Somebody's Daughter

Touching and honest memoir on Ashley C. Ford's childhood, growing up with an incarcerated father and an emotionally absent (and often physically abusive) mother. I consumed this as an audiobook, and Ford as a narrator did not disappoint.

I was originally going to give this a 4/5 but it's been a week since I finished reading it and I already started to forget some of the things I read in this book... which probably means it wasn't as memorable for me? 3/5 it is!

Touching and honest memoir on Ashley C. Ford's childhood, growing up with an incarcerated father and an emotionally absent (and often physically abusive) mother. I consumed this as an audiobook, and Ford as a narrator did not disappoint.

I was originally going to give this a 4/5 but it's been a week since I finished reading it and I already started to forget some of the things I read in this book... which probably means it wasn't as memorable for me? 3/5 it is!

I read Somebody's Daughter in about 3 days, which is amazing for me. I am a very slow reader, and I've been a horrible slump for years. Much of this is due to the fact that my mother died in 2018 and I'm still grieving. It still hurts. Her death was traumatic because it happened quickly, over a few weeks, out of nowhere. I didn't have a great relationship with my mother, and some of what I experienced can be found in these pages. Ford is my age and by hearing her interviews, following her Twitter, and reading this memoir, I feel like I'm not so alone. For me, childhood was a mix of good things and bad things, but I can really only remember the bad things. I feel guilty about that. I think Ford feels similarly.

Regarding the book itself: I loved it. I devoured it. I wanted more when it ended. I can't wait to read what's next. I've never read any of Ford's essays, but now I want to find them. The way it's written is so accessible and familiar. It makes you feel what she feels without pity or pride. Ford is writing about her experiences with the understanding of an adult. While the hurt is still there, she's not wallowing in it. In that way, I wasn't put off. There wasn't a wall. I could be empathetic to what was happening.

I struggled a bit between giving this memoir 4 or 5 stars because there was one thing that bothered me: I wanted more. Some questions weren't answered for me. Some things felt unsaid. Some things felt left out. But when I thought about it, I realized all the questions I had weren't about Ford herself. They were about the people around her. Allen, for example. What happened to him? Did he stick around or disappear? How did she grow apart from R.C. and why? Did her mother ever believe her about anything? This book is about Ford, her growth, her pain, her love. In it, we can see ourselves. We don't need fleshed out characters with their own backstories.

I don't read a whole lot of nonfiction. In fact, the last one I read was by Roxane Gay in 2017. Wow, that's a long time ago. But I haven't even read many other books between then and now. Ford's memoir made me want to read more memoirs, but I get nervous about being disappointed. However, it's important to take a leap of faith. I want to try to do that.

This review is a lot more personal than my others because this book feels so personal to me. I connected with it so deeply, even though Ford and I have very different lives. I learned a lot here, and the stories, the passages, the thoughts, the experiences, everything in this book made me want to keep going and keep trying and do new things. I am so happy I read this.

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This absolutely deserves all the hype and buzz that it's received. It's beautifully written and handles really hard topics with sensitivity and honesty. It's funny that I finished this on Father's Day, a day I try to ignore since Ford has such a complicated yet loving relationship with her father, and I have a complicated and mostly nonexistent relationship with my dad. It gave me a lot to think about to have a woman who spent most of her life away from her father who did a terrible crime but still able to love him.