My Life on the Street - Hardcover

Homeless, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0882821024 ISBN 13: 9780882821023

Publisher: New Horizon Press, 1992

Synopsis

The savage memoir of one of the world's homeless, faceless men.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Alone, in his early forties and calling himself Joe Homeless, he wanders the streets of New York City. He is not a drug addict; he is not an alcoholic; he has never been a convict. But one thing he is--he is unwanted. My Life On The Street is the savage, poignant memoir of one of the world's homeless, faceless persons. Joe once had a job, money and a home. But now, his only home is the street. How he got there, what he does there and how he survives are his passionate themes. Deserted by family and friends, Joe has existed in an atmosphere of fear and violence for over ten years. He has survived hunger, freezing temperatures, wild dogs and physical abuse. He has been hunted like an animal by vigilante block associations armed with baseball bats. Along the way Joe found and repaired an old tape recorder and began dictating his experiences in basements and on rooftops--anywhere he could find a quiet spot alone. Years and several tape recorders later, he had over thirty cassettes that told his story. From rush hour subway platforms, Joe recruited a staff of volunteers: musicians and writers, editors and lawyers who transcribed and edited Joe's account of his decade on the streets. Joe finally found help on the street from these people who either admired his guts and persistence, or felt a social responsibility to get his manuscript published. And, although Joe wanted his story told to "make a buck and get me off the street", he also wants to "make things better for everybody else in the street" by letting people know the truth about a homeless existence. Joe Homeless is a pen name adopted to protect the author's identity on the streets, where he feels threatened by police, residents andhis fellow homeless.

From Kirkus Reviews:

What's it really like to be homeless? According to this acrid report by a 12-year resident of New York City's mean streets, it's sheer hell. Unlike most homeless, the anonymous author, now middle-aged, grew up in a middle-class Italian family. Moreover, he assures us, ``I am not a drug addict, alcoholic, or convict.'' Even so, when, in 1979, his equipment-repair business took a downturn and he couldn't pay his rent, he found himself evicted into the harsh frost of a New York winter. What followed was an odyssey of the damned: The author turned to relatives who slammed door after door in his face; he hiked up to the Italian Bronx and was chased away by a neighborhood posse; he sought refuge in a church only to have a priest pour a cauldron of boiling water on his head. All this suffering is described in gritty prose (``My dirty clothes were rotting off my body, and were so stiff they were like cardboard. Pieces would fall off my underwear as I walked. My brain was turning to jelly'') that hammers home the horrors--fear, filth, loneliness, exhaustion, hunger--of life on the streets (and, briefly, in a shelter and a flophouse and on the subways). Yet, for all this detail and the rambling flashbacks of the author's childhood, a hint of obfuscation taints these pages. It's partly composed of the pure melodrama of some of the events (a priest pouring boiling water?) but mostly of the author's refusal or inability to explain his enduring homelessness--though his relatives' responses and a later stint in a mental ward give strong clues. The text concludes on a relatively upbeat note as the author tape-records his memoirs, gets a portion published in Street News and then Newsday, and is contacted by a literary agent, who sells his book. A photorealist portrait--harrowingly vivid but with little psychological insight--that leaves society's lowest depths still frustratingly unplumbed. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Horizon Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0882821024
• ISBN 13: 9780882821023
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200