Skint Estate is the gritty, profound and darkly funny memoir from writer Cash Carraway, a first-hand account of life and death below the poverty line in austerity Britain. It’s a book about poverty, motherhood and survival.

“And was it always your ambition to live in a refuge, work in a peep show and become a single mum?”
In this extraordinary debut memoir, Cash Carraway details the day to day realities of living in poverty in the UK – staying in a women’s refuge whilst pregnant, working in peepshows and suffering impoverishment, loneliness and violence. Bringing poetry and humour to the starkest of circumstances, Cash’s heart-wrenching account is moving and inspiring in equal parts, told with dark wit and underscoring her extraordinary resilience.

Blunt, dignified and brutally revealing, Skint Estate takes Cash’s personal story and skilfully weaves it into a manifesto for change. With two-fingers up to the establishment, Cash takes us from council house childhood to single motherhood, working multiple jobs yet relying on food banks and temporary accommodation, finding lifelines in her love for her daughter, community and friendships.

Skint Estate is a call-to-action, shedding light on what life is like for people living in poverty in the UK today, and looking towards a better future.

‘Whenever someone attempts to silence me I always remember this: being able to survive in the conditions in which women like us are forced to live, means that we are resourceful and powerful in a way they’ll never be able to fathom. We fight to hold onto our dignity whilst living in the most undignified of situations. We are formidable creatures and when we own our power and collectively use it then we will channel it in a positive way to create change. I’m certain of that.’