Book review: Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain's Poorest Towns by Kerry Hudson and My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay

In this review of two powerful memoirs, Samantha Fiander wonders how reflecting on the past might help us to address the challenges we face now.
"Family is a set of disputed memories between one group of people over a lifetime. I sort of realised that at eighteen I had nobody to dispute the memory of me." (Lemn Sissay).
I am writing this in the middle of April. It feels important to give this frame of reference: none of us will know what our communities and world will look like when this issue of the Journal is published. I am quietly socially-distancing, living through 'COVID-19 coronavirus lockdown' in Scotland, while so much that so many people have taken for granted, is now turned on its head. A time when, perhaps, like me, you are looking to discover something new to read in the quieter moments.