A review by hollyd19
Acceptance: A Memoir by Emi Nietfeld

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

This memoir is absolutely exceptional. 

Acceptance recounts Emi Nietfeld’s childhood up through graduating from Harvard. Contending with a mother who is both a compulsive hoarder and an expert gaslighter, Emi faces down institutionalization, homelessness, negative foster families, and poverty to claw her way to the academic successes on which she pins her future. But Nietfeld is very clear: she doesn’t want to be seen as an inspirational, bootstraps-pulling story of grit and resilience. Instead, with bracing candor, she lays bare her life as a window into the incredibly irrational and often actively harmful hoops through which any youth facing adversity must jump through. 

Early on, her mom’s charm combined with her full authority over her daughter’s life landed Emi in the residential psych ward where her problems were treated as entirely her fault, glossed over with platitudes and encouragement to “own up” to her role in all that had happened. Reading about Emi’s institutionalization was sobering and infuriating. I highlighted an upsetting number of instances when those in authority abused Emi, blamed her for her trauma, and even told her that her ambitions were a source of her issues and that she should stop trying to succeed. 

Fast forward to her years applying for schools and the ways that Emi had to prostitute her own story for admission was devastating. After years of being held responsible for the failures of the adults around her, suddenly she had to display her deepest wounds to be considered worthy of what she needed to create a better life. This felt especially true learning about her pursuit of scholarship money and accommodations. 

This memoir comes replete with trigger warnings, but I cannot recommend it enough. It is courageous, honest, and piercing. It belongs in the ranks of other remarkable memoirs like The Glass Castle and Born a Crime. 
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