RaveCleveland Review of BooksLooking back from a vista of professional security, somewhere on the far side of her own ambition, Nietfeld writes to survey the tumultuous psychological landscape of class mobility. In breaking from the Cinderella-story convention of social mobility memoirs, Acceptance achieves exceptional candor and beauty ... In evincing this pity, Acceptance wins for itself independence from the sentimental identification of the professional reader ... Never does a reader suspect that Nietfeld is smuggling, along with a personal narrative, a coming-of-age story for a hazy set of social ideals that are vindicated by her strife. The drama in this narrative is an uphill battle waged on the path to personhood, an individual coming to blows with truths that cannot be squared with the striver plot of her own life. Harvard gave Neitfeld \'a special voice that I used on the phone\'; in Acceptance, she learns to speak for herself.
