Need Blind (A Memoir of Class and Climbing in America)

In her first nonfiction book, New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Xochitl Gonzalez traces her own history from working class Brooklyn to the corridors of power in order to illuminate and examine the class divide that defines America today

Xochitl Gonzalez has changed economic classes not once, but twice. Raised in a Brooklyn walk-up by working class, blue-collar grandparents, she knows what having ‘just enough’ looks like, and what it means to want more.

Catapulted into the circles of the elite, initially through her Ivy League education and later by writing a bestselling novel, Xochitl has lived the so-called American Dream, gaining access to the power and prestige that accompanies extraordinary artistic and financial success.

And yet, it is easy for Gonzalez to see why the establishment is crumbling. Her unique vantage point as a Brooklyn girl now invited into the “room where it happens” helps her demystify how, exactly, the ruling class has become so disconnected from the majority of Americans’ lives. And while academics, pundits and politicians seem to never tire of proffering explanations— anti-elitism, anti-wokeism, racial inequity, the wealth gap—they often seem to miss the most obvious one. America does not just have a wealth gap; America has the equivalent of class apartheid.

Through Gonzalez’s extensive research, Need Blind tackles the question of class in America with intelligence and humor, asking us not just how we got here but what we can do about it.