That is my overriding thought after reading her autobiographical look at poverty – Lowborn. I want to give Kerry Hudson a massive cuddle. She revisits the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed. Lowborn is Kerry’s exploration of where she came from. But she often finds herself looking over her shoulder, caught somehow between two worlds. She has a secure home, a loving partner and access to art, music, film and books. She’s a prizewinning novelist who has travelled the world. Twenty years later, Kerry’s life is unrecognisable. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. ‘When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, can you ever escape that sense of being ‘lowborn’ no matter how far you’ve come?’ Title: Lowborn – Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns
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