Diane, whose last name is not given to protect her family\u2019s privacy, grew up in the idyllic village of Guildford, England, an experience she describes as \u201csort of a Norman Rockwell lifestyle.\u201d At age 9, her world turned upside down when she found out her doting mom and dad were foster parents, and that her biological mother, Sharon, had come from the United States to retrieve her and her brother, David. \u201cI was just devastated,\u201d Diane recalls, \u201crealizing that everything was a lie.\u201d In addition to the psychological trauma and loss of her childhood identity, Diane was thrust into a new American culture during a period of civil unrest in 1969. Though Diane, David, and Sharon were white, Sharon\u2019s partner at the time was Black, and the family lived in a predominantly African American neighborhood in the South Bronx. Though stories of culture shock told from the perspective of a white English girl growing up in a Black neighborhood offer keen lessons on race in the U.S., the book\u2019s early chapters center on trauma. By 1972, as Diane retells in the book\u2019s shocking prologue, she contemplated murdering her allegedly abusive mother and stepfather but decided to run away instead. Soon Diane\u2019s life had spiraled to rock bottom, and she was pregnant at 14.<\/p>\n
Lassoe\u2019s work paints a disturbing story of abuse, neglect, and generational trauma. It is, however, fundamentally a story of survival, hope, and reconciliation. The father of Diane\u2019s first child, for instance, reappeared in her life having overcome his heroin addiction. The author\u2019s brother, David, who also lived on the streets for a while, was protected by a pair of drag queens. Diane forgave her biological mother following their reunion in her adulthood. In a remarkable story of compassion and forgiveness, Diane took care of Sharon during her dying days. Author Lassoe first met Diane while the two were graduate students together more than a decade ago when Diane first shared her story with him during a classroom assignment. Based on hours of recorded interviews with Diane, Lassoe weaves together her trauma-fueled story into a cohesive narrative. A practicing psychotherapist, Lassoe shares Diane\u2019s vision to provide inspiration to readers who seek to change the story of their own lives from \u201cone of challenge and hardship to one of grace and forgiveness.\u201d Published posthumously after Diane\u2019s 2022 death, Lassoe obtained permission from her family to proceed with publication of their book. Written in first-person, the book\u2019s writing style takes Diane\u2019s stream-of-consciousness, conversational interviews to create a chronological, well-edited story. In addition to the power of Diane\u2019s personal journey, this book is also a model of how to be true to oral history source material while crafting a readable story that shapes disjointed memories into a tight narrative. Even while readers may not identify with the author\u2019s personal faith, the book is never preachy, despite its overtly religious overtones in later chapters. The text is accompanied by a wealth of snapshot photographs taken throughout Diane\u2019s life.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Diane, whose last name is not given to protect her family\u2019s privacy, grew up in the idyllic village of Guildford, England, an experience she describes as \u201csort of a Norman Rockwell lifestyle.\u201d At age 9, her world turned upside down when she found out her doting mom and dad were foster parents, and that her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}