American Dream, promised by blurbs about this book, did not really manifest for me. For example, while I’m happy that Nietfeld finally got the resources to afford therapy, I wanted more of an interrogation of why Harvard had the power to so drastically alter her life’s trajectory, the ethics of working at tech companies that regularly offer six figure salaries, the intersection of whiteness and Nietfeld’s upward mobility, etc.

I’ve read articles about how a lot of writers come from financially privileged backgrounds, so I’m glad Nietfeld shared her life how she did in Acceptance. I also wish that the healing and self-reflection in the epilogue could have had more room in this memoir.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly powerful!!

One of my - personal - favorite parts: was when Emi went to Interlochen Art Academy in Michigan ….their credited academic High school with an emphasis on the arts: music, dance, fine arts, musical theater.
Our oldest daughter attended Interlochen her first year of High School. ( very different than their summer camp programs)

The adversities that Emi survived was almost unbelievable…
from nothing to something …. poverty… mother’s hoarding
& ongoing hardships —
unbearable experiences in psychedelic institutions to Harvard- to Google to Facebook — to now….

The audiobook was excellent…. a little long … but remarkable obstacles this one young woman over- came — her endurance- faith and perseverance!

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Press for the ebook. This is a pretty staggering memoir about the author’s childhood. Her mother’s mental issues manifested in debilitating hoarding, to the point that showers were out of the question because the tub is full of useless junk and the very air makes her ill. This is coupled with her father transitioning into a woman and leaving the family with very limited contact when the author was ten. This was at a time when both of these issues were rarely discussed openly and certainly misunderstood when they were. This leads the author in and out of different schools, to her own mental issues and self harm, a foster home and a long term abusive boyfriend. But the author always has her eye on going to an Ivy League college as a way to another life, although she gets such little encouragement from everyone she meets. It’s not giving anything away because the book opens with the author getting married after telling us she’s graduated Harvard and works at Google, but as we see in the following, sometimes harrowing chapters, achieving lifelong goals doesn’t promise a perfect happiness. This is a wonderful book, made even more so as the author doesn’t tell her story from a distance, but instead pulls you back in time to walk every step of her story right beside her.

[Marianne Kaplan · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5. Very difficult book for me to rate. I’m thinking about what this says about me that I intellectually experience a great deal of empathy and compassion for the author and yet I don’t feel very much emotional connection to her. She heartfully describes the horrors and neglect in the. Child welfare system that miserably failed her. Yet the book is really hard to slog through and the author seems to take little Joy in the good things that did happen for her. I had a similar reaction to the book The maid in which the single parent describes her difficulties in trying to make it as a single parent. For me I think it’s hard to read a book in which the author focuses on how victimized they were. Perhaps due to my family of origin value of self actualization over victimhood.

[Marika · Rating 5 out of 5]

To call this book a memoir would be an injustice as it is so much more than that. Emi Nietfeld writes about growing up with a mother who is a hoarder and the insecurities that that brings. The author doesn't hold back in describing her mother's struggles but does so with a daughter's eye of compassion. How else to describe trying to sleep in a hovel filled with things but not hating her mother? Emi knows that this isn't the life that she wants and is relentless in her drive to attend Harvard despite all the obstacles.
Emi's journey includes living for a period with Foster parents, people who are so rigid in their Christian belief that they are appalled by the “pornographic” art history flash cards of Michelangelo’s David that Emi uses to study.
There's so much in this debut work to absorb. Addiction, sexual identity, hoarding, mental health issues and the driving force of a teenager to not only to survive but to overcome everything that has been in her past.

* I read an advance copy and was not compensated.

[Susan Tunis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trigger Warning: Every nightmare you've ever had has happened to this young woman. You are forewarned.

Like Tara Westover's Educated, this is the coming of age story of a young woman raised in extraordinary and terrible circumstances. While her upbringing was, in some ways, more typical than Westover's, I'd argue that many of her privations and stressors were even more extreme. And, like Westover, she rose above her horrific circumstances and built a successful life through fierce determination, extraordinary resilience in the face of trauma, her own intelligence, and a dogged work ethic. There were precious few helping hands (and those few were, indeed, precious). Most adults--starting with her parents--and the social safety net failed Ms. Nietfeld utterly. She does an amazing job telling her own story, and her voice shines through on every page.

Yes, I've mentioned Tara Westover many times. It's hard not to make the comparison. And one of the reasons for that is that Emi Nietfeld's story is just as compelling, just as extraordinary, and just as inspiring. Read it.

[Komal · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 stars

Overcoming hardship is a satisfying plot arc for coming of age memoirs. In Acceptance, however, Emi doesn’t shy away from laying bare the cruelty and chaos that often gets pushed under the carpet in stories like hers.

Her memoir is a sharp critique of our collective fantasy that all of life’s hardships can be overcome with grit alone. Emi challenges this belief successfully as she takes us on a ride from hospitals to foster homes to homelessness to Harvard University to Google and more.

This book also brought me face to face with our obsession to only listen to the most vulnerable amongst us when they’ve shown post-traumatic growth. Emi is so honest in her reflections, it breaks my heart. Admitting her white privilege, conveying how she transformed herself into a “perfect” victim to get her foot in the door at places she didn’t‘t belong..

My only beef with the book were its inconsistent pacing and exhausting details. That said, it’s a book without silver linings, and that’s what sets in apart from similar memoirs.

[Christy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a pretty heart wrenching story about the author's life. It's incredible, but I didn't feel any emotional connection with her throughout the book.

Maybe because she hardly expressed any feelings? I can see why she had such a hard time writing her personal statements for college. The way she told her story seemed like "everything was so terrible, and then i got into Harvard which was ok, but everything was still bad". There's an element that is missing in her narrative... The authenticity and openness isn't there.

I just wished she expressed her true feelings more and reflect upon them.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a beautifully written and unexpectedly therapeutic book. Despite all of the pain that Emi experienced, I ultimately felt seen and uplifted by her story and her critique of the pervasive resilience narrative. Even knowing how it "ends" I had no idea how she would get there and this was hard to put down.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book because the author’s story is so compelling. However, having an exceptionally difficult childhood and adolescence does not a memoir make. It felt like she hasn’t finished working through her trauma, simultaneously rejecting any responsibility for her own behavior as an adult while blaming others in one sentence and then messaging that children are responsible for the horrific things that might happen to them in the next. This is obviously a function of PTSD. The arc also felt all wrong, with resolution for every traumatic event being resolved in the few pages of the epilogue. It just felt like either her editor was sleeping on the job, or she wasn’t ready to finish this book yet.

[Ginny Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m so grateful to have gotten my hands on an early copy of this book. Nietfeld is a tremendous writer, and she covers her trauma with depth, heart, and - against all odds - humor. The subject matter is dark, but she makes this a wonderful read. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

[Neko~chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. The ambition peels off the page. I think this book was perhaps written to be an Educated-style memoir, to be read and discussed in a similar capacity. Like I felt like it was written to be discussed.

I feel like maybe I was looking for something other than what this book was intended to do. On the face this book is just recounting her first twenty-eight years or so, but I guess something in me refuses to see memoirs as “just that” because writing about yourself only is, in a way, so self-aggrandizing— there has to be another dimension to it. There are other dimensions to this book, primarily about the foster care system (really sad and worse than I realized, but I think wrt gender expression and sexual assault we’ve greatly improved over the decade) and about elite culture. I was pretty interested in the latter: how people who grew up in elite cultures look down on showing off; how people show off inadvertently; how your entry into elite culture can alienate you from others. And this whole nexus of messaging around work and loving your job and how that’s expressed between the arts and more “practical” occupations such as computer science/engineering, and how race, gender, class, and societal perceptions influence that. I felt like there was so much tension that she didn’t go very deeply into. But I also don’t know if that was the primary goal of the book. I guess if you were looking for the thematic arc, it’s a bit unfocused beyond “this is my life up till this point”. The mental state around “I have to be accepted into xyz or else” came across very clearly though, and I could deeply understand how this need to get to Harvard, to take the hardest classes, to get financial security, etc, came to be… even if I didn’t necessarily agree on all the points.

I have a lot of scattered thoughts about this but it’s impossible to put them all together right now, but I’ll book club this so maybe I’ll return to this later. I felt mainly that this book bounces between pure retrospection and reenactment, as in sometimes the narrative voice embodies the character she was at the time. Sometimes this took me out because obviously there’s a naïveté to the younger characters, especially when she’s describing her college application journey or her academic experience at Harvard, one that I found off-putting and didn’t get sufficient retrospective payoff. On a craft level, sometimes the good parts felt too good to be true. Like the rowing win— obviously it was a transformative, joyous experience, but I felt that the poignance would come through more if she leaned away from that a bit— especially because we didn’t really learn about any of the rowers before they’re mentioned by name. I felt like even as she critiqued this need to package yourself to get into elite spaces— Harvard, Google, etc— she was doing that, on the page, in this book. (Obviously some filtering always has to happen in nonfiction, but the writer’s work was apparent in enough areas that I started having these thoughts.) Then again, it’s so hard to critique nonfiction on these things because maybe my issue isn’t with the writing, it’s with the writer.

[Devon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have spent most of my adult life working in college admissions. I’ve read tens of thousands of applications and also worked on the other side as the equivalent of Dr. Kat (the college consultant in this book). I heard Emi Nietfeld on Admission Beat with Lee Coffin and thought, who is this person going on a podcast with the Dean of admissions at Dartmouth to say, the way you make teenagers package and market their trauma, proving they have grittily overcome tragedy, is a problem. I requested her book immediately.
Nietfeld is unsparing — correctly — in her assessment of what we expect from teenagers when they apply to selective institutions. I wish I could assign this as reading to every director and dean of admissions at Ivy plus institutions; I’d like to be a fly on the wall at the subsequent discussion.

[Shannon McLeod · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is completely engrossing. I couldn't put it down! Nietfeld's writing is beautiful, insightful, and raw. Reading this book was an emotional journey.

[CB · Rating 2 out of 5]

Late review…without question the author had an awful childhood into teenage and adult years. Aside from that I felt I was reading a how to about getting into college. College isn’t for everyone and is not the only way to better yourself especially with increasing tuition costs- just saying. Without seeming insensitive it all felt whiney to me. She made mentioned of many things without going into detail then would randomly bring them back up. Always bothers me. I can’t remember if it was Dr. Kat who told the author to shortened her personal statement to get into college (could be wrong on both) but she should’ve also taken her advice when writing this.

PS I wondered the entire book how she got Emi from Margaret.

[Joyce Qallison · Rating 1 out of 5]

The beginning of the book is well written. As I read it though, the book reminded me too much of Educated. (Another three star rating book.) The book drags and drags. While I believe there is much to learn from the book, the book focused on all the horrible episodes too long. Towards the end, the author just couldn't move on and continued to focused on her past miseries inflected on her by her mother and society in general. At what point in your life, are you responsible? Also, at the end she start tried, while never addressed earlier in the book, on society treatment of people in general.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's often hard for me to give less than 5 stars to memoirs that tug at my gut. This one definitely had that. But the flow of the book was choppy and the information in the epilogue (which seemed comparably long anyway) would have fit so well in the chapters as it went imo. Success from struggle is what we want and I appreciated the honesty in this memoir.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible book, written by a powerful woman. My words can’t do this book justice - you’ll have to read it yourself.

Emi, I continue to look up to you, and will keep your motto always in my mind (RUBC).

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brutal, unflinching account of growing up with a crazy mother (grandiose, hoarder, blamer) and resultant foster care, hospitalizations, homelessness and couch surfing… and graduating from Harvard. Reminiscent of “Educated,” amazing Emi survived such a lonely and abusive childhood.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5-good writing, struggled with her story, but maybe I was supposed to. I don’t understand the 4.5 to 5 stars though.

[elif sinem · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is... difficult. The content of the book is harrowing. There's so much that Nietfeld went through (rape and sexual abuse among them) to the point where one as a reader risks making this a cautionary tale in their heads or a pity party where you suddenly feel glad you didn't lead this life. And I don't think that's what the book is trying to do, though it does grapple with it at many points, the idea of selling trauma for some immaterial capital.

As far as the "point" is, though, the epilogue tries to provide meaning and closure to all the ongoing threads of the book by tying it to the American society at large. That was impassioned and powerful writing on Nietfeld's part, as was the acknowledgment that being white (though very low in class) helped her win the lottery eventually. That's something I do feel comfortable rating however, if that makes sense, because the novel ending on such a strong argument immediately throws the previous ~240 pages of the novel into somewhat of a slog, especially in the middle, where such detail was a little... overshooting it. Those sections feel dry despite first person narration and never capture genuine emotion.

Yeah not much else to say here. This could've been a very good New Yorker essay with enough trimmed down. As it stands... it's intense, to put it mildly.

[Margaret Menkus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love to read stories about overcoming obstacles in life. The book, Educated, by Tara Westover is a wonderful example of an inspired life. And it was so well written that I could not put it down. My expectations were set by this book.

Yet, the book 'Acceptance' did not provide me with the same sense of awe, and that disappointment surprised me! I thought the two books would be similar because both women did not let life's fate dictate their outcome. Westover was able to leave the survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, but Nietfeld is still struggling with her life being raised by a hoarder.

I wish Nietfeld WOULD accept her life that she worked so hard to achieve. Yet, she doesn't trust that it is real and she sees herself as broken . . . She is getting therapy and working on it (good for her) but I wish she would have finished that process before she shared this with the world. We all want to do better in life, and don't need to read about someone else's inability to do it.

[Mary Hathaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is the best book I’ve read this year. Wow. Emi is an incredibly gifted writer and storyteller. This memoir challenges that the idea that those suffering around us just need more grit, more resilience.

“I had spent my young adulthood desperate for redemption, striving to make everything that happened “for the best.” It would only be a good story, I believed, if it had the happiest ending. I had to take the tragedy and twist it into triumph. Otherwise, I would be pathetic, if not forever broken. But the man’s email revealed a third option: I was allowed to be broken. I was allowed to be changed.”

She tells her story with such clarity and nuance. She puts us into her teenage mind, while also having compassion for that teenager and those with whom she interacted. I could hardly put the book down but also needed to at times to reflect, which to me, is the mark of an amazing book.

[Marjie Lam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.

[Brynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give it six stars

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

Acceptance: A Memoir was a book I was made aware of a few weeks ago, courtesy of the widespread praise it had received in The New York Times Book Review. My curiosity was piqued and so, I borrowed the book from my local library.

This is the story of a young woman (Emi Nietfeld) who came from a very dysfunctional family in Minnesota (her mother was an inveterate hoarder, who while being at turns convinced of her daughter's intelligence, showed an inability to provide Emi with a healthy and secure home and unconditional love and full emotional support; Emi's father had largely absented himself from her life after divorcing her mother and coming out as trans), went through foster care (which didn't always serve her best interests), endured self-harm issues, and mental health challenges. All the while what sustained Emi was her determination to gain admittance into a Ivy League school, which she believed would wholly transform her life for the better and liberate her from her past.

This is a book that everyone should read because it offers lessons on the importance of facing up to the negative impacts our upbringings may place upon each of us and overcoming their effects on ourselves as we go through life.

[Kaylee McNeil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very triggering (for everything)
If you’re friends with me on this app I recommend extreme caution because you’re probably already traumatized enough tbh

[Hannah Zhou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! Many personal connections: Harvard, #womeninstem, even mentions of Paly, college apps etc. but at the same time even though the surface-level facts would imply shared experiences, this book demonstrates how people can have completely different journeys to get to a similar place in life. Reveals the structural inequalities present in the foster care system and also poses important questions about grit/ownership/responsibility.

[Sidnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really challenging for me, because I think it made me really face a lot of the ways I think about upward mobility and a lot of my own upbringing, as well. What I really wrestled with was that I found the author so, so unlikable. Her blatant striving makes you want to look away, but I think that may be part of the point - that folks with so little have so much riding on each decision, they can't have the practiced cavalier attitude of those with more options. But with each achievement, I kept hoping Nietfeld would feel some relief, but she seems destined to be a supremely unhappy person, and it becomes really tiring, but I really wrestled with what that meant about me as well. I think this book does a lot to fight against the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" that we've come to expect from books like Educated and Hillbilly Elegy that end a little but more on a high note, and I think that's far more true to life. Plus, this character is still working through trauma that is very real, but as a story it's just...tiresome. Also, I took issue with what I found was a lot of really unfair assumptions about people based solely on superficial observations from a person who villainizes others for doing the same. To her credit, Nietfeld explains so many aspects of social services that are just not working, and so many attitudes from those who lead these institutions that needs to change.

[Ivmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of Emi, a young girl growing up in dire circumstances, and her relentless pursuit of a better life. Emi’s path is one which demands not just hard work, but heavy psychological costs.

Acceptance has multiple meanings in this book. The most obvious is the chance to go to college, but it also later becomes about belonging in a community, and coming to terms with the past.

The book opens up in the present time before going back a decade in the past. We find out early on that Emi in adulthood has attained a stable and good life. This helps ease some of the tension we later feel during Emi’s most precarious situations as a teenager.

Then we get into the memoir. We meet Emi as she is put through various institutions at the insistence of her mother. Even a few chapters in, I was shocked by the awful behavior of the adults around her. This is a theme that sadly repeats itself throughout the book. As Emi is in foster care, and at her high school, we see so many instances of adults who actively harm Emi or do not help her when needed. This book really emphasized for me how much teenagers in vulnerable circumstances can be let down repeatedly.

Grasping for hope, Emi fixates on a goal to attend an Ivy League college, believing it will give her the independence she needs. As unhealthy as the obsession and immense pressure are, Emi’s dream acts as a sort of stabilizer. It’s something she can orient herself around when all other aspects of her life, from family to basic housing, are completely unreliable.

Emi’s life changes drastically when she gets her acceptance letter to Harvard (we know from the book cover that it happens). The third part of the book is all about life at Harvard. After such a grueling journey to get to college, we are happy for Emi and hopeful that the rest of her story will be all roses. But finding her footing at Harvard is another trial of its own. There are many times we’re disappointed in the institution and its people for lacking empathy, albeit in a more subtle way than seen in earlier parts of Emi’s life. Emi’s past also continues to impact her through her college years.

I won’t spoil the story, but Emi does eventually find her path, her passions and community at Harvard. Byron the fiance also features in this section of the book, and their relationship is a really heartwarming one.

This was a spectacular book that takes us through an honest and complicated journey of a young girl trying to find her way with little more than hope to hold on to. I went through every emotion with this book - from fear to relief, from anger to laughter (sometimes at the same time). The storytelling is so well done, I finished the book within a few days. You’ll want to make it to the end too – the concluding pages are among the best in the whole book and leave the reader with a lot to think about.