The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp

Top 10 Things Never to Say to a Homeless Person

10.  You are living in a trailer in a Wal-mart parking lot, how can you call yourself homeless?

9.  How can you be homeless, you have a job?

8.  If you can afford a lap top and a cell phone...

7.  Can't you just crash on someone's couch?

6.  But you are clean and you have a business suit!

5.  How dare you splurge on yourself!

4.  Just call your parents.

3.  Look at the bright side, no bills to worry about.

2.  You shouldn't have a dog.

1.  How can you be homeless, you don't do drugs, do you?


PS Girls Guide is a fresh original memoir which is either about being homeless while in a  relationship gone awry, or the tale of a dysfunctional relationship between a couple who happens to be homeless. I found it to be quite a page turner and I highly recommend it.  I do note--that the story seems sort of young.  My frequent complaint about memoirs of late is they feel like they need to sit in people's minds and hearts for a few more years before they get written.  This whole story happened two years ago. (But I guess when you get a book deal, you get a book deal.)

PPS  I learned that things going viral is not necessarily an accident. Good to know.

PPPS  Wal-mart had one redeeming quality for a few chapters.

Catching Fire (and a confession)

If you caught my post of a few weeks ago you know that I am starting to read The Hunger Games trilogy with my son.  We read it almost every night, chapter by chapter, and it really got so exciting that I was losing sleep.  For my own sanity, I snuck off one morning (I can only read this in the morning.) and finished it.  Of course like any captivating story, I find that I can't stop thinking about it and this drove me to pick up the second book and begin to read it right away.

Now here comes the confession:  Rather than go to the bookstore or order it on-line, I picked up my husbands I-pad where he has already downloaded all three books and read, yes, I  did it, I read Catching Fire almost entirely as an e-book.

Whew!  That was a difficult confession.  When I was done, I felt slimy, like I needed to take a hot shower and get the shame of e-book reading off me.  Reader's know that I loathe e-books and have vowed never to get an e-book reader.  A few months ago the Nook seller at Barnes and Nobles approached me to take a look at his little device, and I bit his head off.  (I think he was a little surprised at my ferocity over the device.)

Anyway,  now no one can see from my shelf that I have read this book, I can't loan it to you, and when I am reminiscing about favorite books, I'll need to stare at a tiny icon on a screen.  The actual reading experience, however, was probably not any different from holding a book.

When I was three chapters from the end, my husband took his i-pad and went to work.  I had the day off, so I went to Barnes and Nobles, planted myself in a comfy chair and read and sobbed my way through the last three chapters in the intimacy of the bookstore.  Afterwards, I bought Mockingjay, the third book and happily began reading the real book version of that.

So if you began reading The Hunger Games after my last post, I think you will enjoy this sequel.  It is storytelling at its finest including a gut wrenching love story.

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon

Rachel Simon previously wrote a work of non-fiction called, Riding the Bus with my Sister.  This story catalogs one year of Rachel spending time with her developmentally disabled sister Beth as she rides the city bus every day.  Now Ms Simon captures the life of a developmentally disabled girl in a fictional institution that houses the "feebleminded".

The Story of Beautiful Girl was well written and engrossing.  The stories haunted me.  Partly, it is the history of the evolving views and treatment of the disabled in our community, but it is also a love story and a heart pounding quest and adventure tale.

Beautiful girl and her companion show up on the doorstep of  the farm of an old widow one rainy day.  They have with them a newborn baby.  The widow gives them clothes and comfort, and before she can know their story the police arrive to arrest them and take them back to the institution from which they escaped.  As beautiful girl is stuffed into the  car to go back to her terrible life, and the companion escapes out the widow's window, Beautiful Girl whispers to the widow,  "hide her."  The widow understands she is to hide the newborn baby.

And so the story progresses: each of the four characters is living a horrible life, waiting to get back to the others.  Will Beautiful girl and her companion ever see each other again?  Ever meet their daughter? and what does the old widow do with her new responsibility?

It is a tad schmaltzy, especially toward the end, but it is a fascinating look at how the disabled are perceived in our society and how they also might perceive the world.  It can be terribly sad throughout the book but also has a lovely, sweet ending.  It is a fast, easy read especially if you like a thick coat of sugar.

Undress me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman

Greetings readers!  Glad to be back and writing about reading again.  As many of you know I have had quite the life changing adventure for the past few weeks.  I am here to report on the only thing I managed to read while on the road.  After this I hope to launch a short series on Chinese American fiction.  

A travel memoir about China could not have been more fitting for my recent trip to China to begin a new phase of my life.  Susan Jane Gilman has written a snappy modern day Heart of Darkness about descending madness while backpacking in China in 1986, shortly after the country opened it's doors to backpackers.  

Having some of the same places on my travel itinerary and feeling a little of the same  lost and disoriented feeling as Gilman did, I could really relate to her sense of lonliness and isolation.  I read it late into the night when I was too wired from jet lag.  I could not put it down.  Although I read and enjoy many travel narratives it is not often you can say you can not put one down.  

The most interesting parts of this were how fast and loose they were able to be with getting on flights and fudging passports in the pre-9-11 world.  This scene could never have happened today.  Also, it was a sobering reminder for me that while I was able to skype my friends back home in an instant, Ms Gilman and fellow backpacker Claire had never even heard of a lap top or email.  The best they could do was call collect.  Travel has gotten easier in so many ways.  

I gave this memoir to Catherine and hope she reads it and finds it compelling.  She seemed excited to receive it.  I'd love to hear your recommends both for travel memoir for me and Chinese American fiction to send to Catherine.  

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

I took a break from reading memoirs this past week to read a lovely work of historical fiction that was highly recommended to me by Sweetcakes.

I had to refrain from looking up Frank Lloyd Wright on the internet or learning anything about his real life as the story unfolded as I was tempted to do. Several readers warned me that it would spoil the end of the book for me.

This heartbreaking story was meticulously researched by Nancy Horan. She read newspaper accounts of the time, biographies of Frank Wright and Mamah Borthwick and also histories of early feminism. As I writer, I know that capturing this kind of story on paper is one of the most interesting and challenging to write. Ms. Horan has taken a true story of love, rebellion, feminism, tradgedy and social mores and imagined all the scenes that may have happened between the two lovers and the children and the spouses that were involved. It was a fascinating story and if you have not read it, I highly recommend it. Thanks Sweetcakes!

If you do not know the story of what happened to Frank and Mamah at Taliesen--read the book first and then go to Wikipedia for the story.