I remember cleaning the toilets going, is this my destiny?” she tells Róisín Ingle on the latest episode of The Irish Times Women’s Podcast. I cried my way through this book. It's, to use a cliche, and emotional roller-coaster. To see that child who existed beneath the contempt of those 'others' in society. This is a harrowing tale of Katriona’s life as she was brought up by drug-addict parents surrounded by poverty. Her world around her was soiled, filthy and squalid. I so wanted her to be one of us, the working class, and I felt it in my gut that she was. I deeply longed to see myself in the structures surrounding me and felt she was a bit of me. I loved meeting smart, successful women who were very grounded in working-class culture and identity, and I knew I was in the presence of someone I could learn from.

Katriona O’Sullivan: ‘I remember cleaning the toilets going Katriona O’Sullivan: ‘I remember cleaning the toilets going

Full of insight into a live lived right up against the boundaries placed on it by poverty ... so important ... we'd highly recommend' - Fi Glover, Times Radio It’s Not Where You Live; It’s How You Live: Class and Gender Struggles in a Dublin Estate by John Bissett. Bissett’s book is a mix of theory and storytelling, taking us deep into the lives within a public housing estate in Dublin. I spent the whole year fighting with our maths teacher but if I wanted to choose psychology for my degree I had to do higher level maths in TAP and this scuppered me. But I found my way. My friend Liviu – another mature student who was excellent at Maths – tutored me and reminded me it was going to be okay. But there were also the people – children, and adults, too – who were repelled by poverty. “Poverty has layers. We were probably the most extreme – no food, not washed, nits. Kids don’t want to play with you, so it’s horrible because not only are you suffering at home, I was also going to school and being on the outside. Sometimes, teachers would treat me that way as well, or expect me to perform in a way that was just beyond me because of what was going on at home.”She is actually speaking to ME … in Latin! As I stand in front of Mary Robinson, one of the few Irish presidents I actually know of and admire, it finally feels like I belong. Being able to hear Katriona tell her story in her audiobook, in her own voice brought me to tears several times. Katriona speaks about the people in education and social care setting who helped her, and those who failed her. I cried when reading about her early childhood and the abuse she suffered. I cried when I read about her older brother coming home from work to find her and her siblings, hungry, with not a parent to be seen. Some chapters are truly harrowing. I found myself with a pain in my chest and thinking of that little seven year old and her brothers and sister long after I'd finished reading. Teenager Katriona dropped out of school, despite being academically bright, as she dealt with a crisis pregnancy, homelessness and isolation.

Poor: Grit, courage, and the life-changing value of self

Courts Brothers to stay in jail after appeal of 'cynical and calculated' rape of girl (14) they got ‘comatose drunk’ fails 11:58 Why do you want to do this course?' the interviewer asks me. He seems nice but I'm sure he can see through me. 'I want to change my life' By the end of third year I had found my feet. While I would never fully belong in TCD I knew by then I was good enough. I got to know all the catering staff, all the cleaners and all the builders during my nine years as a student and three years as staff. These were and still are my people. As a research student, I began to flourish and by the end of third year I was achieving high 2.1s for all my work and felt confident I would pass my degree. Those first few months in Trinity proper were hard. I felt lost, the psychology class was small which meant I couldn’t hide. I was sitting with middle-class kids who had got around 580 points in their Leaving Cert and I felt like a failure. Two years before I started my degree I had been working as the dinner lady in the Institute of Education.

Poor is the moving, inspirational and brave story of a seven year old girl who needed love and care and found it with her teachers. Of a teenager whose English teacher believed she was fantastic. Of a young mother who had a caring nurse who encouraged and supported her. Of a woman who becomes a doctor of psychology and works to increase diversity in education. There are no doctors, lawyers or graduates in my recent family … Katriona O’Sullivan PhD wouldn’t have really fitted on my social welfare card or my lone parent’s benefit book. Quotes like "Poor cuts through lots of jargon, words like disadvantaged, underprivileged, deprived or under class. Words that have their place but don't capture the visceral truth of what it is to grow up the way I did. The way thousands of children are growing up right now. It’s like I lived two lives,” she says. “A life up to the point where my mind was opened by education. Prior to that, I had no idea that you could be anything different.” She is furious at the rhetoric around poverty – during the past decade especially – that if someone is poor, it is their own moral failing, and if only they worked harder, they could drag themselves out of it. “What I’ve done is miraculous, and rare, because we don’t have investment. If I was in that situation now, I wouldn’t be here.” Because I’ve been empowered, I have been able to change my life, my children’s lives. I’m not costly any more to the state