Casey Gerald on the American Dream and Structural Inequality

“There Will Be No Miracles Here,” a new memoir by Casey Gerald, is a coming-of-age story that straddles the complex intersection of race, class, religion, sexuality and masculinity. On the surface, Gerald’s story is a classic rags-to-riches tale: a poor boy from a rough neighborhood gets recruited by Yale to play football and ends up making it to Harvard Business School, Wall Street, Washington and beyond. But Gerald turns the American Dream narrative on its head, illuminating the reality of inequality and questioning the systems that perpetuate it.