Join us for an afternoon with author

Janai Norman to discuss her new book

Breaking: News, Barriers, and Stigmas--A Memoir of Choosing Myself

to be held at Solid State Books on H St. NE

Tickets are available here!

Former Good Morning America anchor Janai Norman shares the story behind the smile—from balancing fame and motherhood to the mental health reckoning that saved her life—in this profound memoir of breaking down, breaking open, and breaking free.

At the height of her success, Janai Norman experienced a mental health episode so consuming that one evening, while alone with her two small children–she locked herself in her office, called her husband back home from the grocery store, and ordered an Uber to the hospital where she was admitted to the psychiatric ward. There, she was given a diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder.

What follows is an interrogation of self that takes the reader from the shiny veneer of daytime television into the murky spaces of buried trauma, self-doubt, the challenging demands of juggling career with motherhood, and self-care. But it also breaks through to the clarity and the hope that comes from self-discovery and self-acceptance.

Breaking is a triumphant story of honoring one’s whole self and choosing to live more fully.

Janai Norman was a correspondent for ABC News based in New York, where she reported for multiple ABC News programs and platforms. She co-anchored Good Morning America: Weekend Edition and covered a wide range of topics from politics to entertainment to sports. Norman lives in New Jersey with her husband, two sons, and daughter.

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Eva Rosen is a Professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy. From 2022-2023, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. She is the author of The Voucher Promise: Section 8 and the Fate of an American Neighborhood, which won the Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Outstanding Book Award from the American Sociological Association and the Paul Davidoff Book Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. She is the co-editor The Sociology of Housing: How Homes Shape Our Social Lives. Her new book, American Landlord: The Dilemma of Profit in a Forever Housing Crisis, will be published next year.