Somebody’s Daughter is the heart-wrenching yet equally witty and wondrous story of how Ford came through the fire and emerged triumphant, as her own unapologetic, Black-girl self.

Somebody’s Daughter is smoothly written and marked by moments of alert complexity. Ford borrows from her literary foremother Zora Neale Hurston — especially Hurston’s juxtaposition of happiness to intimacy with the sun.

... heart-wrenching.

Somebody’s Daughter is an apt title for Ford’s memoir, especially since she spends most of her young life hoping to be more than a daughter. The narrative details her attempts to claim that independent identity, but the path is not straightforward.

At once gut-wrenching and heartwarming, Somebody’s Daughter is a story about finding oneself outside of a family unit that hurts and wrongs yet loves with a fiery passion.

Somebody’s Daughter left me struggling to breathe — I found that holding my breath held back the tears that kept coming and coming and coming. In reading Ashley C. Ford’s first memoir, one feels an overwhelming desire to hold her and hold her tight. To cradle her and love her the way she wanted to be loved, to remind her how to breathe when she starts gasping for air.

... radiant.

... stunning.

... a shining example of story and craft that embodies how exquisite a memoir can be.

Ford executes her task with both unstinting honesty and rare tenderness toward the deeply flawed, but steadfast, circle of adults who raised her. The resulting portraits, of her mother and grandmother, in particular, are remarkably vivid and humane, haunting the reader long after one has closed the book’s pages.

Somebody’s Daughter is part Midwestern Black girl bildungsroman and part family saga about the rippling effects of incarceration.

... an affecting, no-holds-barred memoir.

... an in-depth examination of characters and family dynamics that commonly reside within the American landscape. Though they may not be totally unique, the personalities are nonetheless still relatable as she brings them alive in a compelling narrative. The dialogue among family members is often dispiriting and yet poignant at the same time..

The stigma of incarceration is illuminated in Somebody's Daughter in a very poignant way, as we see how few members of her extended family are able to tell her the truth.

In a book that shares a similar spirit with Tara Westover’s Educated, Ford tells the story of uniquely difficult circumstances with profound insight and detail about the tumults of childhood.

Journalist Ford debuts with a blistering yet tender account of growing up with an incarcerated father.