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A review by carriepond
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
5.0
We Were Once a Family is extended investigative reporting that looks at the murder of six children of color by their adoptive mothers from the perspective of the birth families from whom the children were taken and the systems that treated those families with more skepticism than they treated the middle-class white women who would abuse and, ultimately, murder their children. It is a compelling, deeply researched, thoughtful, and damning look at systems that desperately fail at their purported mission of protecting children.
I could not put this book down. It is so good, so heartbreaking, and so well done that I couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading it, and I will think about it for a long time after finishing it. I want to talk to everyone about all of the issues that this book raises-- the racism, ableism, and classicism that are foundational to the operation of our child welfare systems, the misguided idea that the purpose of these systems should be to punish parents for wrongdoing rather than giving them the support they need to lift them and their children up (because, as Asgarian drives home so well, the ways we punish parents-- ripping children from family and all existing supports and normalcy-- punishes the children in ways that will detrimentally affect them for the rest of their lives), how our child welfare system serves as a pipeline to the juvenile justice system, which serves as a pipeline to the adult prison system (and how all of these systems contain a gross overrepresentation of people struggling with poverty, substance use, and mental illness), and how so much of this is a black hole for most people until they get entangled with one of these systems. Asgarian manages to explore all of these topics while telling a story that is also emotionally resonant, unputdownable, and beautifully told.
This is me, pressing a copy of this book into your hands, urging you to read it.
I could not put this book down. It is so good, so heartbreaking, and so well done that I couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading it, and I will think about it for a long time after finishing it. I want to talk to everyone about all of the issues that this book raises-- the racism, ableism, and classicism that are foundational to the operation of our child welfare systems, the misguided idea that the purpose of these systems should be to punish parents for wrongdoing rather than giving them the support they need to lift them and their children up (because, as Asgarian drives home so well, the ways we punish parents-- ripping children from family and all existing supports and normalcy-- punishes the children in ways that will detrimentally affect them for the rest of their lives), how our child welfare system serves as a pipeline to the juvenile justice system, which serves as a pipeline to the adult prison system (and how all of these systems contain a gross overrepresentation of people struggling with poverty, substance use, and mental illness), and how so much of this is a black hole for most people until they get entangled with one of these systems. Asgarian manages to explore all of these topics while telling a story that is also emotionally resonant, unputdownable, and beautifully told.
This is me, pressing a copy of this book into your hands, urging you to read it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Racism, Forced institutionalization, Suicide attempt, and Murder
Minor: Drug abuse