When you finished that book, what did you think you had done?

Well, I think, I think the idea of poverty being this completely bleak experience is, is untrue, and we get misrepresented in literature, in films, in plays.

And so y- you know, the rea- I think I told the truth of, of what it's like to be poor and to grow up in poverty.

Like, some people experience no light and no love, and what I wanted to say in Poor was, "This is how I escaped my destiny." Poverty is a destiny, and poverty is caused by unequal structures that are created by society.

Poverty isn't created by bad people.

Like, my parents weren't bad people.

They were underserved and hurt people and were not supported by the state to escape that or to have that rectified.

[laughs]

[upbeat music] On this week's Never Have I Ever...

There was no way that the joyrider was gonna wanna go out with me if he thought that I was a bookish girl.

Psychologist and author, Catriona O'Sullivan.

There's lots of things, Claire, that I've never shared, because I'm not okay with them yet.