Hope's Boy

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.

"Hope's Boy"- A memoir written by Andrew Bridge made me cry. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons! This young man accomplishesthe seemingly impossible with the courage and grace of a champion. Noneof us chooses our parents - but rarely does life dole out the circumstances and conditions that are handed to Andy. Imagine being six years old living with a mother who is loving but definitely showing signsof mental illness. Hope(his mother) hears voices and has frequent breakdowns on the street. She is a victim of a broken home (herself) and of poverty, facing life on the streets of Hollywood and North Hollywood at the age of 22 with a young boy in tow. The young mother tries to get a job and is even helped by a few good samaritans but eventually she is overcome by the stress and circumstancesof being mentally ill with all that that implies. I am happy when the county takes Andy from his mother, but that happiness quickly turns to sadness and disbelief when he encounters the horrors at MCLaren Hall and the sadistic treatment from his foster mother.(herself a child of the holocaust.) Being innately bright and with a will to survive and keep his "hope"alive (of being reunited with his mother or grandmother), Andy learns how to keep out of trouble by being invisible and not making waves. He does what he is told and eventually finds some acceptance and "normalcy" by being anacademic achiever. None of this brings him what he longs for and needs more than anything else in this world,the unconditional love of a caring human being. While the love being offered to him by his mother was by no means perfect he innately knows that it was the "real thing". No one can or will provide him with this love. Not his social workers, who rarely or never ask how he is being treated , not his foster-siblings who barely tolerate their mother's desire for taking in homeless children, not his teachers who although impressed with his mind do not give more than the prefunctory grades and accolades and not even the friendship usually shared with classmates and friends. He loses his childhood but eventuallyemerges as a strong accomplished man eager to help other children like him deal with the weaknessess, inconsistencies and abuses of the institutionalized and foster-care children of this nation. Congratulations Andy and I pray that through this book you may someday find your true brother Jason whom I can tell you truly have learned to love. May God bless you!

I thought the book, Hope's Boy, was a very touching story. I could really get into the plot of the story. He is very descriptive about the big events throughout his life. I think he tries to really focus on what truly happened, not just how he interpreted it. I would only recommend you read this if you can handle some brutal sadness. Andrew Bridge did not have an easy life as you can clearly tell once you read the book. I really like that you can tell Andrew did not try to hold back or shelter the readers from his scary childhood. The story has almost a bittersweet end, but it makes it all the better. I disliked that he almost seemed to skip years, or possibly important memories. He concedes that in the beginning he would leave out some of his foster houses, so throughout the book, we only see him with the Leonards. I think that you lose some valuable information when he doesn’t even mention those transitions. I also dislike that he never gives his own opinion or feelings about the events in his life. Most of his feelings are just reflections on the past, not actual in the moment feelings. It would be more interesting to see how he thought things through, and why made certain decisions. At times heart-warming, and also heart wrenching, I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars because overall, it is a nice read.

I liked everything about this book. Very self-reflective. Sometimes there are no happy endings...just your story. I will read it again. I hope he's keeping up the good fight. I am inspired to become a foster parent now.

Interesting to get another first person account of life in the care system, especially as unlike some of the abuse stories we read, this man was loved by the people who cared for him for his first 6 years, and a stable foster family from the age of 7 or 8 who even went on letting him stay there in holidays like a member of the family when he was over 18. He claims they never treated him like one of their own children, but in my opinion his own account doesn't bear that out - they were pretty strict with all the children including their own, over both chores and study, but from what I could read that never tipped over into abuse.He did have a very bad experience in an institution for several months before the foster family was found, but I get the impression he has a psychological response that might well have been part of his personality even if he'd stayed securely with his own family. Some people just feel uncomfortable with closeness even if they have well-structured childhoods.At the time of writing the book, he was working as a lawyer on making sure children had a fair deal in the care system. I'd like to thank Andrew Bridge for this honest insight into his life, and for the work he is doing.

What a brave child and beautiful human being. What a great example of how some people survive and some don’t. All he needed to believe that he was loved and that was enough for him to hold on and to live. Loved the writing style and the descriptions through the development of his life. Beautiful book but broke my heart ….. 5 stars

Excellently written. Gives very good insight into an archaic way of 'rescuing' children and putting them into social 'care', and he gets a chance to change that system.

This is well-written and a story that is disturbing. Hopefully the situation has changed now, but the perpetrators of this abuse of children are the o es who should be incarcerated, not the kids.

A good well written book about one childs experience of being taken from his mother, placed in an institution and spending most of his childhood through teenage years in a unhappy foster placement. Although based in America it is noted that the social service and foster care system, severely flawed with no interest in the welfare of the child is basically the same here in Britain, it is a miracle that this particular child turned out as well as he did.