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Reviewed by Mansoor Ahmed for Readers' Favorite
We Learned to Live in the Castle: Stories by Theresa Griffin Kennedy is an incredibly raw, unflinching look at a side of Portland that most people never see. Kennedy doesn’t hold back as she traces her life from a childhood spent in the foster care system to navigating the city’s gritty edges as a single mother. The essays span decades, pulling you into foster homes, neon-lit motels, and the heavy shadow of a brutal 1979 assault. Kennedy manages to bear every family drama—from her father’s hidden love of poetry to her sister Mary’s heartbreaking decline into schizophrenia—without ever reaching for a tidy ending. It is a story of survival set against a backdrop of Thurman Street chaos and bus-stop propositions, blending deep despair with the kind of faint hope you only find when you’re burning the midnight oil to stay afloat.
I was amazed by Theresa Griffin Kennedy’s vivid and gut-wrenching writing; it has a blunt honesty that makes the trauma feel personal rather than performative. The chapters are short and punchy, moving from the isolation of a rocking-horse childhood to the very real horrors of adult neglect and violence. The people in these pages—like the cigarette-hoarding foster teens or the Farmer Brown boys—aren't just case studies; they breathe with a flawed, painful realness. Even coming from the constant bustle of Lahore, Kennedy’s description of the Portland underbelly felt like a mirror image of the hidden struggles people face everywhere. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t offer easy answers, but it pushed me to look at my own family’s messy bonds with a lot more grace. If you appreciate memoirs that refuse to look away from the hard truths of class and mental illness, We Learned to Live in the Castle is an essential read for you.
