Harrowing ... Powerful ... A wrenching book ... Asgarian spent nearly five years reporting this book, finding people to interview and digging through official records ... Even if you’re still skeptical of her proposed solutions, Asgarian gives you plenty to think about.
[Asgarian's] bracing gut punch of a book, We Were Once a Family, is a provocative mix of immersive narrative journalism, rigorous social policy analysis and proud advocacy. It pulls back the focus from the horrific crash to investigate, thoroughly and intimately, why these six children were sent out of Texas in the first place ... Asgarian begins with a powerfully rendered narrative of how the second set of three children the Harts adopted — Ciera, Devonte and Jeremiah — were caught up in the wheels of a Texas family court ... The children are killed with more than 100 pages left in the book. It is here that Asgarian fully steps into the narrative, developing deep personal ties with the children’s birth parents, their partners, their other children and their caseworkers, getting to understand the depths of their impossible life situations and the institutional neglect ... The most affecting story is of Dontay Davis, the brother left behind, first institutionalized and later incarcerated.
Moving and superbly reported ... Asgarian’s rendering of this broad historical context is at times rushed or disorganized, but it nonetheless provides a crucial framework for one of the book’s most compelling threads: its portrait of Dontay Davis ... Patient, compassionate.
Asgarian's tenacious and vulnerable reporting reveals the foundation of this intensely disturbing story ... Asgarian's reporting spares no one involved in the tragedy — including herself ... The book's transparency is our benefit and an informed invitation to step into the nature of family abuse. It's not easy reading. But Asgarian's personalized fact finding provides essential context for understanding what happened.
With fiercely empathetic narrative journalism reminiscent of journalist Svetlana Alexievich...Asgarian herself only appears in moments in which the adoptees and biological families’ narratives are enhanced; she brings Dontay and his caregiver to court appointments, or retrieves photos and ashes of the children to bring to the birth families ... Asgarian explores transracial adoption and white saviorism ... Surely a book that should be included in curriculums for courses on social justice, social work and journalism.
...make[s] clear how both systems have largely disregarded the problem that most families within them face: not necessarily the death of parents, but poverty ... help[s] illuminate the repercussions of America’s broken child-welfare system and the ways it has failed to best serve kids and families—showing how urgently the country needs to reimagine it ... Asgarian forged remarkable connections with the birth families, both of whom were largely ignored in the aftermath of the murders ... By meticulously showing how social workers, legal officials, and other authorities repeatedly failed the families, We Were Once a Family powerfully uses this one story—though clearly an extreme case—to expose how what happened to these children is indicative of the classism and racism still baked into the institution.
This personal narrative twines around a history of the arbitrary, woefully inadequate legislation and funding at both state and federal levels accorded to orphaned and foster children in the U.S. ... News of the shocking story garnered substantial attention, so expect considerable interest in Asgarian’s thoroughly researched and revelatory retelling.
Comprehensive and searing ... . Emotional and frequently enraging, it adds up to a blistering indictment of a system ... Throughout, Asgarian makes clear that the endemic failures that led to this shocking tragedy continue to affect countless families caught up in the child welfare system. Sensitive, impassioned, and eye-opening, this is a must-read.
