Poured Over: Ashley C. Ford on Somebody’s Daughter

Ashley C. Ford’s essays and journalism have run in The Guardian and Buzzfeed; she’s profiled Serena Williams and Anne Hathaway for Allure, Stacey Abrams for Marie Claire, and Vice President Kamala Harris for Elle; and her most recent podcast was Lovecraft Country Radio, the official companion to the hit show. No matter the subject or the format, Ashley knows how to tell a story with deep honesty and a lot of style, and now the story she’s telling is hers. Glennon Doyle (Untamed) says Ashley’s a “writer for the ages,” and Oprah Winfrey’s featuring Ashley’s memoir, Somebody’s Daughter on her imprint, An Oprah Book.
Featured books:

Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Poured Over: The B&N Podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher, among other outlets. New Episodes land every Tuesday and Thursday. Please follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode was produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and engineered by Harry Liang.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

Barnes & Noble: Hello fearless woman, I’m so excited. You made it into the show.

Ashley C. Ford: I’m so happy to be here, Miwa.

B&N: Thank you. Thank you. So we are taping in advance of publication. And I do want to set this book up, it is a very special book, would you do the honors?

ACF: Absolutely, um, this book is about growing up in a family that is heavily affected by circumstances and the forces of the world. My father is incarcerated, my mother is on her own in terms of raising us, even though we have a rich family community around us. And it’s essentially about what happens or the potential for what happens inside a child who notices everything and isn’t allowed to talk about it.

B&N: The opening book. I’m sorry, just remember, you can always come home. And whether or not you actually can. It is something we all want to believe. It just may not be true.

ACF: Absolutely. I mean, it’s part of the reason why I have the word home tattooed on my chest, you know, because I had to learn and understand that I am my home. Wherever I go, wherever I am, is my truest home because I’m with me. And if that’s the case, it’s like, how would you treat your home? And how would you talk about your home? How would you defend your home. And applying those things to myself has been really very deeply important. And you know, any home I had would always be full of books. Because yes, I love to read. And books are everything to me in so many ways. I started reading really early, because my grandma taught me how to read. And you know, using celebrity tabloids and the Bible, that’s how she, that’s how she taught me how to read. And it just never stopped. You know, when I lived with my grandma, I had all these Berenstain Bear books and Little Critter books, and Amelia Bedelia. All those books that were like the you can read books, or the I can read books, I had all of them and I love them Frog and Toad, like just the classics. And you know, being in those stories. And feeling those stories made, my life feels so expansive, and it made my mind feel expansive. And so I think one of the things I realized that I noticed as I got older, and I can see how this would translate into my writing is that a lot of those little moments that you notice are that you feel inside yourself. And you’re like, I don’t know how to describe this, I don’t know how to put this down on paper, it’s worth a shot, because most likely, lots of other people are having that experience or have had that experience. And they also don’t have the words or the language. So if you’re going to be a person who writes things, and if you’re going to be a person who tries really hard to describe those feelings, then try to make it something that feels real to you. And it will feel real to somebody else. Because you’re never alone in that.

B&N: This is a deeply personal book. There’s a lot that happens in this book. And I do I really would like readers to experience it for themselves. So we’re going to dance around some of what happens. How do you give yourself space to write this book, there’s a lot of compassion here. For a lot of folks, you write about fear, in ways that I think other people aspire to. So how do you? How do you make space in your own head? How do you make space in your own life? How do you go through the process of recreating a lot of very intense experiences?

ACF: By taking really, really good care of myself? Leaning on my support systems, as hard as that is? I mean, it’s I don’t think anybody who would read this book would be surprised that I grew up being a person who was not great at asking for help, or allowing other people to care for me. Or having any idea how to relate to let other people care for me. And weirdly, the more I figured out how to take care of myself, and how to care for myself in a real way in a way that like felt good and made sense to me and my body, the easier it became to make space for myself in writing the truth in telling the truth and in writing the deeper darker thing and letting it be because I think what happens, it’s like, as you sort of give yourself permission to fall in love with yourself a little bit to add yourself to the group of people that you love. Um, what you find, or at least what I found, was that anybody who couldn’t handle the space, or who would resent the space I needed or demand it for myself, wasn’t really anybody I wanted in my space anyway, they weren’t anybody I wanted to be around anyway, who was ever going to care for me? Or be there for me? Anyway? Um, and then realizing that you realize that you have a choice to make.. So do I choose me? Or do I choose everybody, but me? And the thing is, if you choose you, there will still be other people who you can have, there will still be other people who choose you. But if you choose everybody else instead of you. There’s only everybody else. There’s no you. And I, I thought I was worth holding on to. And in order to hold on to myself, I had to make space for myself. And once I started, I It’s like it’s addicted. You it’s really, really hard to stop.

B&N: You also grew up though in challenging circumstances. And you had family that would say family comes first, family comes first, family comes first. And yet it’s like that Baldwin line. It’s like you can you can tell me whatever you want, but I see what you’re doing. Yes. And how do you make sense of that as a tiny person?

ACF: I think what was lucky for me, what really worked out for me as a small person was that I was really cognizant of patterns. Like, just really, I picked up on patterns so quickly. And I remembered everything, like there’s a reason I’m a memoirist. I remember everything. For the most either, like, I don’t necessarily remember to turn in homework. But if you tell me something you believe to be true. I’ll never forget that about you. If you tell me something that means something to you. I’ll just never forget it about you. That’s how I am in general. And so I think when I was growing up, especially the adults who around me, genuinely believe that kids were kinda like dogs, you know how, like, you know how you leave the house, and you come back and your dog is like, I thought you were gone forever. I thought you were never coming back. Like they’re all over you. And every time you like, how do you forget things this quickly, right. And I think that the adults around me thought of child memories that way, they thought that things would happen, or that they could say things and that we would just get busy and or busy being a kid. And we would forget that they had said those things. And they would hate to be reminded of what they’d said before. And they would hate to be held accountable in any way. Even if it’s just a reminder, not like actually holding somebody accountable. Like you don’t go to your mom and like I want justice. It’s like no, I want acknowledgement that like, I’m not messing, that I’m not wrong here. That’s it. And they wouldn’t give us that. But I needed it. I needed it. There was something about me that was like, it is so important to hold on to this, like it’s so important to hold on to you. You know, one of the things I think helped with that was consuming a lot of childhood media that was absolutely about adults who needed to hold on to their childhood, or they had forgotten what it was like to be a child and a child came into their life and reminded them that like you used to, like fun. You used to be fun. You used to understand that saying something like this could be devastating, like what happened to you, you know, and I watched all those kinds of things. And I read stories that dealt with that trope all the time. And I think there was just part of me that was like, it is so important to remember what it felt like to be a child because when you don’t remember you grow up to be an adult who treats children like this. And this doesn’t feel good.

B&N: You start writing this memoir in college. How do you start a book like this? Does it start with an image? Does it start with a person does it start with a moment like how do you even start to reconstruct something that is so deeply personal?

ACF: It starts with an assignment. Okay, like that’s how. It starts with a writing prompt. In a nonfiction class, where your professor has gone to pretty great lengths to make sure every student in the class feel safe. to write about the truth and to write about themselves, and that what we read in this class stays in this class, like, we don’t go out of this class and talk about what people wrote in their essays and in their papers. And I wrote an essay about an interaction with my mother. And, you know, I ended up like, I’m not a great like, I was not a great student. If I like just depending on like, what was going on in my life, I was not a great, so I ended up getting a C in this class, and that was generous. But at the end of that class, Dr. Jill Crisman, she handed me that essay specifically and said, This is a book, like not this essay, like this is not a book, but what you’re writing about here. This is a book. So you just need to know that you have that. You know, I don’t know if you’re ever going to write it. I don’t know if you’re ever going to do it. But this is something and she pointed it out that this could be something now, Jill Chrisman is a brilliant, brilliant essays and memoirs. She is a fantastic professor. For the past year, she and I have still not like recently, because I’ve been really busy. For the past year when I was trying to finish my book, she well, even before that, I guess technically, it’s COVID has everything messed up for me in my head. But when my book was due, she, she wrote with me online, every Wednesday morning, she would meet me on Skype. And we would talk about what we were working on that day, what part of our projects or books, and then she would just right alongside me for an hour or longer. And that’s like the, my book really begins and ends with this person. And in a certain sense, you know, because she’s the person who told me was a book and she was a person who helped me get it to the finish line. So that’s how you start writing a book like this, with a good prompt, with some support, and with at least one person who, you know, hopefully can see the potential in your story. And then I just kept going, you know, I took another I took a novel writing class that the professor then let me turn it into a memoir writing class, where I was able to work on some of the first like pieces and bones of my book. Yeah, it’s a lot of help, a lot of encouragement. That’s how I wrote this book.

B&N: But you really have built a community around you. You as you are, not Ashley C. Ford. Memoirist, Ashley C Ford, you know, celebrity profile or podcaster, blogger, journalist, you have a network of people who just, they see you, and they think you’re the bomb, and they want to make wonderful things happen because of that.

ACF: I’ve been very lucky in friendship, you know, like, I It doesn’t always make sense. I’m gonna be honest, like, because I look at feedback, I’ve gotten pre-pub. Looked at the people who are promoting my book being like, really awesome about it. And some of them are, you know, really big names, like massive names. But there’s nobody, I will say this. There’s nobody who blurbed my book, who I have not met, sat with and talked with in person and think of as a friend, right? You know, like, those are my friends. And it’s not, they’re not my friends, because they’re big authors. All of them weren’t big authors when they became my friends. Right? You know, they’re my friends, because like, I’ve been really lucky and being able to find other people who put a premium on kindness, and who are encouraging and loving and supportive and happen to be brilliant writers. You know, I read Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, and fell in love with that book. Like, I didn’t know her. Before I read that book. I had no relationship with her. I started following her on social media after I read the book, and I just couldn’t stop talking about the book, like in the interviews, and so because I loved it so much, you know, and when I finally did meet her in person, which by the way, it was at a book club meeting, like I was part of a book club, and she was like, the author who came to the book club, and I was like, Oh, my God, oh, my, you know, like, just like not fawning, but, but I was really interested And lo and behold, she just turns out to be this amazing, beautiful soul and a person who, you know, who like, had genuine interest in me as a person and as a friend. And so now it’s like, you know like, Min Jin Lee and I are never going to get to hang out all the time. Right? No, I mean, but I would make it a point to see her when I’m in her city, I wouldn’t, if I can, I would always make it a point to be in her presence. And people like that are the people who I want, you know, like to, I want to be in community with in these literary spaces, are the people who put a premium on kindness, the people who look for opportunities to support each other, and also have really good healthy, like, ways of asking for support when they need it. Like, that’s a really beautiful thing. I don’t know. I wish I could say, you know, these are the things I look for in a friend. That’s how, and that’s how I have this amazing group of friends. But it’s really just, in a lot of case it’s timing, it’s luck. And it’s, um, it’s a willingness to give it a shot, like just give a friendship a shot.

B&N: It really is sometimes as simple as showing up, you know, showing up not having an agenda, except Can we just hang out? Can we have lunch sometime?

ACF: Yes. Like, yes,

B&N: It’s amazing to me, just how, and I think we’ve all learned a lot about that in the last year with COVID. And sort of what your limits are and who your people are. And it’s been really wild. And here we are on the cusp of sort of emerging from all of this. And it’s like, Oh, am I fully prepared to be back in the world. I’m not really sure that I’m ready for that. Can we talk about some of your literary influences too, though? I know we’ve talked about, you know, wonderful novels where the kids get to be the hero. I mean, who doesn’t love that kind of story. But let’s talk about Ashley as the adult writer, thinking about how she’s projecting her work and her ideas, who are the people who helped shape that that vision?

B&N: You know, I am a huge fan of Dr. Maya Angelou and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I’m a huge fan of Toni Morrison. I feel like the legacy of black women writers is just so much of where I get my influence everything from, you know, Lorraine Hansberry to Roxane Gay to Tayari Jones, to Terry McMillan. Like just all these amazing black women artists who like and authors over the years, like they’re like, those are some of like the primary authors, I think, whose work has gotten me to this point, one of the people who blurbed my book I would add to that is Laurie Halse Anderson, who wrote the book Speak, there read when I was in early high school. And that was one of the first times I considered that what I had been through was a story I was allowed to tell. Like that was the first time I considered that. So that had been like a huge, amazing influence on me, as well. But most recently, it’s definitely Roxane like, she’s my mentor. She’s my friend. And she’s a brilliant writer. And I absolutely have felt a lot of, you know, like earlier when I was talking about how when you give yourself certain things or make space for yourself, you know, one of the byproducts of that is that the people around you start realizing it’s okay for them to make space for themselves. And I think Roxane was one of the first people who showed me that it was okay for me to make space for myself, all of myself. In every light possible. I didn’t have to, but it was okay if I chose to. It was okay if I wanted to.

ACF: I mean, that’s so important too, because you didn’t have that behavior modeled for you at home. I mean, even your grandmother, who it sounds like a total rock star, and I’m sorry, I never got to meet her. Grandma’s are awesome. You had a lot of folks, though, including your grandma, who were really concerned about what other people thought and fitting them into a role and making sure that you’d like at one point in the book, you say the surest way to lose your seat at the adults tables to be a child who speaks up and even your grandmother was really concerned about what other people think. So how do you learn to model that behavior? Where do you find them? I mean, obviously, you found it with Roxane. But that’s very late in life. I mean, there’s a lot of time in your life before you meet, Roxane. So how do you start to make that space? How do you start to understand how to prioritize yourself?

ACF: You know, at first, I just hid, you know, I just hid. Because I knew that I was not very good at well, no, I knew that I was actually very good at pretending, but that I couldn’t sustain it. I knew that, like, I could give somebody an impression of me that I wanted them to have, but that I could not maintain it. Because the me that wanted to be me, was stronger than the me that wanted to please other people. And so it just never worked out. So then it was just hiding, right? It was just okay, then I will just make sure that I either spend a lot of time alone, or I only spend time around people who I am sure, or certain will, like, get me and understand, you know, to a certain extent, eventually, what I realized, and I think this is what helped me as much as I loved the members of my family who cared a lot about what other people think none of them seem very happy. Right? None of them. And also, as I moved into the world, and, you know, met different kinds of people had conversations, or interactions with people who had had all all kinds of experiences. Um, I started realizing also that a lot of what my family thought people would think about certain things, other people couldn’t give a shit about, like, just weren’t thinking about that, or considering it or even like, it hadn’t caught, they just didn’t care. They just didn’t care about all that. And once I started, like testing that, because it’s like, you notice it, and then you start to test your theory. So you try some different things, you do some different things, and you wait, and you keep thinking like something’s gonna happen. Like, it’s gonna be embarrassing, and everybody’s gonna be like, why she different? What is she doing? And it never happens, because nobody is watching you that closely, and nobody cares. I like reality. It’s not always great, but I prefer it, I can work with reality. What I can’t work with our delusions. Um, and I quickly realized that a lot of my family’s fear about other people’s opinion was wrapped up in delusions, and I couldn’t subscribe to it. Once it clicks for me that something is not true, or is wrong, even if I have trouble. Even if I have trouble altering my behavior, or like getting like, getting it to stick that I’m going to alter my behavior because I don’t believe this thing anymore. Um, I can’t go back to believing it. I can’t go back to being afraid of a monster who I’ve watched take off his monster suit. Like, I just can’t. And so since then, it’s just been like allowing myself to live in reality, remembering that I do not have to please or feed anybody else’s delusion. And essentially, just being honest about the fact that for as weird as I am, I got good friends. And a lot of people still like me.

B&N: Did anything actually surprise you while you were writing this book?

ACF: Yeah. It surprised me how much I had to level up with caring for myself, and specifically my mental and emotional health in order to finish the book. You know, I thought I’m in therapy. You know, I’m always going to be in therapy probably like, so why would like what else could I possibly need to do? What else could I possibly need to reflect on and so like, what strategies could I possibly develop to help me with this? Until then, I got to a point where I was just like, broken down, trying to finish this book. I was broken down and I had to like, go away. I had to go to like a program where they helped me figure out how to manage my emotions and my emotional state, and only then could I finish the book.

B&N: So, all told, then you start this book in college. How long? How many years did this take?

ACF: 10.

B&N: Wow. So you’re living up close and personal with some of the biggest moments of your early life. I mean, this book was about basically through just after college. And you moved to New York and, and so you are living with some really intense memories, some really intense experiences, and also some stuff that’s just deeply unpleasant, I’m sure not fun to revisit. I mean, and I don’t want to give people the wrong idea. There are moments of sheer joy in this book. You’re like, I’m a weird kid, I’m gonna find the other weird kids. I have color guard. I have people who love me. When you go to your great grandfather’s farm with your grandmother, and you get to live there as a kid, and you have a freedom there that you did not have when you were home in Fort Wayne. There are moments of joy and that, as a reader, I was grateful for them too, because it gave me a moment where I could exhale and I could process what had just come before. I had a similar response when I was reading Educated by Tara Westover time and also Daniel Henderson’s memoir, The Ugly Cry. Yeah, you need to read.

ACF: I’m looking forward to that.

B&N: It is so funny. But so when you’re talking about self care, you’re you are talking in a very literal way about making sure that you are, that the guardrails are in place, and you can do what you need to do creatively. By taking care of yourself, which absolutely paraphrase Audre Lorde for a second, taking care of it absolutely is a political act so that you can survive and tell these stories, because the kind of story you’re telling to women have not necessarily been encouraged to tell. And we’re seeing more of these stories. And women are speaking up, but we’re not seeing a number that I think is probably representative of what is happening.

ACF: Not even close. Not even close. Yeah.

B&N: And we keep being met with these responses. Like why are you telling this story? Or what makes you think that it’s like, well, it happened?

ACF: Yeah, I tell people all the time, because it’s mine, because it’s mine. And I wanted to? And it turns out, that’s a good enough reason.

B&N: I think it’s a great. I mean, I can’t think of any other real reason to tell a story except to tell a story. So you’ve been a podcaster, you have interviewed very, very, very famous people. A really cool collection of women honestly. What do you want next, for your storytelling?

ACF: You know, why writing this book. And honestly, what selling this book offered me the opportunity to be a little more free in what I decide to take on, and what projects and, you know, like I decided to partake in, and I want to write a lot more books, I’ve got a lot more books in me. There are a lot of stories, I’m not done with, there are stories from, you know, this book, you know, my memoir that I’m not done with, there’s a lot more to say. There’s also, um, it’s hard because like, I don’t ever really have career plans. I just don’t like I don’t have career plans. And I find that that leaves a lot of room for things to come into my life that I’m interested in. So I’m, it’s like, I’m just open, I want to do things that are fun. I want to do things that I can be proud to be involved with, and that I can be proud to make. And I want to do things that help people. And like anytime something’s hitting, you know, two to three of those notes, I’m pretty much in if I’ve got the time, the energy and the interest I’m in. So I’m always just looking for new opportunities to do things that makes sense for me. So there’s always going to be books, I’m always going to be writing. But maybe there’ll be other new things, too. More podcasts. Maybe I’ll finally start getting into writing for TV or writing, you know, a screenplay feature or something like that. Not that those are just the easiest things in the world to do, but I can do it. And there’s a lot of stuff that I never dreamed I’d get the opportunity to do that. I’m just gonna take my shot, I’m just going to give it a shot. And I’m going to see what happens. Because I think the greatest privilege anybody can have is a second chance. And I believe in my ability to have second chances. Whenever I want to try something, whenever I do something, so I’m looking forward to trying a lot of things, maybe failing at them, and getting some dope, second chances to try again.

B&N: But that’s a lot of what your book is about, second chances, not just for you. I mean, there’s some other folks I mean, even your mother, at one point, towards the end of the story is like, Well, I was a little out of hand, then. And certainly your dad’s story. You’ve been very open about your dad’s story. I have to ask, though, how do your parents feel about the book, I mean, your dad did say, write the thing you’re gonna write, don’t think about me, tell your truth, which I mean, for a parent, that’s pretty great. But now that it’s out in the world, it does take on a different way, when you hold the finished object in your hands, it does take on a different way. Just my kid is writing a book. It’s my kids book is here.

ACF: Yeah, yeah, you know, my dad is very proud of me. He’s very excited to read it, he hasn’t read it yet. He did not want to read it until it was all the way done, which I agreed with. And now that both of our vaccines are getting nice and marinated, we’re finally going to be able to meet up with each other, and I’ll be able to just hand him the book. And then from there, we’ll figure out how he feels about it, or what he thinks about it, my mother will probably never read it. And I’m okay with that. I think that our relationship is good, you know, it’s fine. But I think that she’s just at a place where it might be hard for her to read some of these things and to process them. Um, and I don’t have a fantasy about who my mother is anymore. Like, I love her for who she is, which means I wrote it for me, knowing that, you know, there is a possibility that she would read it, but also knowing that the strongest possibility was that she would not. So I’ve been like, we’ve been fine with it. Like we can talk about the fact that the book is coming out. We don’t really talk about what’s in it. And if that’s what she needs, I’m okay with that.

B&N: Wait, so does that mean your mom still can’t really use the internet?

ACF: No, no, she then now like she can’t use the internet. She just Do you know what? Stronger than the internet? My mother’s ability to ignore things she doesn’t want to know.

B&N: Ah, okay.

ACF: So, yeah. My mom would delete all of her social media. And like, just be like, before she’d like, you know, acknowledge something that she didn’t want to acknowledge.

B&N: Well, there’s that. Is there anything we missed about the book? What’s your experience? And then there are things like Frog and Toad that you internalize.

ACF: Yeah, absolutely. And I want people to read it. I want them to feel me. You know what I mean? Like, that’s essentially it. Like, that’s my goal. Can you feel me? And in most cases, I think everybody will be able to feel me in some aspect of this book. So that’s what feels like a victory to me. Like that’s already a victory is that I think I wrote a book that anybody could pick up and find a part that feels like, yeah, I feel her. I know this feeling. I know this moment. Even in a story with circumstances that I’ve never been part of, or that I would never even picture being part of, I know that emotion. I know that moment. That’s what I want. Like, that’s it. So now, like every conversation I have about the book is a good conversation about the book because the conversation is really about people and the different ways we interact with each other, and what we can learn from each other and how we see each other, the stories we tell about one another. Like that’s, that’s what it’s all about. So no, this is, this is fantastic. Thank you.
B&N: Awesome. I’m very happy to hear that and I’m so happy to see your face but you know what, I’m going to turn off the recording now.