Ashley C. Ford

Ford’s deeply honest and intimate memoir is beautifully written. She had a rough childhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but never lost her passion for life. From abuse to a father in prison, her journey hasn’t been easy. I personally loved all the references to my home state and my alma mater, Ball State University.

Ashley recounts her experiences growing up in Indiana, and her relationship with her mother, grandmother, and incarcerated father.

This memoir has been getting a lot of press lately, where much of the focus is on the fact that her father was incarcerated. But... it's really so much more. It's about her relationships with family members that she loves but that are imperfect. Her mother was often angry, and Ashley was often afraid of being "bad". Her grandmother wanted to be her confidante but show more also could be critical. And her father was largely absent, in jail for reasons Ashley didn't know until she was a teenager. It's also about memories - those we want to forget and those we want to imprint indelibly. And it's all wrapped up in lyrical writing that was an absolute pleasure to read. show less

This is one of the finest, cut-to-the-bone memoirs you'll ever read and cherish. The author has truths to share with her family and with readers that seem almost too intimate to disclose. With a father in prison for violent crimes, Ashley is brought up by her stressed out and frequently angry mom but is surrounded by love for her siblings and her grandmother, who has strict standards but also overwhelming love for her favorite. The sense of fear and mistrust instilled by her mother is show more brought to life when she is assaulted at age 12 by a boyfriend, and the inner torment threatens to overwhelm her until she visits a local college and finds the strength to overcome all her obstacles, both self-created and societal, to leave her family and attend. But she's not out of the woods yet - there's still family issues and lack of confidence to defeat. Ashley's charged relationships with her present mother and her absent father are analyzed in painful depth, and it was gratifying to see her thanking them both in the acknowledgements. This is an enjoyable, complex, yet fully relatable autobiography. It’s in my top five reads for 2021.

Quotes: “The easiest way for a child to lose their seat at the adult table is to speak. Grownups seemed lighter at night, like their feet might hover an inch or two above the ground as soon as the sun went down. The later it got, the higher they flew. As good as I was at being invisible, there was nothing I liked better than being spoken to like an adult.”

“It doesn’t taken long for children to teach themselves not to want what they’ve already learned they won’t have.” show less

A really beautiful memoir about family, relationships, memory, and what it's like to grow up as the child of someone who's been in prison for most of your life. Ashley C. Ford's prose is elegant, but without ever obscuring what she's trying to say, and her description of her relationship with her mother is one of the most honest, poignant, and angry that I think I've ever read. I think many women who've had a difficult relationship with their mothers will find something that resonates with show more them in Ford's writing on the subject. I did wish for a little more connective sinew between the chapters, a little more reflection on Ford's part on some of the events that she recounts. That said, this is still a powerful and moving book, and I look forward to reading more of Ford's work in the future. show less