![\"'Poor'](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4825806_10_articleinline_Katriona_poor_book_cover.jpg\" "\\"'Poor'")
‘Poor’ by Katriona O’Sullivan. Annmarie O\u2019Connor writes: ‘The impact ‘Poor’ has had on our cultural narrative speaks volumes, sitting at number one for 72 weeks on the Irish paperback charts…’\u00a0<\/p>\n\n Poor.\u00a0One word. One syllable. No messing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The title of this book says it all. On the front cover, a young girl climbs a brick wall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not tall enough yet to reach the top; you can\u2019t see her face, but you can feel her curiosity. She\u2019s bright, like her yellow dress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I want to know more about this child, so I buy a copy of the book and start reading it later that morning. I reach the last page by early evening. It\u2019s all I can think about.<\/p>\n
Author Katriona O\u2019Sullivan, academic, educator and activist, pins you by the collar with her truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her early exposure to abuse, addiction, and neglect; being pregnant and homeless at 15 \u2014 these hit hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, what shines through are seemingly small but significant moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘Poor’ by Katriona O’Sullivan. Annmarie O\u2019Connor writes: ‘The impact ‘Poor’ has had on our cultural narrative speaks volumes, sitting at number one for 72 weeks on the Irish paperback charts…’\u00a0<\/p>\n
Acts of kindness and empathy that stop a young girl from slipping, that help her see over the wall and stand 10 toes down as an agent of change.<\/p>\n
Numbers don\u2019t lie.<\/p>\n
The impact Poor has had on our cultural narrative speaks volumes, sitting at number one for 72 weeks on the Irish paperback charts, according to retailer Easons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2025 alone, the award-winning book has been translated into five languages and made its world premiere at The Gate for the Dublin Theatre Festival, adapted by Sonya Kelly.<\/p>\n
For O\u2019Sullivan, Poor is not just a memoir, but \u201ca social document\u201d, she tells me as we chat on Zoom.<\/p>\n
Raised in Hillfields \u2014 a deprived inner-city area of Coventry \u2014 O\u2019Sullivan has first-hand experience of poverty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born to Irish parents who struggled with heroin addiction; from a young age, she witnessed her father\u2019s overdose, experienced sexual violence, and often went hungry or smelled of urine, with school being one of the few places she could find food and care.<\/p>\n
She could have fallen through the cracks of a broken system had it not been for a handful of people whose belief pulled her \u201cout of the trenches\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a few moments in my life,\u201d she writes, \u201cwhen I could have been lost for good, pivotal moments that could have gone either way.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Katriona](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4825797_12_articleinline_katriona-o-sullivan-4_1_.jpg\" "\\"Katriona")
Katriona O’Sullivan. Picture: Br\u00edd O’Donovan<\/p>\n
A former school leaver and now lecturer of digital skills in the Department of Psychology at Maynooth University, O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s ability to capture the destabilising effects of deprivation from different vantage points in her life is what makes this narrative so compelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want people to really question inequality when they read Poor,\u201d she asserts, \u201c\u2026to think about the kids and what we turn into, and how we\u2019re let down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This \u2018social document,\u2019 although in service of something larger, requires immense vulnerability. As a writer, I\u2019m keen to understand how she protects her peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you know me, you would know that I\u2019ve been through stuff, so I\u2019ve always felt that it wasn\u2019t something that I was hiding,\u201d she explains, \u201cthis just gave me the ability to contextualise myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Passionate and to-the-point, what you see is what you get with O\u2019Sullivan. She doesn\u2019t wear a mask.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we are showing ourselves, even when we\u2019re trying to hide ourselves \u2014 especially when we\u2019re trying to hide ourselves.\u201d So true.<\/p>\n
Transparency aside, she points out that as someone who pushes past her emotional limits, she knew that \u201cas soon as I said yes [to writing the book], I needed to be in therapy\u201d, giving herself the \u201ccaveat that I could stop [writing] at any time and I didn\u2019t have to release it, all the way up to the last day.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same way self-awareness allows her narrative to unfold, it also keeps the reader engaged with its core message in an expert balance of realism and hope, allowing light to suffuse the cracks \u2014 a harbinger for better things to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I knew somewhere, if it was all dark\u2026 it might make you turn away. […],\u201d she remarks. \u201cBut the truth of my life is that even in the darkest moments, there was so much brightness, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Katriona](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4825800_12_articleinline_katriona-o-sullivan-5_1_.jpg\" "\\"Katriona")
Katriona O’Sullivan. Picture: Br\u00edd O’Donovan.<\/p>\n
One of those places was school. O\u2019Sullivan self-describes as not being well-behaved, but hunger and trauma will do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was smart. She wanted to play. But to classmates she was \u201cthe nitty kid\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One morning, her primary school teacher, Mrs Arkinson, gave her clean underwear and taught her how to brush her hair and teeth, restoring autonomy and dignity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat moment in the book, particularly, is really sad,\u201d she admits, \u201cbut also, there was such empowerment for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Likewise, O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s secondary school English teacher, Mr Pickering, encouraged her, a then pregnant teen, to sit her GCSE exam.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He believed in her academic potential. Most of all, he reduced the distance between educator and student by sharing his story (left school early, worked in a mine, attended Open University) and his humanity.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s teachers remind us that what we say and do matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the adults who actually saw past how I presented to the world and invested in me despite what I was like at times,\u201d she says, \u201cthey provided a different soundtrack to the one that was being played to me over and over again, which was, \u2018I\u2019m no good. Nobody\u2019s ever going to love you. You\u2019re failing. You\u2019re not very clever\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
We could be, and should be, that adult for someone. In fact, sometimes we are and don\u2019t even know it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The community worker in Dublin who guided O\u2019Sullivan toward therapy and training schemes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The friend who encouraged her to apply to the Trinity access programme while she was working as a cleaner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than unassuming exchanges, these are powerful flashpoints where clarity meets intuition and life changes in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n
![\"Katriona](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4825803_12_articleinline_katriona-o-sullivan-3_1_.jpg\" "\\"Katriona")
Katriona O’Sullivan. Picture: Br\u00edd O’Donovan.<\/p>\n
Some things, though, haven\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n
Thirteen years after graduating with a doctorate in psychology, issues of access and opportunity in the education system persist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Societal tropes like the \u2018success story\u2019 and buzzwords like \u2018resilience\u2019 individualise excellence, maintains O\u2019Sullivan, promoting the idea that hard work is enough, with little consideration for cultural capital or external factors at play.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While acknowledging her own strength derived from hardship, she emphasises that similar experiences have broken many others.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the not-so-easy task of staying grounded in her advocacy work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis stuff hurts me at times,\u201d she reveals. \u201cMe, I\u2019m lucky that I\u2019m really loved. I have a beautiful marriage and a wonderful husband, and we work really hard to stay connected with each other, and so I have a great support in him, and he has in me.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI also think that I\u2019m really grateful. And people get shocked when I say that. I\u2019m grateful for my poverty. I\u2019m grateful for my privilege. To be heard is a gift for a child \u2014 I just felt so unseen, like nobody noticed what was happening to me, or us. So, it\u2019s such a gift to be heard.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
With O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s book, Hungry, due out next year, I think of the phrase \u2018on the beam\u2019 coined by her friend Audrey in Poor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A metaphor that represents flow state, intuition, or being in one\u2019s power, I ask what meaning it holds for her today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always imagine that there\u2019s a light that shines from my feet all the way up out of my head, you know?\u201d She smiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this brightness that comes with all of us, and sometimes there can just be things that block the light and make it difficult for us to shine.\u201d<\/p>\n
And her greatest source of light? O\u2019Sullivan gets emotional, naming her eldest son, John, born when she was homeless and living in a hostel.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the fact that I found it really hard to be a parent. I think he gave me a drive that I didn\u2019t have \u2014 to always try and be better, irrespective of how many times I failed.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shares that with John, now a father himself, and her having a grandson, Axel, the \u201ccycle is completely broken\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the work, all the struggle to get better, to drag myself forward has actually changed the future of my family, which is, I think, all I ever really wanted \u2014 to be able to love and be loved, and love him particularly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Love.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One word. One syllable. No messing.<\/p>\n
![\"Annmarie](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4823766_25_articleinline_mb-annmarie-o-connor-002.jpg\" "\\"Annmarie")
Annmarie O’Connor. Picture: Miki Barlok<\/p>\n