I have never been a reader of non-fiction, but something about this cover with abstract color patches evenly placed in the background and the stark outline of a snake drew me to looking further into what this memoir was about. I don’t tend to like reading about people’s lives because I can never seem to relate to their situation. Although, Somebody’s Daughter was someone else’s story of growing up without a father, it seemed to resonate with the side of myself that can still feel the absence of their father even to this day.

Ashley struggled with how she viewed her father after finding out that he raped two women sometime before she was born. Although she was never apart of the actions that caused her fathers sentencing to 30 years in prison, she was left with the fall out of not having a father figure present in those growing years. This leads her down a path of desperation for the love that she did not have and would not be able to have with anyone other than her biological father. It was heartbreaking for me to feel her internal pain of wanting and longing to be loved. As I read through her memoir I would say the void that was within her caused her to land into some harmful situations. Ashley was raped by the first boyfriend she ever had. It was ironic to me to see that she was a victim of rape as her father was the perpetrator of rape.

Another person in Ashley life that significantly effected Ashley’s relationships with other individuals was her mother. Ashley’s mother was the hard working single mother trope to a “T”. She was bold , unyielding with her rage, and expected the most from her children. There were times in the novel where it felt as if Ashley felt anxious when coming home or doing something that her mother would disapprove of due to the repercussions she would face. Ashley never spared the audience of this book about how she was hit by her mother from a small child all the way into her teens. This repeated action of reprimanding could have correlated to Ashley’s on edge feeling. There is a quote at the end of chapter 22 that specifically shows how even when nothing is wrong that Ashley still thinks there is something detrimental lurking on the edge of communication with peers.

When I asked him why he felt so far from me, even on the weekends when he visited me, or took me back to Fort Wayne , he looked into my eyes and asked, “Why do you need something to be wrong?” And I wondered why I did that.

(A. Ford 146)

Overall, I thought this book was nothing like a non-fiction read. It reads more like a literary fiction novel it flowed that well. I loved the retellings of time periods throughout Ashley’s life. There almost was always a prominent few sentences to end each chapter. They resonated with me so well that I just had to highlight them! I know for a fact it she wrote a novel or even another piece of non-fiction I would be very eager to get my hands on a copy ASAP!

References

Ford, Ashley. Somebody’s Daughter. Flatiron Books, 2021.