Description: A powerful memoir of a woman plunged into fraudulent debt that explores America's broken student loan system and illuminates the ways that debt shapes every aspect of our lives.
At 22 years old, Kristin Collier was on the verge of college graduation, applying for a credit card to cover expenses before her teaching career began. But to her shock, she learned that she didn't qualify for even the lowest line of credit. In fact, she had a shocking amount of debt already: a handful of credit card debts and dozens of private student loans, which she'd known nothing about. In total, she owed over $200,000. How could this have happened? What Debt Demands is a nuanced and poignant meditation on indebtedness and its consequences. Kristin paints a vivid portrait of her own experience with personal debt, navigating the complex student lending system alongside her evolving relationship with the person who stole from her, a family member she loved and trusted. Weaving in interviews with student borrowers, historical analysis, cultural critique, and research into the higher education system, she reveals debt's profound impact on every aspect of our lives, our relationships, and our world. As Kristin explores how and why our nation arrived here and what it will take to heal her own financial and familial wounds, What Debt Demands illuminates the unjust world that already exists and points to a better one: a world where all students, regardless of race or wealth, can access free education. And one in which we are not bound to the state but to each other.Review Quotes: "By locating her own story of the Kafkaesque, yearslong journey of getting her fraudulent debt discharged within a larger reckoning with the student lending system, Collier acknowledges that while the circumstances of her case may be unusual, her experience of indebtedness is not...In reframing who is to blame for her student debt, Collier opens up a broader view of what justice would look like--one that seeks to free millions of student debtors from a system that the government has chosen to trap them in."--The Baffler