Skint Estate: a Memoir of Poverty, Motherhood and Survival

By Cash Carraway

Details

Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Publication Date: 2019 - 06 - 20
ISBN: 9781529103373
Themes: inequality Society Memoir

Preface

How many more unheard voices are out there just like me?

Cash Carraway is a single mum living in temporary accommodation.

She’s been moved around the system since she left home at sixteen.

She’s also been called a stain on society.

And she’s caught in a poverty trap.

Skint Estate is the hard-hitting debut memoir about impoverishment, loneliness and violence – set against a grim landscape of sink estates, police cells, refuges and peepshows.

Told frankly, but with a swaggerous eye roll and a smirk, Cash delves into the reality of family estrangement, mental illness, alcoholism and domestic violence in working-class Britain today. The reality of her circumstances take us on her isolated journey, as benefit cuts, lone parenting and zero contract hours force her to turn to food banks, refuges and temporary accommodation - and a feeling of displacement and seperation follows.

Despite the daily challenges and the difficult hurdles she must jump over to survive, Cash never loses sight of what's most important in life, as she also explores friendship, family and hope in the darkest of times.

Blunt, dignified and brutally revealing, Skint Estate takes Cash’s personal story and skilfully weaves it into a manifesto for change.