This Wheel’s On Fire

Blind in One Eye: A Story About Seeing the Possibilities by David R. Ford (FordWords Publishing; 218 pages; available as a Kindle and NOOKbook download)

David R. Ford’s memoir seemed to present an intriguing premise:  Ford, an attorney in a white shoe practice in Washington, D.C. was adopted at birth.   One day someone tells Ford that she spotted a person on a D.C.-area subway that looked enough like him to be his older brother – was it Ford’s older brother (by seven years) who was kept and raised by their birth parents?   This reader assumed that the story of how Ford comes to meet the older brother he never knew, and would come to know him as a person, would make a worthwhile read.   Sadly, there are too many faults in the telling to label it as commendable.

As I have mentioned, Ford is (actually, was) an attorney.   This is something that Ford never lets the reader forget – he either feels that his readers are suffering from Alzheimer’s or he simply tells us this key point repeatedly in an effort to be patronizing…  In fact, if I had placed a Post-It note on each of the pages on which Ford repeats this grand fact, I’d have been running to the store for more supplies:   “I was a lawyer, trained to seek all of the facts and analyze them carefully…  Most lawyers think they are good writers.   Many are, at least in the technical sense; their nouns and verb tenses usually agree…   I should have tried hard to get to him.   I was a lawyer, a persuader.   Now I couldn’t hope to understand my birth father.”   (These are references on two pages, 169 and 183.   You would not, trust me, want me to list them all.)

“I wanted to get into the conversation but wasn’t coming up with anything to say…  I kept up an internal dialogue as we talked, critiquing my performance as embarrassingly stiff and clumsy.”

Ford apparently lacks an outgoing personality and he seems to want to tie this to his legal training.   Sorry, but this is nonsense.   There are plenty of gregarious, extroverted lawyers out there.   Ford just seems to be an introvert who uses his legal background as an excuse for his lack of comfort in the presence of others.

The biggest flaw in this true tale is that when Ford does meet his brother, he finds someone who is older but not very interesting.   His older brother likes to have a good time, especially fueled by alcohol, and cannot manage to stay married.   The brothers have little in common, and Ford comes to realize that his being raised as an only child – a spoiled one – may have been a blessing.

Since there’s so little substance in the meetings between Ford and his older brother, the reader gets much unexpected information concerning Ford’s relationships with his sisters, who were also given up for adoption, as well as about the members of his birth family.   But because so much territory is covered, and so many individuals must be discussed, this reader felt as if he did not get to know a single one of them very well.   Ford’s birth mother and father were alcoholics, and serial giving-uppers of their own children, and it seems like the less known of them the better.

This memoir ends up being a morality play without a lesson, except that perhaps life is either confusing or simply what it is.   A far better account of an adoptee’s experience in making a journey into her past is found in Lucky Girl: A Memoir by Mei-Ling Hopgood.   As I wrote earlier about Hopgood, she is “a likeable narrator without an excess of ego…  we can identify with her.”   If Hopgood happened to be a lawyer, it’s something that goes unrevealed in her personal – highly troubling yet satisfying – story.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the author.   Lucky Girl: A Memoir by Mei-Ling Hopgood (Algonquin Books; $13.95; 272 pages) was reviewed on this site on June 28, 2009, and July 30, 2009.

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There’s a Wall in China… a Review of the Book Lucky Girl: A Memoir

They’ve got a wall in China/ It’s a thousand miles long/ To keep out the foreigners/ They made it strong/ And I’ve got a wall around me/ That you can’t see…   Paul Simon

I grew up with a cousin who was adopted.   He learned this fact in his early teens.   He became quite angry but also quickly managed to accept it.   I know that he completely loved his adopted parents and a huge part of him died when they did.

Growing up I used to wonder how my cousin would have reacted if he had learned who his birth parents – who we knew were not from the U.S. – were, or if they had sought to contact him.   This memoir, Lucky Girl, by Mei-Ling Hopgood provided the answers for me.   In this intriguing true story, Mei-Ling is born to parents in China who quickly give her up for adoption to a family in the state of Michigan, U.S.A.   After graduation from college, and during the first part of her career as a newspaper reporter, she discovers how to contact her birth parents and siblings.   They make clear that they very much wish to see her also, and the first of what would turn out to be multiple reunions is set.   Thus begins the new chapter in Mei-Ling’s life…

Mei-Ling must literally make a journey of thousands of miles to decipher the secrets of her birth family’s past, and to learn about the life she might have led.   Initially there’s much happiness but then the family facades give way to human weaknesses, cruelties and non-explainable behaviors.

Once Mei-Ling takes this trip to a past she never knew she first accepts it and then – somewhat blissfully – lets it go.  

Hopgood is a likeable narrator without an excess of ego; she freely expresses her foibles and failings.   Because we can identify with her, we feel her fears, her nervousness in certain situations, her disappointments in others.   She is, though, far from the most fluid or natural writer, and more than a few mixed tense sentences break the flow of thought.   Yet she manages to tell a very engaging – and very human-scale – story of meeting, accepting and defeating the ghosts of her past.   Because these are the ghosts that haunt every one of us, this is her personal story and our very own story.

This review was written by Joseph Arellano.   Reprinted courtesy of the Troy Bear blog.   This is a “bonus” review.

A Simple Twist of Fate: A Review of Lucky Girl, A Memoir

According to an old Chinese proverb, “You can draw the image of a person…  but you can never know what’s inside a person’s heart.”   In this unique memoir, Mei-Ling Hopgood attempts to learn and describe what is in the hearts of the family that gave her up for adoption.   In 1974, Hopgood’s parents in China released her for adoption by a couple in Michigan.   More than twenty years later, Mei-Ling manages to contact her birth parents and her siblings who very much wish to see her.

The reunions, like much in life, wind up being both joyful and painful.   Families are complicated and for every joyful thing that Hopgood learns about her birth family’s past, she also learns about painful secrets and memories that are best left forgotten.

Hopgood discovers that while in most lives “the twists of fate are…  imperceptible,” this was not the case for her.   She was harshly removed from one life in order to be granted another.   Hopgood finds that she gained more than she lost and became a very lucky person, a lucky girl.   In the end she moved onward and found happiness.

This review was written by Joseph Arellano.   Reprinted courtesy of Sacramento Book Review.