Audiobook Review: Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford
Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: June 1, 2021
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: He’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates. When the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley desperately searches for meaning in the chaos. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father’s incarceration…and Ashley’s entire world is turned upside down.
Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she embarks on a powerful journey to find the threads between who she is and what she was born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.
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 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.
