Source of book: Audiobook from the library
This book is a memoir by the author, mostly about her childhood, which was haunted by the fact that her father went to prison for two decades for rape. The effect of an incarceration is never limited to the person incarcerated, but often affects partners and children as well.
Ashley Ford reads the book herself, which leads to a strongly first-person experience of her story. She is literally telling her own story both in writing and in her own voice. She does a great job, by the way - she is one of the few authors that truly reads her own words well.
Ford grew up in Indiana, in a lower-to-middle class family, along with her siblings. Her mother primarily raised her, but her grandmother was also a significant factor in her life. Her extended family on both sides lived nearby, and thus she experienced the closeness of a large family, for better and worse.
Her mother was abusive, unfortunately, although this is complicated. Honestly, this is one of the hardest things for many to understand about abusive parents and abusive family dynamics. Abuse is not the only reality. In many - likely most - cases, there are a lot of good times too. Few people are psychopathic, hurting their children for the fun of it. Many have great intentions, and do what they feel is best. The problems come largely from the parents’ own trauma, and from toxic beliefs about childrearing.
So, Ford’s mother isn’t a terrible person. Not at all. She works hard to support the family, she shows affection, she does her best to raise them to be successful. But she also has her moments of blowing up and becoming physically and verbally violent and abusive.
For Ford, she was the eldest child, and also thoroughly misunderstood. She was highly intelligent even as a small child, thought for herself, and knew when she was being treated unjustly. Her mother interpreted this as Ford being “difficult” and even malevolent - trying intentionally to make life harder for her mother. This misunderstanding predictably lead to unnecessary conflict.
A lot goes on in this book; some pretty heavy-duty stuff. At age 12, Ashley is raped by her boyfriend, a white boy who uses his supposed passion for her as an excuse to control and possess her. She is groped and abused by a family friend. Her early development and large breasts lead to accusations at school that she is dressing inappropriately. (Hey, I wrote about that once…) Her mom’s long-term boyfriend humiliates her, and in one case hits her.
But there are also plenty of good things in her life. She develops a relationship with Brett, a kind and sensitive young man who plays saxophone and pushes her to go to college when she thinks she can’t. They have a sexual relationship for years, before he finally admits what they both kind of knew: he is gay, and, while he is a great lover and she enjoys amazing sex, it doesn’t do it for him. Their breakup is lacerating for both of them, so it is truly gratifying that they survive this and continue to be good friends with each other.
Another wonderful observation about her time with Brett was how she was able to reclaim her sexuality. After the rape, she felt tremendous guilt that she still wanted to have sex - she craved sex, but felt that to do so was somehow a betrayal of herself and a retroactive consent to the rape. Yeah, that’s fucked up, of course. But Ford eventually came to understand (in part through Brett’s help) that being raped is not the same as having sex. Expressing one’s sexuality with a willing partner is a totally different experience - a categorically different thing. This allowed her to separate the violence perpetrated on her from the pleasure she shared with Brett. That is a truly beautiful thing.
Ford was able to attend Ball State, where she learned the skills she later used in her writing, and discovered a lot about herself both from teachers and her therapist. She made a good life for herself, and has a happy marriage with her husband. Things worked out, so to speak.
Another good thing in this book is the number of truly kind and decent people in it. Brett is one example, of course. But there are a number of others. Brett’s family looks out for Ashley when she is having difficulties at home. Teachers go out of their way to help her, even though she wasn’t an easy student. The family she babysits for makes sure she can get home to see her dying grandmother. Various friends help her when she needs it. And, for that matter, despite her family’s issues, they do pull together much of the time. Her mother, for all her flaws, supports her at college.
This is pretty much just an overview of the book. It really needs to be experienced. I would say it is one of the best memoirs I have read - Ford is quite self-aware, and brings a nuanced approach to her story, including the emotionally difficult parts.
After the book itself, there is an Interview and discussion the author has with Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed. The two of them discuss storytelling, truth, racism, and a bunch of other stuff.
What is most revealing about the discussion, at least to me, is how Ford describes the ethics and minefields of writing a memoir. So much of this resonated with me, as a blogger who talks about my own childhood and family.
If you have read this blog for any length of time, you probably know that I am estranged from my parents, following decades of difficulty in our relationship. You also know that I was a part of Bill Gothard’s cult in my late teens, and that I am a lawyer because that was literally the only opportunity for higher education that Gothard offered, and thus that my parents were willing to support me in. It was not my first choice, and I am still a bit angry that I was denied a normal college education. I don’t hate law - it’s a good gig - but I wish I had been allowed to decide for myself.
So much in the book resonated with me. I too was the eldest child, and the one that was most misunderstood. (Probably - my brother might have an argument of his own for that. Our sister was and is the golden child who could do no wrong.) The root of this misunderstanding is complicated, but I believe it was a combination of factors. My parents were both younger siblings whose older siblings sucked up the attention. My mom was outright abused and neglected by her parents, who didn’t really want her, lavishing worship on her older brother. So the birth order thing already put me in the position of “that bad oldest child.”
I also had a mouth on me, and I talked back plenty. (And yes, my own kids inherited that from me. And their mother.) I was not the easiest kid, I am sure.
But because of the Fundamentalism my parents chose to identify with, there were teachings that guaranteed that I would be misunderstood. First, the idea that children are inherently evil and need that evil beaten out of them. Second, that disagreeing or talking back is “rebellion” and thus inviting Satan into one’s life. Third, that the most important thing a parent needs to do for their child’s eventual salvation is to “break their will.” My will was never broken, and probably could not have been broken without literally killing me.
You can guess where this is going.
I do not believe I am an inherently rebellious person. But I am a divergent thinker. I question things, I think for myself, and I do not just go along to get along. However, that is not rebellion by any reasonable standard. I worked hard in school. I found ways to pick up work all through my teens. I literally taught my siblings algebra and chemistry and geometry when my parents couldn’t. I worked my ass off on household stuff whenever asked - and sometimes when I wasn’t. I didn’t do drugs, sleep around, or get into trouble.
But because of the toxic belief system, I was pegged as “rebellious” from my youth, and because of that, my moral concerns, from my objection to joining Gothard’s cult, to the decisions my wife and I made to reject the Cult of Domesticity, to my pushback on my parents’ racism and bigotry in the Trump Era, have been consistently dismissed and ignored. My morality has been brushed off as somehow just “virtue signaling for your like-minded friends.” Gah! And that’s before you get to the years of treating my wife as if she didn’t matter and would never measure up.
So I very much identified with Ford when it came to that dynamic.
And then there is the question of writing about our stories.
For many of us, Ford and myself included, for years, we felt like we couldn’t “own” our own narratives. That we somehow had to sugar-coat our stories so our parents wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.
At some point, however, we both realized that our stories were OUR stories. They were not owned by our parents or our siblings or anyone else. The fact that they might remember things differently doesn’t mean they can control our stories. Not anymore.
There is a moment in the interview where Ford describes her mother as being obsessed with her image, and thus took it very badly when she was no longer able to control the story told about her by her daughter.
Oh man. That’s literally me and my parents.
The thing is, it’s complicated, just like it is with Ford’s mother. My parents were pretty good parents when I was a child. They were mediocre during my teens - the toxic beliefs about rebellion made those years more difficult for them and me than they had to be. But of course we had good times during those years too. Just because there were some bad things doesn’t mean there weren’t good things.
And, the flip side as well is true: just because there were good things doesn’t mean that the bad didn’t exist or that I have to ignore the bad and not talk about them.
All of the crap probably would have been survivable had my parents been able to accept the adult me, and also accept my wife and children for who they actually are, not the fantasy of what my parents thought they should be.
My parents took a lot of their identity from being “good parents” - and got a lot of credit for the fact that we were good kids, at least in appearance. (My sister, like other narcissists, was able to put on a good face for strangers.) Unfortunately, my parents believed that the reason we were good wasn’t primarily the good things they did raising us (the love and attention, for example) but the bad stuff: the corporal punishment, and later, Gothard’s toxic teachings.
Because their identity was so tied up in the image of themselves as “good parents,” when I started telling my story from my point of view, their image took a bit of a hit. No longer were they the ones with the “good kids” but the ones with a kid who took issue with their rejection of his wife, their attempts to control adult children and their families, and their increasing embrace of bigotry of all kinds. That was problematic. And rather than actually deal with the issue, they decided to throw me and my family away. And so it goes…
I think Ford is absolutely right, though. WE own our stories. We have the right to embrace our own understanding of our experiences. Our parents do not control how we experienced our lives, and do not get to dictate to us how we tell our stories.
And, in case of point here, if they didn’t want to look bad in our stories, maybe they should have behaved better. If Ford’s mom didn’t want to look bad, maybe she shouldn’t have blamed Ford when her stepdad hit her. Just saying. And perhaps if my own parents wanted to look better, maybe they should have listened to me when I objected to joining Gothard’s cult. And perhaps they should have accepted and respected my wife rather than attempt to bully her into living her life according to their cultural preferences.
And, the more parents double down on their attempts to control the narrative, to dictate to us the meaning of our stories, the more they will find themselves out of our lives. That’s just natural consequences.
Ford also makes a great point that in order to break the cycle of trauma, we have to stop candy-coating what happened. You cannot cut the cancer out if you can’t call it cancer. The saddest thing to me is that, once upon a time, my parents really did try to break the cycle. And, to a degree, they did. A significant reason that I am who I am - and why I can stand up for myself and draw boundaries of acceptable behavior with my parents (in a way they couldn’t with theirs) is that I experienced less trauma than they did. I applaud that.
The reason this is so sad though, is that for all their fruitful efforts to break the cycle when we were children, they seemingly abandoned it (along with most of the moral values they taught us) later in life. Instead of truly breaking the cycle of favoritism that poisoned their own childhoods, they doubled down on favoritism toward my sister (to the degree that people outside the family comment on it.) Instead of truly breaking the cycle of sacrificing children to religious beliefs (they were both missionary kids), they sacrificed me to Bill Gothard and his teachings. Instead of breaking the cycle of ignoring children and treating them like inferiors, they abandoned the practice of listening and respecting that they had when I was a kid, only to thoroughly ignore, disrespect, and condescend to me and mine as adults. It feels so backwards, and makes me sad. I truly hope I can avoid doing the same thing as I age.
I think a key takeaway here is one that has been mentioned in connection with author Judy Blume: the need to treat children and teens as capable moral agents. Ashley Ford wasn’t a horrible rebellious child. Rather, she had a deep sense of justice, of ethics, of morality, and insisted on being treated fairly. My hope is that I can at least grant my children the gift of being taken seriously as moral agents. In fact, rather than worry about whether they reach all the same conclusions as I do, I want them to think ethically and compassionately, and go wherever that leads them.
As Kathryn Reklis described her own experience growing up:
“I was actively taught that teenage self-discovery was a myth of “secular culture” meant to lead me away from the faith. On the one hand, Christian teens needed to be able to articulate their own beliefs clearly and confidently. On the other hand, any process that might lead to questioning or rejecting those beliefs was a sign of sinful rebellion. Owning your own spiritual journey was fine so long as the results could be predicted.”
For me too, that was the issue. I was expected to “own my own faith” - but that faith had to look exactly like my parents’ faith, particularly when it came to cultural and political preferences. The problem is, the results cannot be predicted. And that is okay. Ford’s journey led her away from religion, but toward a greater sense of compassion and justice. My journey too has led me away from Republican politics (particularly the Trumpist-Fascist manifestation that has taken over the party), and far away from retrogressive beliefs about race and gender.
As a final thought, the book started out as being mostly about Ford’s father, but in its final form, it really is more about her mother. The title survives from the earlier vision, perhaps, but it makes sense in either context. The fact of the matter is that her mother raised her, and her father was incarcerated most of her childhood. He wasn’t there. But the book really explores the complexities and ambiguities of both relationships in a truly powerful way.
For this and other reasons, I highly recommend this book. The audiobook is good too, and it enriched the experience to hear the author’s own voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment