Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir

This book is so beautiful and painful. I think Ashley does a beautiful job of getting at the nuance and grayness that exists in life & the pain & happiness that comes along with it. I really related to the claustrophobia of home, and the sometimes wonderful but sometimes painful and bad parts of a mother-daughter relationship where there is love but also hurt & trying to make peace with that while continuing to grow. I also really related to the intense need to leave home, but the fear that I didn't have a place in the community (being family or a wider community) but the need and importance of finding my own way. I also related to the fear of something happening to your body being your fault because of how girls were raised and expected to control and prevent the violence boys and men commit against their bodies and the shame that comes with it when that happens. It made me think of the chapter called #Fasttailed girls in Hood feminism and how WOC bodies are over-sexualized and that is blamed on them.
The way Ashley describes relationships and how the good and bad exists at once is truly beautiful.

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dark funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

5-star memoir alert! I enjoyed every page of this so much I risked getting horribly carsick to finish reading it on a road trip. The relationship with the author’s mother was so complex and expertly-detailed. I think Ford examined the multiplicity of what it means to be family in an enlightening way; the concept of unconditional love shone through the entire narrative and manifested very different through Ford’s individual relationships. I think Ford writes sexual trauma in an extremely conscious yet evocative way. I could feel her pain through the writing but I could also feel her strength. As a survivor myself, I felt seen and empowered at the same time as Ford reckoned with her own experiences and the narrative she’d been told about her father throughout the work. Also, the way it the story was told starting and ending at the same point was so beautifully done. It felt wrapped up but still realistic in a way that many narrative nonfiction cannot capture.

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