What Debt Demands

“I predict this book will usher in a paradigm shift in the way we view higher education, indebtedness, and collective care.”–Debutiful“Student debtors especially will find sympathy and solidarity in this book, which takes the dysfunctional American student loan system to task.”–NPR Books We Love“Readers interested in social justice and family dynamics will find this story fascinating.”–Booklist Reviews“Kristin Collier’s clear-sighted recounting of her own devastating story of debt shines a bright light into the darkest and most personal corners of our unjust systems and enlarges our understanding of how money and class work in the U.S. As Americans struggle with new financial hardships, there couldn’t be a better moment to read Collier’s powerful and important argument for a different way of doing things. I learned so much from this beautiful and honest work–it’s absolutely gripping. Pick this book up for your friends, for your children, for your parents, for your wallet, and for your heart, which will be in your throat from beginning to end.”–V. V. Ganeshananthan, award-winning author of Brotherless Night

“More than any other book I’ve read, Kristin Collier’s What Debt Demands details, at a level of intimate granularity, the ways in which debt circumscribes the lives of those it encloses. Whether a debt is “deserved” or not, its tentacles stretch across relationships, professional ambitions, and the debtor’s very sense of self, rendering those in its grip helpless to pursue rich and meaningful lives. With exquisite, devastating clarity, Collier lays bare the mechanisms that allow American capitalism to collapse the individual into a set of financial relationships that almost never resolve in her favor.”

“What Debt Demands is an exceptional account of American borrowing. Collier’s memoir of her own life and debt, much of which was obtained by her mother fraudulently in her name, is akin to existentialist literature, absorbing and dark. Her societal analysis is rigorous, as is her forceful reframing of debt, including how it is often created by the best things we do, like caregiving for our loved ones or mutual aid. Reading it will change how you understand what we owe.”

Kristin Collier is a graduate of the University of Minnesota MFA program. She has been a recipient of Minnesota State Arts Board funding and a Yaddo artist residency. Her writing has been published with Fourth Genre and Longreads and was recently anthologized in Coffee House Press’s American Precariat. She is an organizer and high school English teacher, living in Minneapolis.