All the Gold Stars

Ambition—the want, the hunger, the need to achieve—is woven into America's fabric from the first colonisation 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 funnelling 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, labour organisers, 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.