A raw, vulnerable, and authentic memoir about the daughter of illiterate, poor Lao refugees growing up in Stockton who defies the odds of being a welfare queen to earn a degree from Berkeley Law and work at a big law firm. 

Samorn Selim survived her first drive by shooting at the age of five. Her brother survived a mass gun shooting at his elementary school when a white man decided to terminate the children of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Lao refugees.  

Pegged to be a teenage mom, a gang member, and a high school dropout, she was ecstatic to pass the California bar exam on her first try. When she started her big law job with a six-figure salary, she thought she had achieved happiness. 

But she was miserable. She felt like an impostor. She felt like a fraud. She felt like she didn’t belong. 

She woke up every day with dread and anxiety. She became the shell of who she once was. She was an outsider. She was a workaholic. She was depressed. She was an insomniac. She wondered if she would make it out alive. 

As the founder and creative joy director of career unicorns and a board member of the American bar association career center, she has helped over a thousand law students and lawyers who identify as women, people of color, first-generation professionals, and underdogs to transform their careers from dread to joy.

Samorn Selim invites listeners to feel firsthand what it’s like to be a workaholic, depressed, and insomniac lawyer who is her own biggest bully. She shares candidly the ugly and awful things she beats herself up with. She shows how difficult it is for children from poor, immigrant backgrounds to succeed and the immense challenges of balancing professional and personal responsibilities.