Book extract: Dr Katriona O'Sullivan shares a chapter from her new autobiography documenting the many challenges she faced growing up in poverty in Birmingham...
Dr Katriona O’Sullivan is an award-winning academic whose work explores barriers to education. Katriona’s journey to success is inspiring; she grew up in extreme poverty in the Hillfields, Coventry, as one of five children to Irish parents in a home shaped by her parents’ heroin addiction. Katriona faced incredible challenges from a young age and again when she became a mother aged 15 and ended up homeless on the streets of Birmingham.
When Mrs Arkinson was pleased with you, well, you felt like you could survive forever on that small nod or pat on the head. It was like she pushed confidence into you. Personal hygiene When we got into the girls’ loos Miss Hall pushed open all the cubicle doors and then pushed the handle back on the main door, locking us in. It was very unusual so I figured I must be in terrible trouble. I stared at the floor and flexed my feet against the lino.
It was true. I stared at the floor. Couldn’t she just leave me alone? I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t nod or shake my head. I just stared at the floor. ‘Do you wet the bed?’ she asked, hunching to look up at my face. I flinched but didn’t answer. She pushed my hair back. ‘Head up now,’ she said, ‘nothing to be ashamed of, but let’s learn to keep ourselves . . . fresh and clean.’
She showed me again, ‘Up and down, wash wash wash, around and under,’ and asked me to show her how to do it myself. I did, repeating the words as she said them. ‘Then dry like this,’ she said, patting my skin and giving me the towel to repeat the action myself.‘We are going to help’ She repeated my new routine: I was to come in every day and use the girls’ loo to wash like she’d shown me and put on my new pants.
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