Publisher Description
From journalist and author of An Ordinary Age, an examination, dismantling, and reconstruction of ambition, where burnout is the symptom of our holiest sin: the lonely way we strive.
Ambition—the want, the hunger, the need to achieve—is woven into America’s fabric from the first colonization to capitalism. From our first gold star assignment to acceptance at the “right” college to hustle and grinding our lives, we celebrate our drive, even as we gatekeep who is permitted to strive–and how visibly. Even as we burn out. When we can’t even. When we know: work won’t love us back.
All the Gold Stars looks at how the cultural, personal, and societal expectations around ambition are driving the burnout epidemic by funneling our worth into productivity, limiting our imaginations, and pushing us further apart. Through the devastating personal narrative of her own ambition crisis, Stauffer discovers the common factors driving us all, peeling back layers of family expectations, capitalism, and self-esteem that dangerously tie up our worth in our output. Interviews with students, parents, workers, psychologists, labor organizers, and more offer a new definition of ambition and the tools to reframe our lives around true success. All the Gold Stars provides ways for us to reject our current reality and reconceive ambition as more collective, imaginative, and rooted in caring for ourselves and each other.
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“In All the Gold Stars, Rainesford Stauffer looks at our societal conversations around ambition and success for young people, and deftly unravels the myriad of ways those conversations preach a cruel and unyielding message to the inheritors of this society: deny the limits of your humanity to get ahead. Stauffer speaks with those deeply affected by this warped messaging, and writes a new narrative for us. One that includes an acknowledgement of our humanness, our need for play, and a more compassionate path to a better future. Read this book, and expand your imagination beyond what is, and toward what could be.” —Ashley C. Ford, Writer and Host
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