The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
Indianapolis author Ashley C. Ford discusses deeply personal memoir
Ashley C. Ford spent much of her life bearing secrets that she hoped to someday confess to someone who would love her despite them. As she recounts in her new memoir, that hypothetical someone was often her father. But she couldn’t even recognize her father in photos, because he had gone to prison before she could even remember his face.
The author’s deep pain from his absence and crime bookends “Somebody’s Daughter,” which landed on the New York Times Best Sellers’ list after its release from Flatiron Books in June. Ford’s thoughts on her dad are threaded throughout her childhood in Fort Wayne, her college years in Muncie, and her time in Indianapolis and New York.
The memoir relates the tangle of complex family relationships, her love of books, struggle with her body and the sexual assault that drove her to write an essay that launched her career.
It’s a deeply vulnerable first memoir from Ford, who has written or guest-edited for such publications as The Guardian, Elle Magazine, Slate, Teen Vogue and New York Magazine. But the author, who now lives in Indianapolis with her husband, doesn’t consider the book an act of courage.
“When people talk about my book being really candid or really brave, what I feel like they’re reacting to are the things that they would keep secret,” Ford told IndyStar. “Secrets are about shame to me, and I didn’t do anything that I was ashamed of.
“I was living a life where I was carrying a lot of shame, and very little of that shame belonged to me in any capacity. So writing about these things was less about working up the courage to talk about things that are shameful and a lot more so about figuring out how I define what is shameful and what shame belongs to me and what doesn’t.”
Ford recently spoke with IndyStar about “Somebody’s Daughter.”
‘He’s got to know what he missed’
One of the first things a young Ford remembers about her father, apart from his absence, is her grandmother telling her how much he loves her. Growing up, the young girl adores him, imagining how he’d hold and protect her.
Ford was a teenager when her grandmother told her that he’d raped two women. The author already knew the devastation of having a man steal a woman’s autonomy over her body -- she had been sexually assaulted by a former boyfriend.
Now that her dad is out of prison, she’s working on a relationship with him, and Ford said he’s currently reading her memoir. Some people ask how she can let him into her life, given his crimes and her experience.
“Reality is that my dad did an evil, terrible thing and that changed the course of my life,” Ford said. “Thirty years later, I have the opportunity to get to know who my dad became in the meantime. And if I deny myself that reality, if I deny myself that opportunity, I’m not changing anything for anybody. I’m only harming myself and taking something away from myself.”
People change, the author said, and it’s reasonable that the man who went to prison decades ago is different now.
“My inclination is to sort of not let him get away with not having to be my dad because I’m not super easy, either. And he’s got to get to know me now. He’s got to know what he missed,” Ford said. “It would be letting him off the hook, in a way, to not have to face me and have to build a relationship with me based in reality, not some fantasy about who either of us could have been.”
Ford’s mom hasn’t yet read the book
Alongside Ford’s self-discovery, what drives “Somebody’s Daughter” is the author’s complex relationships with her family. Sometimes she finds her mom to be a welcome, protective force. Other times she’s “the Mother” — a woman whose anger morphs into screams and slaps.
Ford told those close to her that some of the storytelling would be difficult. Several read it. But not her mom.
“I don’t know that she ever will. And that’s OK,” Ford said. “I didn’t write it for her. I love her, but I didn’t write it for her. I think if she feels moved to read it, that would be OK. But if she doesn’t, that’s also OK with me.”
‘It’s presented as ... your body is property’
When Ford’s body begins its journey through puberty, adult men take notice. But as a pre-teen and new teenager, she’s too young to understand why she must exchange her favorite puffysleeved top for a long T-shirt that she’d normally sleep in.
Inside her psyche is a muddle of messages that she, like other girls, have received since she was small: Make sure your clothes don’t make you look too old; your family will kill anyone who hurts you; and your mother will monitor your interactions to ward off any whiff of a potentially harmful situation. Still, the author experiences sexual assault that makes her body feel alien. Ford later takes nude photos of herself to help her see her beauty.
People, and especially women, are often made to think their body is property to be protected, Ford told IndyStar, and she calls that thinking damaging.
“It’s never really presented as: You don’t want this to happen because it is unsafe for your body because of the way the interactions can affect your brain health and mental and emotional health as you get older. ... It’s presented as sort of like: Your body is property and you have to navigate and exchange your interactions with other people while treating it like property. You just want people not to damage your property,” Ford said.
“I hope we’re learning to do better by kids and by ourselves, honestly. Because the reason that we treat kids that way is because we think of our own bodies that way. And that’s unfortunate. We’ve all got to grow up.”
‘This beautiful feeling that kind of changes everything’
Although Ford worked on “Somebody’s Daughter” for a decade, her feelings surprised her after she finished.
“I put it out into the world after making all these big and little decisions about how it would exist, and it exists now,” Ford said. “Enough people, you know what I mean — the right people, like it. And that makes me feel proud in a way that I’ve never really gotten to feel proud before. It’s like this beautiful feeling that kind of changes everything.”
Coming out of the pandemic, her more immediate future includes frequenting restaurants, concerts and festivals.
Ford’s plans for her future work build off of the themes in “Somebody’s Daughter.” While she can’t divulge specifics now, the author said that she wants to bring to light the stories of children whose parents have been incarcerated. And she wants everyone to be in touch with their own stories.
“If you get anything out of my book, if you get anything out of anything that I’ve said, any interview I’ve done, whatever, I hope it’s that you’re not alone in the way you think you’re alone,” Ford said. “You can always find somebody you can tell the truth to and somebody who will love you through that.”