Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir

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 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 show more writing that was an absolute pleasure to read. show less

I'll start with what is good. Ford is a very good writer. Her prose is natural and spare without being sloppy or terse. I particularly liked her dialogue which had a familiar and authentic flow. Lots of memoirists do this poorly, obviously there is no transcript, dialogue is recovered from scraps of memory and a feel for how people talk. Often memoirists fall down on the second part of that equation. but not Ford. Perhaps equally important, Ford is brutally honest. She has worked through some very complicated life experiences and is the product of some very complicated relationships. In recounting all of those I never doubted the truth of those experiences and relationships. I knew Ford believed she was baring her soul. Again, for me show more that is unusual even in memoirs and autofiction I have loved. Finally, there are many books I treasure with characters I don't like, but who are interesting so usually I don't talk in my reviews about liking the characters (or this case the storyteller) but I liked the Ashley Ford I met this this book. I do not actually know her, and so I can't say if I would be interested in better knowing the non-curated version of Ashley, but I think I probably would. She has taken an early life that lacked consistency in every possible way and built a life filled with committed friends, a loving and supportive partner, exciting experiences, good work, and professional respect. (In my mind consistency - which is not to say foolish consistency- is one of the most important parts of being a good parent. If children cannot identify what responses from parents behaviors are likely to yield they never learn to trust, or to build relationships. They just learn to resign themselves to constant uncertainty and that yields anxiety and fear and some other really crummy results. Ford seems to have mostly avoided that fate.)

Now on to the less good stuff. This book is not at all the book it is advertised as being. I get that the publisher might be to blame for this, but it still impacted my enjoyment. This is not about growing up with a father in prison or about how the mass-incarceration of Black men dangerously damaged the family structure for many Black Americans, especially those who are economically insecure. That is the book I expected to read based on the description. Ford did grow up with a father in prison and his absence appears to have had a mostly negative impact on her, but we don't learn much about that. Viewed from 10,000 feet one could say that the prison pipeline is what led to a one-income household led by a woman with little education and consequently limited earning potential, and that the stress brought on but that aloneness and financial strain made Ford's mother and grandmother the way they were. Again from a distance, you could say that her father's absence led Ford to look for male approval in unhealthy ways. And you can even argue that the bad men Ford's mother invited into her and her children's lives would have been rejected rather than embraced if non-incarcerated men were not so thin on the ground. You could say all that, but I think its a gross oversimplification and it would require you to assume facts Ford did not put into evidence. I can be imperious at times, but even I am not willing to substitute my assumptions for someone's truth. Ford's father raped two women, he would have and should have been in prison even if the US justice system was not a racist juggernaut in cahoots with the prison industrial complex. Ford could have addressed why she was nearly entirely out of communication with her father for 13 years despite having nothing but good memories of being with him, even on an early prison visit. That would have told me a lot. Ford never addresses her feelings about learning her father was a convicted rapist, though given her life experience there must be a lot of feelings. That discussion would have made such a difference here! Most of this book is about Ford's relationship with her mother and a good deal of the rest about her relationship with her grandmother. There are elements of those relationships which are fascinating and troubling, but they are rarely instructive or more broadly meaningful because Ford does nothing to help the reader know her mother and grandmother other than sharing who those women are in relation to her. Also, Ford doesn't tell us a lot about herself. She makes some terrible decisions, and most of her good decisions seem to be made only with the prodding of concerned and compassionate friends, teachers and mentors. I don't think Ford knows why she only makes bad decisions unless forced to do better. She is young, and some things that happened to her are tragic, but just recounting those things without analyzing the players and why they did what they did is just someone's diary, it is not a memoir. Ford is often sad or scared or anxious for reasons we can guess at, but they aren't educated guesses because Ford doesn't educate us.

There is a lot good here, we get access to the facts, but this is like watching the dailies on a movie shoot. All the stuff that gives us necessary context, character development, and a POV (so the skeleton upon which the storytelling must be placed) is not here. 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 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 show more 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 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 show more forward to reading more of Ford's work in the future. show less

I thought this was going to be about her relationship with her father, who was in prison from the blurb. That was not the case, so I was disappointed. The more I read, however; the more I liked it. I did not like her mother, with whom she had a contentious relationship. I think this effected her own self-image.

I first heard of Ashley Ford’s book when John Green featured it as one of his two favorite books of 2021. (The other was How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith.) Since I am the ultimate John Green fangirl, I put Somebody’s Daughter on my TBR list.

Ashley’s dad went to prison when she was very young and so she and her brother were raised by just her mother. Her mother was a volatile, abusive person, which made Ashley an anxious child with low self-esteem. In her search for unconditional love, she ends up dating a boy who turns out to be a horrible person. In addition, her mother ends up marrying a guy who is a complete jerk, to say the least and is not nice to Ashely either.

Listening to Ashely read her memoir was heartbreaking. She show more had no safe space as a child and kept going by imagining that if only her father wasn’t in prison, he would be her safe space and her life would be different. But one day her grandmother tells her the truth about what her father did to end up in prison and Ashley realizes this is probably not the case.

It’s amazing that Ashley persevered and is successful now. She figured out how to get into college and live on her own with almost no help. She’s impressively self-aware now and able to see clearly how the events of her childhood affected her psyche. Her writing is beautiful, even if what she wrote about is distressing. I’m very glad I chose to listen to this audiobook. show less

3.5 rounded up. This was beautifully written and funny and painful and interesting. Ford has a strong voice and she somehow managed to write about incredible trauma with clarity and introspection.

It felt incomplete though. I appreciate that the characters are revealed to us as the author experiences them, but they ended up flat and one-dimensional as a result. For example, it was mind blowing to me that she casually mentioned her mom was a correctional officer, a profession very often linked to brutality, without any connection to her mother’s volatility and abuse. I really wanted Ford to examine the motives of the women and men in her life. I was also left feeling frustrated by the passive conclusion. The confrontation and show more resolution I spent the whole book waiting for never came. show less