Synopses & Reviews
An extraordinary young writer's search for authenticity among the various communities of identity-black, Latino, techno-utopian, Ivy League, activist-competing for her allegiance, each with its distinct allures and perils. California saved Caille Millner's parents, or at least saved them from lives of poverty and oppression as black Americans growing up in racially benighted backwaters. It provided them with a free education and opportunities for advancement into the solid middle class and even beyond. But it did its damage too, and to the young Caille Millner as well, growing up in a Latino neighborhood in San Jose, relocating to more affluent but quietly hostile white-bread Silicon Valley suburbs being transformed out of all recognition by boom times, and then fleeing to a succession of utopian communities that in the end proved to be no less messy than the places she left behind. The Golden Road is Caille Millner's frankly wonderful memoir of coming of age in a world in which the need for a stable identity and the need to embrace radical change all too often collide, with consequences at times hilarious and at times devastating. Caille Millner is equally familiar with the high-stress world of teenage strivers' gaming the system, obsessed with college choice, and the world-nearby geographically but impossibly far away by any other measure-of kids trapped in an entrenched underclass who don't have the first idea what that game even is or how one gets on the playing field. Throughout The Golden Road, Millner navigates from one world to the other with breathtaking ease, always the outsider but always genuinely struggling for empathy and connection. The result is a book that tours the landscapes of possibility carved by race, class, and culture for young Americans, and reckons with the prevailing fantasies and realities of internal immigration and gentrification, through the prism of her own experiences, with electrifying freshness and lucidity. This is that rare thing, a memoir that transcends its author's personal experiences to say something important and new about the broader culture without losing traction with the human story that gives it its astonishing power.
Review
"A sharp-minded, elegantly written memoir . . . Frank and dryly humorous."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"Intriguing . . . Millner's searingly honest Road takes readers into a little-known experience."
-Essence
"[Millner's] clear-eyed, breezy recollections, delivered with a light touch, win us over."
-The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
The true story of a remarkable young woman's struggle to find a home in the world Caille Millner is a rising star on the literary scene. A graduate of Harvard University, she was first published at age sixteen and was recently named one of Columbia Journalism Review's Ten Young Writers on the Rise. The Golden Road is Millner's clear-eyed and transfixing memoir. From her childhood in a Latino neighborhood in San Jose, California, and coming of age in a more affluent yet quietly hostile Silicon Valley suburb to a succession of imagined promised lands-Harvard, London, post-apartheid South Africa, New York City-this is the story of Millner's search for a place where she can define herself on her own terms and live a life that matters.
Synopsis
The true story of a remarkable young womanas struggle to find a home in the world
Caille Millner is a rising star on the literary scene. A graduate of Harvard University, she was first published at age sixteen and was recently named one of Columbia Journalism Reviewas Ten Young Writers on the Rise. The Golden Road is Millneras clear-eyed and transfixing memoir. From her childhood in a Latino neighborhood in San Jose, California, and coming of age in a more affluent yet quietly hostile Silicon Valley suburb to a succession of imagined promised landsaHarvard, London, post-apartheid South Africa, New York Cityathis is the story of Millneras search for a place where she can define herself on her own terms and live a life that matters.
About the Author
Caille Millner was first published at age sixteen and recently named one of Columbia Journalism Review’s Ten Young Writers on the Rise. She is the co-author of The Promise: How One Woman Made Good on her Extraordinary Pact to Send a Classroom of First Graders to College and her work also appeared in Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black In America. She’s received the Rona Jaffe Fiction Award, as well as prizes from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, the National Press Club and the New York Black Journalists Association. Currently on the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, she has also written for Newsweek, Essence, The Washington Post and The Fader.