Post #35 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Reviewed by Michelle Rockwell
Ashley Rhodes-Courter
Ashley was born in 1985 to a seventeen-year-old girl. Due to substance abuse issues and an inability to provide for her children, Ashley’s mother lost her two young children to the Florida state foster care system. Ashley spent 9 chaotic years in and out of fourteen different foster homes. Three Little Words: A Memoir is a must-read for anyone who cares for, or works with, children.
As a young child, Ashley was recognized as an outstanding student and a gifted writer. Fortunately, she was adopted by a loving family at the age of twelve. She received national recognition when she wrote a winning essay about her adoption-day for The New York Times. In her teens, Ashley began speaking out and testifying on behalf of thousands of voiceless Florida children trapped within the confines of a foster care system that allows many children, who have already suffered extensive trauma, to be neglected and abused further.
Ashley’s voice is young and fresh. Her words remind any aspiring memoirist, young and old alike, of the power in the honesty and simplicity required in any well-crafted narrative.
“My mother had a carefree attitude. She was too self-absorbed to fuss about my safety. Although she always strapped me in my car seat, her battered truck did not have seat belts. Driving down a bumpy South Carolina road, the unlocked door popped open. I tumbled out, rolling a few times before landing on the shoulder. My mother turned the truck around and found me waving at her. I was still buckled into the seat,” (p.3).
Ashley Rhodes-Courter could be a very bitter young woman, but she isn’t. Her goal is to raise public awareness of the plight of American children who are locked inside a sometimes uncaring system. She wrote her memoir in an attempt to make sense of her past and to say thank-you to her adoptive parents and to the caring professionals who took an active interest in her case.
To learn more about Ashley, you may visit her web site at http://www.rhodes-courter.com. She is a well-known public speaker and an advocate for children’s rights.
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Michelle Rockwell is currently writing her memoir.
memoir book review
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