"This haunting novel-like memoir about an extraordinary journey from childhood neglect to finding strength as an adult reveals how we have the power to escape the cards we’re dealt."
Heart-wrenching, beautifully-written, and inflamed with love, Juano Diaz’s Slum Boy is an outstanding memoir. Tinged with poetry and painterly magic as it tells the story of the author’s journey from childhood neglect, through being placed in the care system, to finding his identity and place in the world as an adult, it reads like a novel with a powerfully arresting voice that shifts through time.
Born into poverty in Glasgow in the 1970s, at four years old John has already experienced a lifetime’s worth of hardship, and these early years are related through his deeply affecting child’s voice. For example, consider his response to the moment his alcoholic mother found the drowned body of “the man that Mummy made me call Daddy”: “I slam my hands over my ears, crushing the cold wet crisp packet into my face… Mummy! I scream with terror as she falls to her knees in front of me, her head slamming into my lap”.
In the wake of this, John is placed in the care system, all the while longing to see his Mummy, who becomes known as “Birth Mummy” when she gives permission for John to be given “a new forever mummy and daddy”. While he finds a different life in the Romany Gypsy community with his new family, his bonds to his birth mother remain palpably deep to the end.
Rippling with pain and conflict, guilt and regret, reunion and recovery, above all, Slum Boy shares a story of love, resilience and transformation.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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