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patricia_epub's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
“When you write about you and me? Just tell the truth. Your truth. Don’t worry about nobody’s feelings, especially not mine. You gotta be tough to tell your truth, but it’s the only thing worth doing next to loving somebody.”
This is a pleasant, spontaneous read that I am so glad I picked up (or clicked on, rather). Ashley C. Ford is a thoughtful writer and this fact shone through the way she wrote her memoir. Her experiences were deeply emotional, scarring, and painful—but she told her story, her truth, with the careful gentleness of someone who struggled for a long time but has also started healing (and continues to heal up to this day), someone who's been learning to be kinder to their selves. She wrote with understanding of the people who shaped her, good and bad. Wrote with sobriety that I think accorded much more nuance to the tone of her memoir.
As I said in my initial impression of this book, there is just so much to unpack. The Black experience is there tied with poverty, trauma, and the universal struggles of women: sexualization of women’s bodies, rape, and assault. There is also the inescapable struggle to reconcile her trauma with her absent father, and the truth behind his absence. Her tumultuous relationship with a detached, abusive single mother. The complicated feelings she associates with a grandmother who is both her loving caregiver but also her harshest critic.
I am truly glad to have heard this story from the author herself through her wonderful narration of the audiobook.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence
Minor: Body shaming, Bullying, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Sexism, Stalking, and Toxic relationship
skudiklier's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.75
This book was beautiful, thoughtful, and painful. It was a lot more about her relationship with her mother than I thought going in, but maybe that's because I have personal reasons I relate to some things with her father (and so I was especially interested in that going in). Regardless of what I expected, I definitely loved this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Body shaming, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Grief, Medical content, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, and Toxic relationship
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