An Interview: Memoirist Lara B. Sharp on Improving Foster Care Experiences

An Interview: Memoirist Lara B. Sharp on Improving Foster Care

By Anj Handa

I first came across feminist writer Lara B. Sharp when her hilarious post on mansplaining went viral across social media. It was an account of how an older man tried to not only hit on her but also advise her about writing, despite having no prior experience of this and not being ‘much of a reader’ while she was reading… Rebecca Solnit’s book ‘Men Explain Things to Me.’

More recently, I noticed that she has been writing more about her own foster care experiences. I was intrigued, so I asked if I could interview her and was delighted when she agreed. As Lara herself says:

Here are her thoughts. Our interview is peppered with her irreverent sense of humour, because that’s Lara, but she also has great ideas for policy change which would translate to most countries, particularly the US and UK.

The reason that Lara speaks up on this issue is that her experience of entering foster care requires children to shut up and remain as quiet possible so that they are not moved on. They’re not expected to express their needs or wants, their personalities or their opinions. They don’t have parents to advocate for them and, as wards of court, can’t advocate for themselves. Many adults who have emerged from the system carry this throughout their lives, and so the issues that this large minority group face persist.

Lara, you’ve been writing bitingly funny feminist posts for a long time now. You’ve had mixed feedback since starting to write about the care system. Most have responded positively and shared their own stories. Then there have been those who have unfollowed you. How has it made you feel overall?

I write ranting, neurotic memoir posts, on my Facebook page! I don’t think about how anyone might react, when I write, but I’ve sometimes had to unfollow people who post graphic images of animal abuse.

Foster care is an intense topic, so I sort of liken it to being similar to something that. I love animals, and I care deeply about preventing animal abuse, but sometimes, I just can’t handle seeing something that upsetting popping up in my Facebook news feed.

Using your platform to tackle important issues

The large majority of my posts are comical, and very feminist, and I’m sure that a lot of people follow me for precisely that reason. I love that. I’m flattered, and basically astonished, that anyone reads anything I write.

Weirdly, my memoir about growing up in foster care is OFTEN absolutely hilarious, and it is totally feminist! My well-known, warped, self-deprecating, sense of humor, and my chronic confusion about the world, carries over, even into THAT experience. There are so many people who are now, and were formerly, in foster care. I really hope that they read what I write about my own experiences.

For everyone else, it’s an important issue, and it shouldn’t be ignored, but there’s plenty of other, unrelated material on my Facebook wall and in my memoir. I’ve gotten so many amazing emails and I’ve even had phone calls, from people who really appreciated that I’m writing about having been in foster care.

Many of my existing followers wrote to me saying, ‘Me too’ and I’ve gained a lot of new followers because of this. Which is awesome, because people who have been through the care system are my siblings. I want them around.

Truthfully, I wrote about my demented life long before I had a bunch of Facebook followers, so I’m just doing what I’ve always done. A large part of what people seem to like about my work comes from the fact that I grew up in foster care. They just didn’t know that. I’m an eclectic adult, and an eclectic writer, who had an eclectic childhood!

Speaking Up about Foster Care

What prompted you to start sharing your experiences?

I’m writing a memoir about my childhood called ‘Do the Hustle’. I grew up in NYC, with an extremely eccentric, but oddly feminist mother, who had a drink and drugs problem. She also suffered from mental illness.

My mother was in and out of mental intuitions. She eventually lost custody of me, and I ended up in foster care. I write about whatever is on my mind. That day was on my mind when I spoke to my sassy, fancy, New York City Literary Agent, Terra Chalberg, of Chalberg & Sussman. She has been amazingly supportive and is very excited about my book.

Straight up, this world needs more extremely imperfect foster care to basic life success stories, because it actually happens. People need to know that! Growing up in the system, I did not know that, and it would have been enormously helpful for me to have known!

As a foster child, I got a very clear, totally incorrect message that my life would always and forever be absolutely terrible. It was difficult, and I took the long road to normalcy. I got myself into many, extremely crazy situations. I made some hilarious mistakes, often based on being extremely socially inept, and I’m totally honest about all of that in my book.

Getting here, to my occasionally peaceful, mediocre, somewhat middle class life, was a slapstick, vaudevillian, herculean effort. I didn’t do anything right, or normally, but I got here in the end. I was supposed to become a junkie, and a hooker, and die on a street corner, the victim of a violent crime, or I was supposed to end up in jail. That was spoon fed to me through the media, based on having been a foster child. But, I didn’t do that. I basically rebelled!

Negative Portrayal of Foster Children in the media

What would you like to see change about the way children from care backgrounds are portrayed in the media?

Well, for starters, I’d like to see a much less negative media and social narrative… Look at it this way… I’m Cuban… Imagine if the large majority of books, TV shows and films REPEATEDLY portrayed Cubans with a fruit bowl on their head, dancing to Samba music, in a tobacco field. That would be weird.

Over time, many Cubans would begin to feel really offended. In today’s society, that would be called out as inappropriate. We have had a huge push in America, for more reality-based, less negatively biased, and more appropriate, and truly representative portrayals of people of color, of the LGBTQ community, and of women, within our society and within our pop culture.

Foster youth are still facing a false, ridiculous, negative stereotype. Although there are a few exceptions, for the most part, foster youth, and adults who were raised within the foster care system, are usually portrayed as criminals, sociopaths, killers, sex workers, drug addicts, and sex offenders.

We’ve changed that quite a bit, with regard to other underrepresented, formerly maligned demographics. We see many more representative, realistic voices and characters, for other formerly disparaged members of our society, thankfully. I’m not seeing that happen very often at all, with regard to people who have been, or are now, in foster care.

I’m super tired of turning on my TV, and checking out an episode of Criminal Minds, and Law and Order, only to find that, once again, the drug-addict sociopath who is eating women and children’s heads, is being described as ‘someone who grew in the foster care system’.

I’m 48 years old. I grew up in foster care and I have yet to kill, or cannibalize anyone. Over 400,000 people are in the US foster care system today. We aren’t ALL monsters. We get really, really terrible PR. I’m not saying that a lot of us don’t end up having a nightmarish adult life. A lot of us do.

Developing Self-Worth in fostered children

I know exactly how it feels to be shunned within your own social group, and even within your own society. I remember watching the movie, ‘Pretty in Pink’, and for the first time, I realized that I wasn’t alone. For me, that was enormously helpful.

Pop culture and the media have the power to improve society. Thankfully today, we have lot more TV programs, films and books, focused on the issues of bullying. Having been bullied, when I see something, I say something. I speak up at work, online, and even in the grocery store. I’m also doing that with my memoir. In my opinion, that means that the bully lost and I won.

How can society encourage foster children and/or adults who were previously in care?

When you meet someone involved, or formerly involved, with the foster care system, don’t automatically assume that we are a psychological mess. Don’t automatically respond to us with fear, and trepidation. Give us the benefit of the doubt. If we are a mess (because some of us are, and I certainly was when I was younger), I’d appreciate people showing us some compassion.

Residents of the foster care system cannot change the fact that we were abused and neglected, no more than someone can change their ethnicity. I’m making that specific comparison intentionally, because having grown up in the system, for me and for all of us, is literally an immutable characteristic.

We cannot go back in time and change it. We will always be someone who experienced the foster care system for the rest of our lives. Only bigots, racists and homophobics prejudge, and vilify people, based upon stereotypes of immutable characteristics.

Listen to the people who have actually been in the system, and those who are in the system now, and read our narratives, because a large majority of the people who talk about us, and write about us, based on what I see in our media and within our pop culture, seem to have never even knowingly had an actual conversation with any of us.

Support the many efforts being made by the survivors and the thrivers who have personally experienced the foster care system. Help us to reach out to those still in care. Help us share our own voices, with those of us who have been made, incorrectly, to feel that we need to hide our past, so that we can give them, and ourselves, and everyone else who doesn’t know anything about the realities of having been in foster care, a better story – our own, true story.