Distant relative

I note this Fulbright prize winner because her uncle (sort of) is my uncle (sort of). It's pretty good anyhow that she's a professor of English and poetry, let alone win such a prestigious prize. Our mutual uncle points out that our family came from Ireland at the time of the great hunger, through the Liverpool court slums where twenty to thirty families shared a yard with one pump and one toilet. In 1866 our great great grandparents, Charles and Mary, were too illiterate to sign their names on their wedding certificate.

Four generations later, life has improved for us.