David Ambroz is an award-winning child welfare advocate and gay foster dad, but he grew up homeless, with a mother who lived with mental illness. He was abused by her and by later foster parents. This memoir of his childhood and early adulthood, however, is more than just a story of how one boy found his way out of poverty and abuse, but rather a look at the interlocking systems of social and economic injustices that make success stories like his an exception rather than the rule.
Purely as a memoir, Ambroz’s tale is raw and compelling. He and his siblings followed their mother to shelter in train stations, diners, and other temporary locations, stealing food and staving off hunger with coffee creamer packets. When Ambroz finally finds the courage to speak up about his mother’s abuse, all but one of the foster families he is placed with abuse him as well, often because they sense he is gay. Moving from location to location, he finds little continuity academically or socially. Somehow, he finds the resilience to stick with his studies, and to jump on the rare opportunities that present themselves. He becomes part of the National Foster Youth Advisory Council, a project of the Child Welfare League, which connects kids in foster care to the politicians who are making decisions that affect their lives. He knows that many of the “solutions” proposed don’t address the very real problems that he has experienced, but he also sees that it is possible to create change.
Ultimately, he gets a scholarship to Vassar College, his first significant step out of poverty. He later graduates with a law degree from UCLA, served as a California child welfare commissioner and led corporate social responsibility for Walt Disney Television. He was recognized by President Obama as an American Champion of Change, and currently serves as the Head of Community Engagement (West) for Amazon. He is also a terrific writer, crafting an engaging narrative that weaves social commentary smoothly but emphatically into the story of his life.
This isn’t just a story of how he personally found his way from hardship to success, though, but rather a critical look at the system that kept him in hardship in the first place. The book should leave every reader with a better understanding of what it means to grow up as a child in poverty and in foster care in the United States, and how we must take action to improve their lives.
