United States of Rejection: A Story of Love, Hate, and Hope is published by CRUX: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction at UGA Press.Thanks to everybody who’s supported this book!
READERS: You can order from your favorite community and online booksellers or directly from UGA Press. I recommend ordering from any of the bookstores who’d kindly agreed to host my events.
You can order books from these and other local indie stores in-person or online, OR from Bookshop.org, designating a brick-and-mortar for part of the sale!
* * *
UNITED STATES OF REJECTION is an exploration of real-life, relatable rejections through reporting and lively storytelling.
This is a love-hate story about personal and political relationships in the United States, told through the intimate stories of both the rejectors and the rejected: lovers, families, neighbors, and a nation and its people. Although we’re taught not to care about others’ opinions, rejection always hurts, and it hurts some people a lot more than others.
To prove it, this book marshals contemporary neuroscience, the Founding Fathers’ rejection advice, and four centuries of personal narratives, many of them hilarious, many more heartbreaking. These rejection and acceptance stories span loving and disastrous American first encounters, soldiers and dancers rejected on front lines and chorus lines, playground bullies invoked before the Senate, and generations of lovers and patriots battling or swiping right to defend their loved ones and their country.
In laboratories, diaries, self-help manuals, auditions, lawsuits, and wars, we find models for “getting past” rejections, not just through personal resilience, but also through creating accountability and justice. United States of Rejection begins with heartbreak and ends with hope: an urgent self-improvement program for changing our relationships and the future of our messy nation.
* * *
Check out the Ultimate Rejection Playlist: you can just listen on YouTube, or you can play The Game!
* * *
It all started out with my Best American Essays Notable Essay “The Rejection Lab“ at GAY Magazine (2020). See Series Editor Nicole Walker’s essay about the upcoming books from CRUX: the Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction from University of Georgia Press.
cover design: Erin Kirk. Thank you, Erin!
* * *
Reviews, Mentions, Interviews:
* Chicago Review of Books “Favorite Books of 2026 (So Far)“!
* KQED Forum (NPR)
*LitHub published an excerpt of my chapter on educational rejections!
* Vol. 1 Brooklyn May 26
* Hippocampus Magazine
* Publishers Weekly
* The Atlantic
* * *
Thanks to the wonderful advance readers for their blurbs!
“United States of Rejection is a brilliant, substantial work of social criticism. With disarming wit, she offers insight on the many ways that American culture and history have been shaped by messy feelings. The book is a fascinating take on the complex motivations that can drive the political discourse. It gave me a new perspective and feeling of genuine hope.” Wendy S. Walters, author of Multiply/Divide
“The trick that Alison Kinney manages to pull off throughout United States of Rejection is tacking around the idea of rejection, both personal and universal, and making a book-length argument about rejection and America. Light and often funny, Kinney’s narrative voice in this book is great: it’s conversational without being glib and scholarly without being dull. Playful and serious at once, this is the best kind of creative scholarship: everything in these pages takes on emotional resonance and layered meaning. Dazzling, really!” Ander Monson, author of Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsessions
“In United States of Rejection, a fascinating and impeccably researched book, Alison Kinney makes a thoroughly convincing argument for how rejection has shaped the country’s past and present–and how it can redefine the future. Rejection is the throughline that connects power dynamics and inequality with the potential for transformation through community building and a collective refusal to accept the status quo. ‘Our nation’s standards . . . have never been fixed,’ Kinney writes. Change is always possible. This book is a testament to that fact.” Michele Filgate, editor of What My Father and I Don’t Talk About
“United States of Rejection is a truly fascinating book with interesting methods and a rich array of case studies. Alison Kinney’s wide expertise and stylistic savviness is one that readers need.” Marcos Gonsalez, author of Pedro’s Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land
“Alison Kinney brilliantly rejects simplistic empowerment narratives and useless pity. By time traveling through history, offering interviews, and even sharing the personal, we land in a place that’s firmly rooted in our world and yet otherworldly in its compassion.” Steve Fellner, author of Eating Lightbulbs
