As a caution to this review, it does not adequately name the story or the pain it took to overcome and write this book.
This is a real-life story. It took my entire life to live and a great deal of courage to return to. Writing it meant revisiting poverty, failure, abuse, shame, trauma, and survival, not as ideas, but as lived experience. The comparison to Evicted misses an important distinction. Evicted is a strong and important book, but it is observational. Matthew Desmond stood close to people experiencing housing instability and documented what he saw. I respect that work. This book is different. I did not study poverty. I lived it. I did not enter and exit these conditions. I carried them.
What is described here as repetition is the progression of how poverty followed me throughout my life. Poverty repeats itself. Trauma repeats itself. Educational disruption is not a single moment you move past. It follows you, shapes you, and impacts how you imagine yourself long before anyone talks about resilience or “making it out.” This book was written for people who genuinely want to work with those emerging from struggle, not analyze them from a distance. It was also written for students who need to see a life that did not have it all together, but required people to stop, believe in me, and say that belief out loud.
I appreciate the engagement with the role of community. That is not a theory for me. Community is the reason I am here. It is the reason I finished school. It is the reason I continue this work.
This book is not trying to be Evicted. It is telling a different kind of truth.
This is a real-life story. It took my entire life to live and a great deal of courage to return to. Writing it meant revisiting poverty, failure, abuse, shame, trauma, and survival, not as ideas, but as lived experience. The comparison to Evicted misses an important distinction. Evicted is a strong and important book, but it is observational. Matthew Desmond stood close to people experiencing housing instability and documented what he saw. I respect that work. This book is different. I did not study poverty. I lived it. I did not enter and exit these conditions. I carried them.
What is described here as repetition is the progression of how poverty followed me throughout my life. Poverty repeats itself. Trauma repeats itself. Educational disruption is not a single moment you move past. It follows you, shapes you, and impacts how you imagine yourself long before anyone talks about resilience or “making it out.” This book was written for people who genuinely want to work with those emerging from struggle, not analyze them from a distance. It was also written for students who need to see a life that did not have it all together, but required people to stop, believe in me, and say that belief out loud.
I appreciate the engagement with the role of community. That is not a theory for me. Community is the reason I am here. It is the reason I finished school. It is the reason I continue this work.
This book is not trying to be Evicted. It is telling a different kind of truth.