Kerry Hudson's 'Lowborn': A Review

A memoir of sweeping diasporic breadth, Kerry Hudson’s Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns spans the length of the UK, from Aberdeen to Canterbury. Across twenty-five chapters,

Hudson revisits ten towns from her youth, juxtaposing her childhood of relentless poverty with her present-day

middle-class comfort. An imagery-rich odyssey, Hudson navigates shifting social circles and economic landscapes, culminating in profound personal revelations and polemical commentaries that grapple with the question: What does it really mean to be poor in Britain today? A landmark report recently published by the Social Metrics Commission has revealed more than one in three children and a quarter of adults are currently living in poverty in the UK – the highest levels recorded. Tragically, Hudson’s memoir has only grown more relevant since its first publication in 2019. While mainstream narratives of poverty often dehumanise, reducing those who are struggling to objects of scorn, ridicule, or scapegoating, Hudson’s memoir offers a contrast. She presents each individual - no matter how fleeting their role - as fully realised and delicately nuanced. It is the kind of memoir that lingers long after the final page is turned, leaving readers with

the sense that they have held the weight of many lives within their hands.

Hudson’s mother, for example - whom Hudson is now estranged from - is a woman who ‘loves to dance’, who has a ‘huge, bellowing, dirty laugh’, ‘full of irrepressible life’, but who is also ‘extremely, possibly irretrievably, vulnerable

and fractured, and extraordinarily naïve’. Hudson writes: ‘I understand well enough that apologies only come when there is blame, and there is no one to blame for the hardship of my childhood.’

In an unconventional opening, Hudson invites her readers into a dialogical relationship from the beginning of her memoir. She asks:

"Shall we start with a happy ending? I made it. I rose. I escaped poverty. I escaped bad food because

that’s all you can afford. I escaped threadbare clothes and too-tight shoes. I escaped drinking or

drugging myself into oblivion because…because."

The ‘all-encompassing, grinding, brutal and often dehumanising’ experiences of poverty that characterised Hudson’s childhood have left her unable to reconcile her ‘now’ with her past. She describes ‘this vertiginous feeling as belonging nowhere and to no one, neither “back there” nor truly “here”.’

The sociological challenges that can arise from a life of crossing class borders often manifest as psychological burdens, which Hudson articulates with a self-effacing, reticent sense of duty. On the one hand, there can be feelings of guilt surrounding the ‘escape’ from one’s roots – a kind of betrayal toward a larger community – while, on the other hand, there is pride and delight in having ‘pulled off’ the escape, especially when success stories are so rare. How can an individual cross these borders of inequality while still cultivating a sense of mutual respect? A straightforward answer may be unobtainable, but Hudson certainly begins to craft a response to this paradox. Her seamless weaving between the personal and the political, using her own experiences as a lens for wider social commentary, alongside the tender descriptions of individuals within her narrative, imbues her prose with a crystalline quality, even when addressing the murky ethics of such topics.

When Hudson returns to Great Yarmouth, the new residents of her old home notice her standing outside, gazing at the house. Intrigued, they warmly invite her in - a kindness that is both touching and emblematic of the generosity Hudson encounters repeatedly throughout her travels. Staring at the woman now occupying her old home, Hudson reflects that the life she had been avoiding, the one she ‘was so desperately scared of having’, doesn’t seem so bad after all. Despite its hardships, this woman ‘wore it’.

A memoir testifying to countless individuals who excel despite extraordinarily difficult circumstances, Hudson reflects:

"It seemed to me that from the moment a child is born, the very moment it comes out scratching and covered

in shit and blood and the pulverised insides of its mother, if that child is born on the margins, if the mother is defenceless and poor, then the struggle begins as soon as the first air burns into its tiny lungs."

Dialogically tender and expertly crafted, Hudson orchestrates a dynamic interplay between running toward an evolving future and returning to face the unresolved past. Grinding poverty is hermetic: it renders individuals as spectators of their own lives rather than active participants. Hudson’s ability to narrate a story so devastating – a damning indictment of Britain’s ever-widening inequalities – while leaving her readers with an impression of warmth, resilience, and crystalline, unassuming poise is a testament to her remarkable talent.

Words and Images by Lucy McLaughlin (she/her)