Hope's Boy
by Andrew Bridge
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Book Summary Information
Author: Andrew BridgeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2009-02-17
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Hyperion
Book Reviews of Hope's Boy
Book Review: Born for Hope
Summary: 4 Stars
Andrew Bridge's account of his own childhood, Hope's Boy, pounds home the best and worst we can do with hurting children. He loved his tempestuous mother Hope as much as any boy can, which made her mental illness, his removal from her by the state, and his grinding journey through the child welfare/foster system a trial of loss and a trail of pain. That he found his way with the help of committed teachers through Harvard Law and became a Fullbright Scholar is an amazing story, but doesn't diminish the years he wandered outside his mother's arms. This is a story more than a lesson, but a pointed story; it leaves a welt, like one from the lamp cord he was beaten with by one of mom's boyfriends. The story comes full circle with his own work on behalf of children born or delivered into overburdened and burned out systems of care.
The writer and reader both experience this as a purgative book-we both suffer, but are released. He writes "I was seven years old the last time that I lived with my mother and first night that I slept in foster care. By the time I was a teenager, I had spent half my life in county custody." Hope is beautiful, daring, mentally ill, exhausted, raped, poor and evicted; during their time together, they have to steal food to have a Christmas. They are shamed, their life totaled up in three grocery bags. Was it the right decision to remove Andrew from Hope? Probably. Maybe. No. All seem right at various times.
We get to know Andrew more than Hope. "In half a day, everything that comprised a seven-year-old's life had been seized, and no one along the way had thought it necessary to tell him why." At that time in Los Angeles, the "shelter care facility" was run by the Department of Probation. The place was surrounded by a barbed wire-laced perimeter fence, staff were recruited from the juvenile hall, and county officials chose armed guards to patrol the halls. He was SEVEN, locked in with hundreds of foster children from "failed placements," children sent back from foster or group homes, kids whose childhoods were lost entirely, institutionalized until they could "emancipate"-like slaves.
Eventually Hope's boy is placed with a foster family, with a tyrannical "mom" and distant "dad" who clearly and regularly favored their biological children over the steady stream of foster kids who marched through their "home." The housemother's power was supreme and unchallenged, and she was very jealous of Hope. At any moment, for any reason, she could summon the county and within hours a car would take him away, "back." Andrew conformed, was compliant, while pining for his grandma in Chicago who could not take him, and his mother who'd been taken from him. In 5th grade, a sympathetic teacher taught Andrew to love to learn-learning to love came harder. He stayed with the placement family until he went away to college. Before he headed to Harvard, he visited Hope in a state mental ward.
She shuffled in dressed in a muumuu, bloated and bleary from institutional food and "endless protocols of tranquilizers and anti-psychotic drugs." Her mind had stayed stubborn; they walked on enclosed grass and drank coffee. The talk was excruciating and tender, with silences. "You know, I tried," she said. He said "I know," and had to leave. Childhood was over. Hope "loved me more than she could care for me...she did what we ask of every mother. She taught her boy to survive without her."
The author makes clear his success was extremely hard won and rare for a foster child. This book call for serious changes in how we care for our poorest and most vulnerable children. In 2008 there were a half million American kids in foster care; the majority don't graduate high school, 3-10% graduate college, 30-50% of foster children are homeless within two years of "emancipation." I can't imagine what we are freeing them from, or for, or to. We push them to shelters and criminalize their mental illness. For their and our own good, we've got to do better, and the book prescribe some ways: empathy, trauma informed treatment, consistent aftercare, someone who will CLAIM these children: a relative, teacher, coach, neighbor, county worker, churchgoer, legislator, citizen, single or couple. If we don't, all our mouthed Golden Rules are just empty words.
Summary of Hope's Boy
"Critics Choice . . . Shocking, inspiring, unforgettable."--People magazine
"Andrew Bridge has written an affecting, moving memoir which in the end is a poignant cry for rethinking our foster care system. Hope's Boy will stay with you long after you've put it down."
--Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River
From the moment he was born, Andrew Bridge and his mother, Hope, shared a love so deep that it felt like nothing else mattered. Trapped in desperate poverty and confronted with unthinkable tragedies, all Andrew ever wanted was to be with his mom. But as her mental health steadily declined, and with no one else left to care for him, authorities arrived and tore Andrew from his screaming mother's arms. In that moment, the life he knew came crashing down around him. He was only seven years old.
Hope was institutionalized, and Andrew was placed in what would be his devastating reality for the next eleven years--foster care. After surviving one of our country's most notorious children's facilities, Andrew was thrust into a savagely loveless foster family that refused to accept him as one of their own. Deprived of the nurturing he needed, Andrew clung to academics and the kindness of teachers. All the while, he refused to surrender the love he held for his mother in his heart. Ultimately, Andrew earned a scholarship to Wesleyan, went on to Harvard Law School, and became a Fulbright Scholar.
Andrew has dedicated his life's work to helping children living in poverty and in the foster care system. He defied the staggering odds set against him, and here in this heart-wrenching, brutally honest, and inspirational memoir, he reveals who Hope's boy really is.
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