A Place Called Home
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This memoir is not for the faint of heart, so if you have a faint heart, goodbye!
As a child in the 1990s, David Ambroz experienced poverty and homelessness in New York. Despite being the youngest of three, he felt most responsible for his mother who suffered from severe mental illness. That burden continued to weigh on him even after the family was split into foster care homes when they entered their teens.
I really struggled with the mom of it all. I wanted to be sympathetic to her mental illness and it was very clear that social programs failed her time and time again, leaving her without any genuine tools to make a difference in her situation. Still, the rampant child abuse cut off my sympathy real fast. Ambroz delicately describes some of the most horrific moments of abuse, clearly protective of the mother he loves while not shying away from her dark sides. Ultimately, I decided that if he can view their relationship from a place of empathy, then so can I.
Ambroz’s struggles were compounded by his sexuality. I’ve read a few books that shed light on degrees of homelessness, the foster care system, and child abuse- Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, The Glass Castle, Educated and Demon Copperhead. Each of them forced me to think about social problems more creatively, pushing me outside of black-and-white thinking. A Place Called Home is no exception. I had honestly never thought about how being a gay child could affect your placement in the foster care system, much less being a gay child in the 90s. Homes just straight up wouldn’t take him and everywhere he turned, people encouraged him to tamp down his personality, which I’m sure was great for a vulnerable adolescent to hear!
Ambroz’s story is definitely worth reading. He’s very explicit that he didn’t just write this book to show you his pain and elicit compassion. He wants that empathy converted to action and as an advocate for child welfare in his adult life, he talks the talk and walks the walk. IMO, the conservative rhetoric around welfare programs and ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ is an automatic moot point when it comes to kids. Ambroz and his siblings were totally helpless and kids like that should be helped with no strings attached. Overall, I recommend this book if you want to learn more about the welfare and foster care system or simply hear a harrowing story. It’s made me personally revisit the idea of fostering and I appreciate that he’s challenged me to think about the whole system more critically. My only complaint is that from a writing perspective, the ending felt a little rushed. I had become so invested in his life and there were some loose ends that I preferred to be tied. A Place Called Home receives 4 out of 5 flames.
