49 pages • 1 hour read
The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Addiction as a Lifelong Struggle
The Many Lives of Mama Love is a memoir about addiction. Hardin opens the story with the line, “Reading was my first addiction” (1). From there, Hardin recounts how reading turned to a love of writing, which both functioned as forms of escapism. In college, Hardin sought stronger forms of escapism rooted in a lack of self-acceptance, leading to her abuse of opioids. Her journey of finding her way back to the empowering activity of writing is the core of the memoir.
Hardin is not apologetic about her use of drugs, nor is she repentant. Rather, she understands that her heroin addiction isn’t who she is; it makes her do things she wouldn’t do if she weren’t struggling with addiction. She stresses that an addict’s primary goal is to procure more drugs, and this takes precedence over everything and everyone else in their life: “The truth is simple: Getting high feels better than not getting high. And until that changes, no addict will change” (141). The ability to feel love, joy, and peace—all the things missing from her day-to-day life—makes her unable to stop a behavior that she knows is hurting herself and her loved ones. Hardin is apologetic for the actions she took to maintain her addiction, such as stealing, lying, and betraying others, but she maintains that the person and the addiction can be separated. This is paramount for the possibility of transformation. She battles addiction even when she is clean, and she has to learn that she is more than her addiction to heal herself and her relationships.
Hardin’s portrayal of the detoxing process shows the physical, psychological, and emotional difficulties it entails. She spares no details and shows herself vomiting, crying, losing weight, and sleeping through the days. Once clean, she is honest about the struggle she faces watching others get high and knowing the joy, release, and ecstasy washing over them. She knows this will remain a lifelong struggle. For this reason, Hardin is brutally honest about the cost of drug use. She loses her dignity, her family, her home, and her business. She never advises readers to stay away from drugs, nor does she state that drugs are bad. She never blames the drugs for her actions. Instead, she tells her story and lets readers make their own judgments.
When Hardin leaves heroin behind, she returns to writing. Leaning into this addiction, she develops a literary career, culminating with writing her memoir and starting her own agency. Her addictions can bring her down, like heroin did, or they can lift her up, like writing does. Addiction, Hardin argues, can be good or bad, depending on the thing at the center of the addiction.
Understanding the Criminal Justice System
As with her depiction of drug use, Hardin does not attempt to moralize incarceration. Rather, she presents an in-depth picture of her experience to help readers understand the realities of the criminal justice system. She traces her experience with the criminal justice system from the moment of her arrest in a wealthy California suburb to booking, holding, jail, probation, and reentry. She portrays Child Protective Services, the court-appointed lawyer program, Family Reunification, and the steps someone arrested must take as they make their way through the system.
Hardin’s portrayal is of a woman’s experience in the system. After booking and holding, she is transferred to jail, undergoes a brutal cavity check, and is processed into G Block, an area that contains some locked cells and an open area with bunks lining the wall. Overcrowding is a problem, as are guards who trade favors for sex. Contraband comes in easily, from drugs to food to notes, from the men’s jail. There are power struggles, friendships, and beat downs. Some inmates are “rolled up,” or forced to go to another unit, others are broken, and babies are taken from new mothers. Hardin’s first-person present-tense perspective allows readers to learn and experience the system along with Hardin, and they experience her shock and despair as she encounters new injustices and failed aspects of the system.
Hardin’s return to G Block shows how quickly the social structure can change. She is no longer the unit’s leader and finds herself betrayed by former allies. This shows that she faces dangers not only from the authority figures or unfair system but also from the other inmates, who will harm each other for their own self-interest and survival. When Hardin moves to county prison, readers learn about minimum security incarceration, the family visits, the guards who help (or hurt) the inmates, and the volunteers and systems in place to help inmates rehabilitate.
Contrary to her nonjudgmental portrayal of drug addiction, Hardin is harsh on the criminal justice system. Although she benefits greatly from the programs designed to help reintegrate her into society, she believes the programs are designed for recidivism. She knows that many of the women in prison with her will never leave or will return soon after being released. Hardin understands that the identities and friendships formed on the inside can be appealing and strong, a lure compared to the daunting work of rehabilitation and finding acceptance in a society that rejected you.
Hardin is not apologetic for the person she was in prison. She makes deals, conning to get ahead at times, and leverages her superior education and white, upper-class privileges to gain respect and obedience from her fellow inmates. She earns the nickname Mama Love in G Block and wears the nickname with pride, eventually integrating her prison identity into her overall identity as a person. She understands a complexity that only prisoners know: that there is a whole society behind bars and a temptation to remain within a strict, orderly system rather than face the chaos and challenges of the outside world.
The Power of Blended Families
Blended families are defined as families that form through remarriage or partnership after one or both partners’ divorce or separation. A large, blended family is at the center of Mama Love’s life, and the many intertwined lives in the memoir show the participants’ desire to share parenting responsibilities and maintain relationships with their children even when they are no longer with their former spouse. These complicated relationships form a support network for Hardin, who balances ever-growing responsibilities as the family expands. Hardin has four children with two different fathers and becomes a stepmother to the children of three successive husbands. Despite the co-parents’ marriages failing, they are aligned in their desire to support their children and stepchildren together. Hardin, DJ, Bryan, and Darcy show up for all their children’s school events, and Hardin does not use the terms “stepchildren” or “half-siblings” when she talks about the children she’s raising.
Hardin’s narrative shows the advantages of having a blended family. One key benefit is the opportunity for individuals to build new, supportive relationships with stepsiblings and stepparents, fostering a sense of belonging and an expanded social network. This is the case with Bryan and Darcy. They raise Hardin’s four boys for a time before Bryan and Darcy divorce, taking Kaden when Hardin goes to jail to keep him from going into foster care. Hardin and Bryan co-parent Dylan, Cody, and Ty. Additionally, shared responsibilities in these households can lead to enhanced teamwork and cooperation among the family members. When Bryan cheats on Darcy, Harden and Darcy decide to co-parent the boys in one pivotal scene. After DJ’s divorce, with Hardin’s help, he eventually becomes a good father to his two daughters. His mother, Carol, is influential in helping the couple through their incarceration and afterward.
The flexibility inherent in blended families allows for unique, personalized structures that cater to the specific needs and dynamics of the individuals involved. Hardin also benefits from having an extended family that is financially stable and able to take on multiple responsibilities as situations change. Hardin’s positive family experience is juxtaposed with the experiences of the other mothers in G Block whose children are taken by CPS, some in their infancy after being born in prison or sent into foster care. Hardin’s successful blended family also contrasts with her childhood in a family with an abusive father and stepfather who ultimately abandoned the family and a struggling single mother. Hardin’s aunts and neighbors helped her mother whenever possible, but Hardin remembers her childhood primarily as a source of trauma. Hardin struggles with the knowledge that her actions have also imposed trauma on her children, especially Kaden, who is three when Hardin is arrested. She does not entirely break the cycle of family trauma she experienced, but thanks to her blended family, her children have multiple role models, gain diverse perspectives, and learn valuable interpersonal skills as they navigate their various familial dynamics.
Unlock all 49 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
