# All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive - Hardcover

by **Rainesford Stauffer** (Author)

**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.

### Author Biography

**Rainesford Stauffer** is an author, journalist, speaker, and Kentuckian. She's the Work in Progress columnist for _Teen Vogue_, and wrote a column for Catapult, _Gold Stars_. Her work has also appeared in _The New York Times, Scalawag, DAME Magazine_, Vox, and other publications. She is the author of _An Ordinary Age_, and is a 2022-2023 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism.

**Number of Pages:** 288

**Dimensions:** 1.2 x 8.3 x 5.8 IN

**Publication Date:** June 06, 2023

## Details

- **Price:** 28.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 28.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive - Hardcover

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