What Debt Demands: Family, Betrayal, and Precarity in a Broken System
Kristin Collier
Nov 2025 · Hachette Audio · Narrated by Mia Hutchinson Shaw
headphones
Audiobook
family_home
Eligible
info
infoThis book will become available on November 18, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this audiobook
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.
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.
About the author
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.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
