“The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.”—Lara Love Hardin, The Many Lives of Mama Love.
Soccer mom Lara Love Hardin had a seemingly perfect life until the police knocked on the door of her million-dollar home. Behind her suburban facade, she was funding a heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards. Hardin’s memoir, The Many Lives of Mama Love, blends despair and comedy as she recounts her journey. “I carefully pick through the bottom-of-purse debris until I find some small brown chips… I don’t know if I’m smoking heroin or food crumbs or lint…,” she writes.
Her crime spree came to a screeching halt with a conviction of 32 felonies and a prison sentence. In the women’s correctional facility, she confronts her choices and quickly adapts, climbing the social ladder to the top. Jailhouse politics aren’t much different from PTA meetings.
Hardin doesn’t shy away from critiquing the criminal justice system, exposing its flaws and the stigma ex-cons face when reentering society. She sheds light on the challenges of finding work and rebuilding a life post-incarceration. However, parts of the memoir, like a Shaman scene, the author’s worship of Oprah Winfrey, and Buddhist thought made me uncomfortable. 4 stars.
** Thanks to the publisher for a comp. The opinions expressed are my own.