49 pages • 1 hour read
Lara Love HardinThe Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Neighbor From Hell”
Hardin’s heroin use continues as she uses her con-artist skills to keep the new, even more dangerous addiction hidden from her mother-in-law. She shifts blame for this to DJ, even as she takes steps to secure her next hit. They steal from DJ’s mother while they live in her house, survive off her charity, and are free on her bail money. Their probation officers inform them that their 27-year sentence has been reduced to roughly four, meaning they will lose Kaden but be free fairly soon if the plea deal doesn’t go through. Hardin continues to use heroin and laments the obstacles in her way to reunifying with her sons and getting her life back on track.
Hardin goes unannounced to her son’s basketball game only to find Kaden and Bryan at the game. This is a clear violation of her bail, which prohibits her from seeing Kaden without CPS present. Bryan’s wife confronts her, threatening to report her and ruin the plea deal.
When Hardin awakes, her arm is swollen and covered in track marks. In the ER, she’s told that repetitive heroin use has caused an infection close to sepsis. After a week, she’s on morphine, and DJ is injecting heroin directly into her IV. Once out, Hardin goes back to using heroin, and she and DJ are high at her sentencing.
The lawyer tells her that the judge knows she’s been bragging about her light sentence and is laughing at the system, which Hardin denies. Even while high, she insists that she wants to be a good mother to her sons. Shockingly, her plea deal is accepted, and she is sent back to jail to finish her one-year sentence. Unbeknownst to the court, she is smuggling drugs, including heroin, and needles in her vagina for use once she is back inside.
Back in G Block, she feels at home. The first morning back, a guard gives her a copy of the newspaper with a headline about her titled “The Neighbor From Hell.” She finishes her heroin and then violently detoxes, is rushed to the medical unit, and returns to G Block to find someone has printed out the comments under the digital newspaper article and mailed it to her. She’s hated by everyone she ever knew.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Push and Pull”
Hardin loses her grip on G Block when Christina, the girlfriend of a big-time street dealer, arrives. She demands Hardin do meth with her, and Hardin relents. After Hardin uses the meth, Christina tells her that if she fails a drug test, she doesn’t get to go to county prison, where she can have visitors like her son. Kiki has helped Christina in this ultimate act of sabotage, and Hardin is gutted.
Hardin goes to church and feels inspired. She decides she’ll write a memoir, go on stage and talk about her life, get her family back, and have everything she’s always wanted. On March 18, 2009, she decides that she will never use again and marks this as her new birthday.
She is transferred to Blaine Street, the county prison, where non-violent offenders serve out their sentences. She passes her drug test and gets acquainted with the new environment. The place is strict but welcoming, and she enjoys the classes that range from relapse prevention to crochet and computer courses. She believes that the free labor they provide to run the prison is unfair and that the system invites recidivism. She wonders if they are intentionally kept from reaching their potential in prison. She gets back to writing, the thing she loved in high school before she started using drugs. She trades writing for goods and services in prison and becomes a ghostwriter-in-training, telling the stories of her fellow inmates in appeals, applications, and correspondence.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Mother’s Day”
Hardin works to fulfill the reunification requirements from prison so she can get Kaden back when she is released. Using her writing skills, she convinces a former mayor to teach the parenting class she needs from prison. Kaden visits with a CPS officer, and Hardin is given free range of her block for the visit; all the other women agree to stay in their cells for this to happen. She befriends a guard and is soon wheeling and dealing like she did before, only now she stays away from drugs. She asks to join a reentry rehab program called Gemma, where she gets to leave prison two days a week to attend classes. She’s granted permission, and this is another opportunity that helps turn her life around. In rehabilitation classes, a volunteer snaps at her, and Hardin finds out that it is because she’s friends with someone Hardin robbed. Hardin gets the volunteer in trouble, eliciting the sympathy of the guards and program director.
Her boys visit, and she feels loved and accepted, finally the mother she wants to be. She is sober, motivated, and working toward a goal. She graduates from the rehabilitation program and walks in a ceremony at the courthouse, which her sons attend. A distant uncle pays for her hotel room so she can attend the ceremony. She is granted early release, but she must return to jail daily for work detail and drug court.
On day one, she has overlapping commitments to fulfill her probation, CPS, and early release requirements. She feels disheartened, like she is working within a system that is setting her up to fail.
Chapters 11-13 Analysis
In these chapters, Hardin struggles in prison and loses the clout she gained before her sentencing. First, her ruined reputation confronts her in the form of a newspaper article proclaiming her “The Neighbor From Hell.” The harsh comments confirm that to everyone aside from her friends in G Block, her sons, and DJ, she is a villain. Then, Christina usurps her power from inside G Block, jeopardizing Hardin’s opportunity to go to county prison. These chapters set up her triumph in Chapter 13, thematically titled “Mother’s Day,” as Hardin attends her graduation ceremony with her sons in attendance and vows to a start a new life. Hardin’s reliability as a narrator is still compromised from the relapses and broken promises in previous chapters, so it is not clear if her newfound dedication will have lasting results, highlighting Addiction as a Lifelong Struggle.
Hardin is aware of her complicated position in the narrative: She writes herself as alternately the villain, hero, and innocent victim. Most of these perspective shifts are intentional, but some occur subtextually. For instance, when she’s transferred to county prison, she stays sober and joins a rehabilitation program. She blames the system for her lack of help and contemplates intentionally injuring herself so that she at least has a bed to sleep in. This is without realizing that the reason she has no allies is because she harmed, conned, or robbed them all. There are no apologies, and Hardin continues to explain away her actions rather than apologize for them.
Hardin also takes advantage of her privilege to get into rehabilitation programs, work-release programs, and post-release opportunities but then complains about how unfair it all is. While these systems are likely unfair for everyone in some respects, many inmates from less privileged backgrounds left on the inside were not given these same opportunities, highlighting the theme of Understanding the Criminal Justice System. Hardin acknowledges that the system makes it unnecessarily difficult for former inmates to fulfill their obligations but does not dwell on the uniqueness of her successful experience within the broken system.
