Accountable

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hardcover
496 pages • $20.99
ISBN: 9780374314347

The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed

Dashka Slater

“This is a compelling and contemporary cautionary tale that should be required reading for any teen before they create, comment, or even like a media post.”

—Booklist, starred review

When a high school student started a private Instagram account that used racist and sexist memes to make his friends laugh, he thought of it as “edgy” humor. Over time, the edge got sharper. Then a few other kids found out about the account. Pretty soon, everyone knew. Ultimately no one in the small town of Albany, California, was safe from the repercussions of the account’s discovery. Not the girls targeted by the posts. Not the boy who created the account. Not the group of kids who followed it. Not the adults—educators and parents—whose attempts to fix things too often made them worse. In the end, no one was laughing. And everyone was left asking: Where does accountability end for online speech that harms? And what does accountability even mean? Award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author Dashka Slater has written a must-read book for our era that explores the real-world consequences of online choices.

© Gioncarlo Valentine

Dashka Slater is an Award-winning journalist, she has written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Salon, and Mother Jones. Her New York Times-bestselling young-adult true crime narrative, The 57 Bus, has received numerous accolades, including the Stonewall Book Award, the California Book Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. It was a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist and an LA Times Book Award Finalist, in addition to receiving four starred reviews and being named to more than 20 separate lists of the year’s best books, including ones compiled by The Washington Post, the New York Public Library, and School Library Journal. In 2021, The 57 Bus was named to TIME magazine’s list of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. The author of fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction for children and adults, Dashka teaches in Hamline University’s MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults program. She lives and writes in Oakland, California.