BLACK BOX

Workers’ rights advocate Glasson’s debut memoir offers her account of pregnancy discrimination and the path she took to fight it.

In 2010, the author officially began her career in the tech industry with an internship at telecom company T-Mobile before moving on to work at software company Salesforce and, later, educational company Udacity. After a grueling interview process and encouragement from colleagues, she landed a position as a user researcher on the Social Product Area team at Google in 2014. The author, who’d experienced a difficult childhood and had worked hard to build a successful life for herself, saw Google as “a pinnacle of achievement.” In these pages, she tells difficult stories of management misconduct she encountered, starting before she worked at Google, whom she later sued for pregnancy discrimination when she was pregnant with her second child; the suit was eventually settled. Glasson’s memoir is well-organized, reaching back into her past for context, explaining her career path and breaking down company jargon and processes with lucidity. She also grapples with why it took her so long to act on what she saw as discriminatory practices: “What causes someone like me—an educated, accomplished adult woman with skills and talents—not to question such things?” She effectively tells of how her conflict with Google took a toll on her mental health as she searched at length for a law firm to take her case, and afterward. Glasson also shows laudable self-awareness throughout, taking note of her own privilege and admitting to mistakes, and this is what renders her book so useful: The author claims not to speak for everyone, but she offers advice and foregrounds the experiences of others facing discrimination, particularly in her final chapter and an appendix. Overall, this is a memoir and advice book that’s sure to reveal to many readers just how common pregnancy discrimination is.

An introspective remembrance that ably shines a light on employee rights.