THE THREE with Debut Writer, Emi Nietfeld

An interview, a photo story, and Pop-Up Questions

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Emi Nietfeld is a writer and software engineer. After graduating from Harvard College 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.

-I read Emi’s debut work, Acceptance, with my gut clenched and my brain on fire. It’s a painful book, an important book. Nietfeld’s memoir takes us from her life as a small child with her father and mother to a life with her mother, who becomes a hoarder and is mentally ill, and without her father, who abandons Emi after her parents divorce. In the care of her unwell mother, Emi lives with mice and their feces and urine amongst so many piles of objects and trash that there isn’t room to walk from the front door to the back of the house. As this impossible and harmful situation becomes toxic, Emi gets pulled into the government systems of institutional care and foster care. Here we see, through her young but sharp mind, the clunking and leaking and rusting of the entire machine, how it fails Emi, how it fails our children. There is so much to say about this fine memoir and where Emi ends up, but I’ll let you read it, and Emi’s interview below. -MME

POP UP QUESTIONS

The writer picks five out of ten pop-up questions and answers them.

What do you think about when you are awake at 3 am?

When a lot of people left New York City during lockdown, my husband and I bought an apartment. I feel incredibly fortunate to be a homeowner in Manhattan, especially after high school when I was in foster care and, at times, homeless, bouncing between friends’ sofas and sleeping in my car, and longing for the place I might belong. I also never anticipated how fraught home could be. For over a year, I woke up at 3 am convinced I’d made a horrible mistake and that the rest of my life would be shaped by my reckless choice to spend more than the bare minimum on housing. I’ve had way too many nightmares about floods, curtain rods, and rats in the building’s garden.

What book do you wish you could read again for the first time and why?

Dominicana by Angie Cruz. This novel, told from the point of view of a fifteen-year-old girl who gets married to an older man so her family can have a better life, stole my heart. The direction it takes is so surprising; I’m devastated I’ll never read it again for the first time.

What writer romanticized being a writer for you as a young person?

Joan Didion all the way! I was fourteen and living in a facility for troubled teens when I chanced upon The White Album on a library outing. Sitting on my desk, underneath the chicken-wire glass window covered in bars, I found myself transported to this magical, made-up place city called Bogatá, nestled in the mountains, filled with emeralds. I was shocked when I learned Bogatá was not a metaphor and was in fact a real city in Colombia.

What is a quote that has endured in your mind?

It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. -James Baldwin

What music do you love on road trips?

I get really attached to older women whom I secretly hope will adopt me. My phone is filled with playlists named after them so that if we’re ever in the car together, I will know exactly what to queue up to make them love me. All of them include “Long Way Home” by Jukebox the Ghost, “Skeletons” by Jr. Jr, and “Bookworm” by Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s.

PHOTO ROLL STORY

The writer picks a photo from her phone and tells us about it.

Once upon a time, there was a little baby penguin named May. She was the world’s greatest penguin author, world-renowned for her classic If You Teach a Penguin To Fish, and the recipient of many Penguitzer Prizes. Unfortunately, her parents were idiots. Worst of all, her dad took credit for her work and even went on a book tour, claiming May’s work as her own! One day, May decided the injustice had to stop. While her parents were asleep, she threw paint all over the walls and then pooped on their faces. Her mama reached for her and pulled her into his wings. “Little one, why did you poop on my face?” he said. “Te he he he he,” May replied. “It’s time for you to go to sleep!” May protested, but she was being winged so tightly she could hardly even flap. Her mama’s embrace was so warm and comfortable that, despite her best efforts to stay awake, her eyelids began to droop and her beak grew heavy as she fell into a dream about the glory and vengeance of her next bestseller, which she’d write the very next morning.

THE INTERVIEW

The writer answers questions about her life and work.

Firstly I want to tell you how absolutely fierce and brave and important I think your memoir is. Over and over, I was deeply moved by the bald presentations of your life and your willingness to show your scars, both metaphorically and not. I was not in foster care, my mother was not a hoarder, and my father was not absent, yet your book was written from a place of such emotional truth that much of it resonated deeply with me. I think this is important work and that your story will help move our culture toward better understanding and helping 'troubled youth', whatever form that trouble takes. I have a lot of respect for the interior strength it must have taken you to write your story. Did finishing this book change you?

Absolutely — I feel like Acceptance wrote me. I started writing it driven by the same urge as when I was applying to college as a desperate teenager, summed up by: “I must achieve this goal at any cost.” That was seven years ago. Back then, I’d completely bought into these tales of overcoming and I thought that if I just worked hard enough on this book, I could make all the bad things that happened in my life “worth it.” This fantasy even extended into healing my parents and giving me a happy family.

But the writing forced me to confront the truth as I read medical records, uncovered family secrets, and confronted horrors I refused to discuss. It felt like breaking every bone in my body again and again. Each time I had no idea how I could live with what I’d found, let alone keep writing. Yet somehow I’m still here.

At 18 I was put into a mental care facility for major depression and anxiety; I stayed two weeks. Much of what you wrote about your own stay resonated with me, but nothing more than these lines: "I had no more wiggle room. I could never come back to the psych ward and leave with a future intact; people would give up on me. it didn't matter how much I was suffering or how suicidal I felt." I had this same moment of clarity, and simultaneously I thought, what must happen to other kids who don't have this awareness, or who don't have anything that rises up inside them to stop this possibility? We know what happens, it's as you said- people give up, the system gives up, and in my opinion this could so often be avoided if our systems would catch up with current neuroscience and the understanding of what children and teen brains need to develop emotionally and intellectually. What do you think allowed you to doggedly continue forward despite the enormous suffering you experienced? Was it your innate person, tucked underneath the trauma, biology, the fact that you had experienced some love versus kids who have none- ? I'm always curious what makes a human being a survivor. 

I think a lot about how youth are pushed into situations that will shape the rest of their lives before they’re old enough to understand. We see this with mental health, the carceral system, and even student loans. And in a nation where so much depends on the circumstances of your birth, we’re ironically obsessed with free will. We assume youth are making deliberate decisions for which they need to face consequences — even when the research suggests that’s not how young brains work. We put this tremendous responsibility on kids to navigate systems they did not create and do not serve them. We blame those who fall through the cracks and glorify those who make it through all the hoops.

People ask me all the time how I made it out when so many people don’t, as if resilience is a muscle that can be strengthened with exercises anyone can do in a tiny, isolated cell. I don’t think about it that way. Instead, I look to the advantages I had: I never had to deal with racism or extreme poverty. Because you and I were in psych wards instead of prison, our crises didn’t haunt us publically.

I also felt a sense of control when it came to academics. “Take control of your life” is a cliché command when the truth is that many people’s lives do not teach them that they have control. Many of the most vulnerable people literally never get the joy of acting and having that action pay off — the systems are so stacked against them. 

How different would it be if every single kid had something concrete that they could do, that let them feel agency and mentally escape their immediate circumstances, and that they believed would lead them into a better future? 

A major theme of your story was how adults made you responsible for the way you handled all the things that happened to you, instead of addressing the responsibility and failures of the adults in your life. I see ACCEPTANCE as an important subtext to the voices of women speaking up about our society's obsession with 'the perfect victim', the idea that women have to meet a specific checklist of qualities or behaviors before they can be truly sympathized with. For children, this unspoken list is a list of requirements that are pure chance- neurological wiring at birth, mental health, physical health, temperament, and of course the racism and prejudice that you address numerous times throughout your book- which makes it easier for white, attractive, and hetero-presenting people to get help. What changes in the foster care and psychiatric communities do you think would be beneficial to children based on your experience?

In America, there’s an extreme power imbalance between adults and children. Kids are naturally dependent on their caregivers everywhere, but our policies magnify the gap. The U.S. is one of two nations that hasn’t signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Many people in this country believe that children should not have rights because their parents should have absolute control. In this country, parents can have their children locked up for any reason at bootcamps, wilderness programs, and reform schools. There’s no recourse for these kids who are essentially incarcerated. There’s not even federal oversight for these programs.

I hope reading Acceptance, a story that privileges my teenage experience, illuminates some of the ways we disregard children’s perspectives. A lot of problems in child welfare and mental health are really hard, but listening to young people and really prioritizing their perceptions and goals is a great place to start.

Reading your memoir I kept having a feeling that I couldn't quite place, until toward the end, I realized it was a sad satisfaction at seeing my own experience of adults throughout my childhood and teen years, reflected in your experience. I rarely came across any adult (at least, the ones who paid attention to me) who was emotionally intelligent, caring, and able to offer honest communication and support through the questioning and gentle, unconditional listening that children need. Many adults I saw throughout those years were cruel even, using sarcasm and barbed remarks as humor, openly judging everyone around them in the least generous view possible, angry or irritable much of the time- especially at kids. I can think of a place that was an exception, but mostly this was true. Now as a mom of four, this has not been my children's experience of adults on the whole. When you look around at your peers, in work, in casual meetings, friends, etc, how do you perceive them compared to the adults you had around you growing up? Do you think you and I were just 'unlucky' or do you think that was a cultural reality? If you see a positive change, what do you attribute it to?

When I worked at Google, I was shocked, because my colleagues seemed to adore parenthood — especially the dads. The people I knew growing up seemed to harbor a lot of resentment towards children and the inconveniences they brought. At the same time, kids were supposed to make up for their parents’ unachieved dreams. 

At first, I thought this was a cultural thing, but then I realized that at Google no one seemed particularly stressed because they enjoyed generous parental leave, had nannies, and when their kids got sick they just worked from home. It’s a totally different situation than when everyone is strapped for resources. The material ways our country fails families often trickle down into how parents treat their kids. 

Also, it’s shocking how little most people — across social classes — know about child psychology. There are some really promising studies on the impact of having nurses visit the homes of new parents. Just a little bit of support and guidance can improve emotional bonds and developmental outcomes. I hope we stop thinking of good parenting as a moral choice and start considering it a set of skills worthy of investment.

You mention in ACCEPTANCE that you changed your name to Emi.  What moved you to do so, and did it help you?

I grew up in a super-strict Christian household, like the kind where secular music was banned, until I was nine and my father came out as trans. This ushered in my own life transformation: I became vegetarian, started playing the drums, and started meeting these really amazing women through my parent’s trans community. One of them, the coolest, was named Emi, a name she chose from Dance Dance Revolution (my obsession back in 2001). As soon as I heard the name “Emi,” it just felt like my name. 

 I’d always hated being the frumpy “Margaret Frances” but people at school wouldn’t even call me “Maggie.” These women accepted me as Emi instantly. It was so empowering to have control over such an important part of my identity. They taught me what a gift it is to be seen as you are. Don’t we all want that?

Can you tell us a little about your process writing ACCEPTANCE? What did it look like week to week, day to day? Do you have a writing room or space, rituals, quotes?

I started writing ACCEPTANCE shortly after I graduated college, almost exactly seven years ago. In the style of my high school obsession, National Novel Writing Month, I churned out the first 50,000 word draft in November 2015. Like all my first drafts, it was bad!!!

I worked on it every day, religiously, usually before work and on the weekends. I started with 30 minutes and ramped up until, when I had time off between jobs and we had to stay at home, I was editing eight hours a day. (I still can’t believe I did that.) 

Until lockdown, I never wrote at home because I didn’t want to infect my living space with the bad memories. So I threw myself out of bed before I could think, put on sunscreen, and then walked to the coffee shop while listening to “Surviving the Times” by Nas. (It plays in my head whenever anything book-related happens.)

I was dead set that the book ended with high school, convinced I couldn’t write about the hardest, most shattering part. Then in 2018, I met the person who eventually became my editor.  She told me, “You’re asking a stranger to spend 10 hours and pay $27 to read this book. You owe readers closure.” I was shocked: I thought a book cost $9.99. $27 is a lot of money!! After that, I kept a post-it taped to my notebook that said “$27 Ending,” to remind me of my commitment to my future readers. I hope I delivered!

In high school, you find out that you win an important scholarship, yet you feel empty afterward. You ask your friend why, and she responds, "Success is hard. It doesn't always make you feel the way you think it will." How does the success of ACCEPTANCE make you feel?

When I was seventeen and had those first, earth-shaking successes, I was in a really dark place in my life. I was deep in an eating disorder, struggling with substance use, and wracked by the uncertainty of college admissions. I also believed that if I achieved enough, I’d have love and happiness and a home. When I got success, and wasn’t immediately completely happy, I panicked. If winning a huge writing award and getting into Harvard didn’t make me happy, what would? I was convinced I’d be miserable forever!

In hindsight, it was actually great preparation for the rollercoaster of publishing a memoir. It’s been incredible, filled with elation and gratitude to have my story resonate with readers. I’m also deeply exhausted and a little depressed. But I’m grateful to know that’s all part of the process; good things will happen I can’t even imagine yet. And the stakes will never be as high as they were at seventeen. 

What joys and comforts do you have or experience now that would make young Emi happy to know was in her future?

Too many to count! Every night when I go to sleep, I’m so grateful to have my own home and my own bed with crisp white sheets and seven plush penguins. Just to be able to buy food when I’m hungry is huge. I used to have to give away books as soon as I read them, since I couldn’t carry them with me. Now, I have a whole library. 

I also never thought I’d get married. When I am not asking my spouse why he still hasn’t started dinner, I’m deeply in love. It seems impossible! I hated it when my foster parents said, “let’s have family time.” Now we have “family reading time” every night. I’m about to turn 30 and I’m ready for my stand mixer! (But I wouldn’t have been happy to hear about the stand mixer. I would said, “Kill me now!”)