April L. Ford

April L. Ford’s award-winning story collection, The Poor Children, is a courageous effort to remove the blinders we stubbornly cling to, the blinders that prevent us from seeing the pitiable conditions and situations that many hopelessly endure. In the worlds of these stories, cruelty, exploitation, and dysfunction are the norm, and the poor children are both victims and perpetrators.

The settings, subjects, and characters are diverse: teens in correctional facilities, families steeped in poverty and ignorance; inept, drunken parents; small towns outside the fringe of cultural normality; hapless correctional officers and social workers; a haunted museum ironically situated in a ski-resort town; beautiful, damaged children who are exploited because of their beauty or who use it for selfish gain; a fundamentalist cult where inbreeding has produced grotesque specimens and the opportunity for further exploitation. This collection is driven by dark impulses that we deny, ignore, or try to hide.

Ford writes about disturbing topics with authority. Most of the stories are delivered through first-person narrators, often kids in their early teens. In these she employs both male and female narrators whose voices are welded to the characters’ motives, environments, and tendencies. In the exceptions that unfold through a third-person voice, Ford handles the camera lens with admirable skill, moving seamlessly through time and in and out of characters’ minds.

Ford’s language in these stories is gritty and visceral while reflecting the beauty of spoiled fruit or faded blooms. The following example is from “Isabelle’s Haunting”:

First it was the youngest child, infant Valérie, who was found lying face down in her crib in
October. The autopsy revealed she had drowned in lung fluid, but the cause was neither viral
nor bacterial. The following month it was the twins, toddlers Benoît and Pierre Lamont. They
awoke in the middle of the night convulsing. … Twelve-year-old Isabelle was the next to go,
but her death was never confirmed. Her bed was found empty on the December after the
twin’s death, not a crease on the sheets or an imprint on the pillow. …

Readers who are brave enough to gaze unflinchingly upon the horrors we inflict upon ourselves and our children will savor this collection. The Poor Children is disturbing yet beautiful in its execution and the possibilities revealed when we rip down the mildewed curtains to let in the light.… (mer)

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I admit, I was not expecting the unrelenting harshness and bleak outlook of April Ford's The Poor Children when first picking it up, and it took some getting used to before I was finally into the swing of things and along for the ride she clearly meant to set up for her readers; imagine the rural lawlessness of a Bonnie Jo Campbell story combined with the gothic blackness of Sam Shepard, with a healthy dollop of Dennis Cooper sexual transgression thrown into the mix. As such, then, this short and intense story collection is absolutely not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and you deserve to ask yourself whether you're even up for reading the the kinds of mental baseball bashings these pieces represent; but if you are, you'll find a lot to like here, an unblinking and sometimes surprisingly poetic look at the seedy underbelly of the American spirit, right up the alley of existing fans of Kathy Acker and others. Strongly recommended, but only to a highly specific crowd; you know who you are.

Out of 10: 8.6, or 9.1 for fans of transgressive literature… (mer)