![Aol | Simon & Schuster](https://ifp.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/troubled-9781982168537_lg.jpg)
Aol | Simon & Schuster
“When I was a baby, my mother and I lived in a car. About a year later, we moved into a slum apartment in Westlake, a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles. Documents from social workers report that my mother would tie me to a chair with a bathrobe belt so that she could get high in another room without being interrupted. She left bruises and marks on my face. While my mother did drugs, I would cry from the other room as I struggled to break free.”