Surviving on the Streets
How to go Down without Going Out
Ace Backwords, 2001, Loompanics Unlimited, Port Townsend, WA, 195 pages, with comics and photos
If you are going to be homeless tomorrow buy this book today! I bought mine from Paladin Press, so am not even sure if Loompanics is still in business. The author appears on the cover and within, along with homeless friends. He is of course writing under a pen name, and is hopefully off the streets for good.
This is a self-help memoir in which the author reaches deep inside and into the dark corners of his past, and provides the reader with a surprisingly unbiased view of homeless life. I will let the author describe the substance of this book for himself, in the following quotation, “To lose everything that you cling to. To become a loser. A bum. A lost soul in a twilight world with nothing…” and “It’s against the law!”
This guy was homeless before the word existed, when it meant being a bum. He has also seen the latest crop of homeless [the teen hordes ejected from the state foster care system] hit the drug-saturated streets.
I am reading this book again and will read it a third time if life permits. Hopefully I will not need to slide it into my book bag and hit the road with it as my survival guide.
Read this book.
NIce review! I give it 5 stars. You captured the flavor of the book quite well.
It is an honor Sir! Thank you for checking in. I hope to hear from you again. There was a lot of soul in this book and I was glad to have the chance to read and review it.