Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs
Weblink
https://www.robkhenderson.com/

TROUBLED

Rob Henderson

A Memoir of foster Care, Family, and Social Class

In this raw coming-of-age memoir, Rob Henderson vividly recounts his journey living in the Los Angeles foster care system, enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, ascending into the halls of elite education, and ultimately pioneering the concept of "luxury beliefs" - ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the less fortunate. As he navigates the peaks and valleys of social class, Henderson finds that even his greatest achievements - including earning degrees from Yale and Cambridge - are hollow measures of success.

Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met - and grew up in ten different foster homes in California. When he is finally adopted into a loving family, he is hopeful that life will finally be stable and safe. But divorce, tragedy, poverty, and violence mark his adolescence and teen years, and Henderson enters the military upon completing high school. He recounts the steps and missteps he took to escape the drama and disorder of his youth.

Despite success after success - a military career, an undergraduate education from Yale, a PhD from Cambridge - Henderson can never shake the feeling of being on the outside looking in. In this unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation, and determination, Henderson reflects on his expectation-defying young life and juxtaposes his story with his friends who wound up incarcerated or killed. He argues that stability at home is the strongest predictor of future success, and he illustrates the ways the elite among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable.

Henderson grew up in foster homes in Los Angeles and the rural town of Red Bluff, California. He joined the Air Force at the age of seventeen. After his enlistment, he graduated from Yale University with a BS in psychology and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Once described as "self-made" by the New York Times, Rob received a PhD in psychology from St. Catharine's College, Cambridge in 2022. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and the New York Post, among other outlets. Rob's popular Substack newsletter is sent each week to more than thirty thousand subscribers. Learn more at robkhenderson.substack.com.

Available products
Book Published 2024-02-01 by Gallery
Book Published 2024-02-01 by Gallery Books

Comments

roubled is an extraordinary document. It is a primary document of historical descriptions of life in working and lower middle class America in the late 20th-century. It is time to sit up and listen to the voices of those who have suffered because of the policies of the highly educated and affluent class that validates and affirms the behaviors and attitudes of marginalized children that they would never accept for themselves or their own children, Rob Henderson's story is breathtaking but all too familiar in this county. He reminds us that the child raised with experiences of abandonment and chaos will experience the same in their relationships and employment.

Troubled is vivid, insightful, poignant, and powerful. Beautifully written, it is a moving memoir, a powerful description of the predicament of countless foster children, and a sophisticated social critique. Using his own astonishing life as a guide, Rob Henderson illuminates the plight of foster children and the ways that elites and policy makers often adopt ideas that do not, actually, advance the interests of those who are most vulnerable in our society. Troubled is magnificent.

Searing and brutal, but utterly articulate. Devastating, yet full of hope: Troubled is a masterwork. It pulls no punches about our deficient systems of care for abandoned children - and speaks from the heart to anyone even remotely interested in promoting resilience in young people. A must-read; five stars.

UK / C: Swift Press

In Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class debut memoirist Rob Henderson catalogs just how stacked the odds are against kids brought up in Foster Care. He takes us through the system; what he did to escape it and his findings that he and the other students in the Ivy League spoke different languages that he attempted to learn. One of his most shattering observations is that elites have moved on from materialistic Veblen Goods to a perhaps more dangerous set of 'luxury beliefs' that they may profess but don't practice. I highly recommend this provocative new book.