Reading the story of Donna Ford is painful: abandoned by her mother, unloved by her father, at the age of five she became a defenseless victim of her stepmother, in comparison with which Cinderella’s stepmother will seem the embodiment of kindness. Eight years of insults, pain, sexual abuse, hunger and rejection — all this Donna writes about simply and unsophisticatedly, without trying to arouse pity or anger in the reader.
Reading the story of Donna Ford is painful: abandoned by her mother, unloved by her father, at the age of five she became a defenseless victim of her stepmother, in comparison with which Cinderella’s stepmother will seem the embodiment of kindness. Eight years of insults, pain, sexual abuse, hunger and rejection — all this Donna writes about simply and unsophisticatedly, without trying to arouse pity or anger in the reader. It is this reserved and detached tone that makes her autobiography one of the scariest and most powerful books imaginable. Donna Ford was lucky — she managed to escape from the nightmare that was her life. However, it is possible (and this idea runs throughout her book) that somewhere very close to us, right at this moment, another helpless child is being beaten or raped. A child who needs our help. And after the book by Donna Ford, it is very difficult to get this thought out of my head.
Amphora