When Chelsey Glasson first secures her dream job as a User Researcher at Google, she feels she has finally proven her worth. The joy is short-lived, however, as she goes on to experience the company’s harmful work culture, which goes largely unchecked by upper management. During her second pregnancy, Chelsey realizes that she is facing blatant discrimination and is being deliberately pushed out of her job. That is when she decides to sue the formidable tech giant and blow the lid on the abuses that have so far been happening behind closed doors.

In BLACK BOX (A Pregnancy Discrimination Memoir), Glasson documents her experiences with a clinical meticulousness that unpacks her journey through to the memoir’s climax as though she is laying out a set of tools. Events are set in chronological order, starting from her tumultuous childhood; through her education and first jobs; then onto her employment with Google—until finally culminating in her legal battle, and the effect it has had on her and her family. Throughout the book, she uses the analogy of a black box to describe situations where the workings of a system are deliberately hidden from view (for example, her employer’s HR processes). She does not present herself as a one-dimensional crusader for justice. Instead, she highlights how general silence and compliance, including her own, are enabled by several factors, including surface-level ‘wokeness’ and a culture of blurring personal and professional lines.

The book goes into detail about the tactics tech companies employ to make sure their workers operate from a place of insecurity, rather than confidence, pushing competition and driving workers to create value for their employers at the expense of the former’s personal lives and health. The book’s final chapters read almost like an instruction manual on how to weather similar difficulties, and include testimonies from other women who have experienced pregnancy discrimination so that readers can see it in its various iterations. BLACK BOX does need to include trigger warnings, however, as certain sections (such as those dealing with sexual assault and pregnancy loss) can be particularly painful for sensitive readers.

Written with the precision of a surgeon and laying out every dirty little secret under a harsh and sterile light, Chelsey Glasson’s BLACK BOX (A Pregnancy Discrimination Memoir) is a much-needed examination of the inner workings of the tech world and how companies deliberately foster toxic environments.

~Sakina Hassan for IndieReader