A review by reading_rainbow_with_chris
Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

 
“Somebody’s Daughter” by Ashley C. Ford
***Content Warning: sexual assault, verbal abuse, physical abuse, gaslighting 
Ashley C. Ford grew up in Indiana with her mother, her siblings, and the knowledge that her father was in prison. From an early age seemed to be seeking a way to connect with adults, to be something to them. Ford’s memoir was startling in how relatively simple she kept it without making the style feel juvenile, a tricky balance to strike which she expertly handled. As a result, the rawness of her experiences shine. I was also impressed that the tone of the experience did not sink beyond recovery at any point in the narrative. Ford recounts multiple forms of abuse and trauma from her childhood, including but not limited to verbal abuse, sexual abuse, and copious amounts of gaslighting. In other memoirs of similar content, the book becomes heavy and difficult to bear the weight of the story. Ford is honest about her experiences and sometimes leans into them as factual happenings rather than focusing on her own emotions of the experiences, creating a balance which allows her to return from darkness and keep our experience as readers balanced. This is not to say that Ford doesn’t utilize her own emotion in the narrative; she does so with powerful impact, landing craters of feeling at just the right time. But how and when she reveals it feels strategic in a way that serves the memoir beautifully. This is an excellent example of memoir that I will highly recommend for fans of the genre or for those who are simply interested in human experience.  

 
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