Breakfast at Sally's by
Features a new foreword by the author and a heartfelt endorsement of the book and its mission by Washington State's First Lady, Trudi Inslee! Once a happily married businessman, avid golfer, and the proud owner of several luxury cars and three boats, conservative-minded Richard LeMieux saw his fortune change almost overnight. In this astonishingly heartfelt memoir, he describes his descent into homelessness and his struggle to survive personal and economic disaster. Evicted from his home in 2002 and living with his dog, Willow, in a beat-up old van, LeMieux finds himself penniless and estranged from his family and friends. He dines at the Salvation Army (aka Sally's), attempts suicide, and is treated at a mental hospital where he is diagnosed with depression. Writing on a secondhand manual typewriter, first at a picnic table in a public park, and then wherever he can, LeMieux describes his odyssey and the quirky, diverse, and endearing cast of characters found among the homeless people of Bremerton, Washington, and, by extension, everywhere else. Breakfast at Sally's is a rare inside-look at how the other America lives, and how one man, beaten down and alone, was able to reconnect, find good people, and ultimately, with their help, to persevere.
Breaking Night by
Breaking night: (Urban slang) staying up through the night, until the sun rises Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard. Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.
Homeless, Not Invisible by
Sharon Rodriguez explores homelessness in Olathe, Kansas through this photo documentary. She trades food and goods in exchange for the stories and portraits of a number of people living on the streets of this rich suburb of Kansas City.
Homeless in Las Vegas by
The homeless men and women represented in this book speak candidly about their plight, its origins, and the many obstacles to escaping it. They discuss the unique challenges and opportunities that Las Vegas's focus on tourism, indulgence, and diversion offers its homeless residents. This compelling and emotionally charged ethnography counters many of the stereotypes of homeless men and women, revealing the remarkable diversity of their circumstances. It also offers their perspectives on social services and civic attitudes toward homelessness.
I Beat the Odds by
The football star made famous in the hit film The Blind Side reflects on how far he has come from the circumstances of his youth. Michael Oher is the young man at the center of the true story depicted in The Blind Side movie (and book) that swept up awards and accolades. Though the odds were heavily stacked against him, Michael had a burning desire deep within his soul to break out of the Memphis inner-city ghetto and into a world of opportunity. While many people are now familiar with Oher's amazing journey, this is the first time he shares his account of his story in his own words, revealing his thoughts and feelings with details that only he knows, and offering his point of view on how anyone can achieve a better life. Looking back on how he went from being a homeless child in Memphis to playing in the NFL, Michael talks about the goals he had for himself in order to break out of the cycle of poverty, addiction, and hopelessness that trapped his family for so long. He recounts poignant stories growing up in the projects and running from child services and foster care over and over again in search of some familiarity. Eventually he grasped onto football as his ticket out of the madness and worked hard to make his dream into a reality. But Oher also knew he would not be successful alone. With his adoptive family, the Touhys, and other influential people in mind, he describes the absolute necessity of seeking out positive role models and good friends who share the same values to achieve one's dreams. Sharing untold stories of heartache, determination, courage, and love, I Beat the Odds is an incredibly rousing tale of one young man's quest to achieve the American dream.
My Way Home by
His life was barely worth a dollar. He slept outside, on park benches, in stairwells, under bushes. Michael Gaulden lived in shelter after shelter across the United States. With his father incarcerated and mother disabled, he stayed homeless for ten years. From the age of seven to seventeen, Michael, with his mother and sister, journeyed along his own underground railroad, desperately searching for a way to free his family from the sewers of society. Michael learned death was a big part of youth homelessness. Education was not. To survive, he had to become something more. Caught in between two worlds- his dreams vs. his reality- violence, gangsters, hunger, poverty, and sorrow marked his daily life. Michael vowed to change his fate through getting his high school diploma. He never hoped to dream that not only would he graduate from high school but also from a prestigious California university. This is the true story of a homeless boy, marked for prison or worse, who fought against tremendous odds and persevered to achieve academic and professional success.
Stories from the Street by
Stories from the Street is a theological exploration of interviews with men and women who had experienced homelessness at some stage in their lives. Framed within a theology of story and a theology of liberation, Nixon suggests that story is not only a vehicle for creating human transformation but it is one of God's chosen means of effecting change. Short biographies of twelve characters are examined under themes including: crises in health and relationships, self-harm and suicide, anger and pain, God and the Bible. Expanding the existing literature of contextual theology, this book provides an alternative focus to a church-shaped mission by advocating with, and for, a very marginal group; suggesting that their experiences have much to teach the church. Churches are perceived as being active in terms of pastoral work, but reluctant to ask more profound questions about why homelessness exists at all. A theology of homelessness suggests not just a God of the homeless, but a homeless God, who shares stories and provides hope. Engaging with contemporary political and cultural debates about poverty, housing and public spending, Nixon presents a unique theological exploration of homeless people, suffering, hope and the human condition.
Tunnel People by
By the end of the millennium, thousands of homeless people roamed the streets of Manhattan. A small group of them went underground. Invisible to society, they managed to start a new life in the tunnel systems of the city. Acclaimed war photographer Voeten gained unprecedented access to this netherworld, where he lived for five months, meeting Vietnam veterans, macro-biotic hippies, crack addicts, cuban refugees and runaways. 13 years later, Voeten tracks down the original tunnel dwellers - now evicted - to discover what happened since they left the tunnels.
Welcome Homeless by
Homeless. No other word better describes our modern-day suffering. It reveals one of our deepest and most painful conditions--not having a sense of belonging. However, Alan Graham, founder of Mobile Loaves & Fishes and Community First! Village, is improving the quality of life for a large quantity of people through sharing his personal story of becoming more human through humanizing others. Graham believes the more we can give people dignity, the power of choice, and genuine community, the better we'll be able to offer solutions that will have impact on the world at large. And while his missionary work is focused on giving a home to the physically homeless, he also wants to transform the lives of every living person by shifting the paradigm in understanding what it means to be "home." In Welcome Homeless, Graham delves deep into what it means to be connected to God, the earth, and each other. In doing so, he shows us the home we've all longed for but never had. Welcome Homeless is about becoming fully human by being fully present. It is about finally connecting with the disconnected and finding our identity through knowing the true identity of others. Graham wants to engrain the human story in you so deeply that you start being who you were made to be--that you start finally being like the image from which you were made and start empathizing instead of sympathizing with the people around you. Similar to how we can become 100 percent fully human by mimicking the ultimate image, we can shape a better world by mimicking the picture of the new heaven and the new earth--a picture that has reality at the heart of it but is beyond our imagination. Alan Graham also shares his personal story, the stories of the homeless, and the stories of those whose worldviews have been shifted by the homeless. Because of his raw, humorous, and honest voice, he achieves a rare and profound universality. Houses become homes once they embody the stories of the people who have made these spaces into places of significance, meaning, and memory. Home is fundamentally a place of connection and of relationships that are life-giving and foundational. Graham invites you to make everyone feel truly at home by finally inviting those living on the fringes of society into your heart. This is why Welcome Homeless is about doing, not saying. It is about taking the ultimate and forward-thinking vision of a new heaven and new earth and literally breaking the soil so that new earth can exist here today. It is about realizing that homelessness is not fundamentally a consequence of moral and spiritual inadequacies; but rather it is often the logical and economical outcome for a large part of our population. So, what does your vision of humanity and love look like? Whatever the vision, it should look like community. People should feel more alive after they meet you. When your consciousness changes from one of self-absorption to a consciousness aware of its human desire for connection, compassion, kindness, and beauty, you will start seeing things differently--and others will start seeing you made anew as well because the absolute greatest self-help occurs when you help others