America’s Most Insidious Myth [theatlantic.com]
By Emi Nietfeld, Illustration: Adam Maida, The Atlantic, March 13, 2023 When I was 17, I won $20,000 from the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Named after the prolific 19th-century novelist whose rags-to-riches tales have come to represent the idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” the scholarship honors youth who have overcome adversity, which, for me, included my parents’ mental illnesses, time in foster care, and stints of homelessness. In April 2010, the...