Lowborn

The author’s account of grinding, unrelentless poverty and neglect, set against her eventual, miraculous escape to a different life made me cheer.

Bravely, Kerry Hudson returns to the scenes of many crimes committed against her to really understand why the past refuses to let her go and whether anything has changed for deprived families in those rundown British towns she grew up in.

In an early chapter the author recalls being pushed between two adults across a table. She thought it was a game, but her parents were in fact arguing over who should keep her. Neither was willing.

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A slice of real life for so many that grow up in poverty in Britain, a life lived pinballing from house to flat to school and back again, on the move with a single mother, Scotland, Liverpool, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, and the North East, Kerry writes about all her traumatic experiences with honesty, humour, and spot-on descriptions of setting – "Hetton- le Hole, hell hole." Formative experiences and a discovery of official documents, help her reflect on a childhood that she survived and thrived beyond. Never judgemental, always honest, required reading.

Hudson revisits the towns and cities that formed the backdrop of her, somewhat chaotic, childhood. She excavates the effects of poverty on the UK’s working and underclasses from this peripatetic experience. Lowborn is a vibrant, witty, and often poignant social commentary. Like all aforementioned books, it unwittingly challenges the notion of white privilege.