Somebody’’s Daughter: A Memoir

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NBCC John Leonard Prize Finalist
Indie Bestseller

＂This is a book people will be talking about forever.＂ --Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed

＂Ford’s wrenchingly brilliant memoir is truly a classic in the making. The writing is so richly observed and so suffused with love and yearning that I kept forgetting to breathe while reading it.＂ --John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author

One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father.

Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley C. Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates. When the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley desperately searches for meaning in the chaos. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father’s incarceration . . . and Ashley’s entire world is turned upside down.

Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she embarks on a powerful journey to find the threads between who she is and what she was born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.

Ashley C. Ford lives in Brooklyn by way of Indiana. Ford hosts The Chronicles of Now podcast where she has featured Lisa Taddeo, Carmen Maria Machado, Tommy Orange, Curtis Sittenfeld, and more. She also co-hosts The HBO companion podcast Lovecraft Country Radio. Ford has written or guest-edited for The Guardian, ELLE, BuzzFeed, OUT Magazine, Slate, Teen Vogue, New York Magazine, Allure, Marie Claire, The New York Times, Netflix Queue, Domino, Cup of Jo, and various other web and print publications. Her writing has been listed among Longform & Longread’s Best of 2017. She has been named among Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Media (2017), Brooklyn Magazine’s Brooklyn 100 (2016), Time Out New York’s New Yorkers of The Year (2017), and Variety’s New Power of New York (2019). She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Kelly Stacy, who is also a writer, and their chocolate lab Astro Renegade Ford-Stacy.