Bio of Pat LaMarcheHow many times have you seen a homeless person sleeping on a park bench or shivering in the cold on a windy night and asked yourself why they just don't go to the local homeless shelter?
The answer to that question and many more is found in this concise and powerful book, "Left Out in America: The State of Homelessness in the United States" by broadcaster and journalist Pat LaMarche. The vignettes found in these 37 short chapters are so arresting that you will read it in one sitting. And then read it again. The pictures of life on the edge that LaMarche paints with her words will stay in your mind forever - and compel you to act.
LaMarche combines the first person reporting skills of a Barbara Ehrenreich with the power of our best short story writers. After years of researching, writing, and volunteering in homeless shelters as an outgrowth of her concern for children and the poor, she decided to go on a 14-day trip to 14 homeless shelters across America. With the precision of a haiku, each shelter and its residents is brought to life. Without undue sentimentality or harsh moralism, she relates the stories of domestic violence, health crises, and unfortunate decisions that have brought so many of our neighbors to the brink.
You will never forget the 4-year-old who drew life-like pictures of her mommy, baby sister and herself, and then, in a child's recognition of the futility of her existence in a shelter, crossed out the faces of each person. Or the elderly woman who lashed out at anyone who tried to help her make her bed, her teeth bared at those trying to help but not understanding how her dignity and self-image were represented by the folded sheets on her rickety cot.
LaMarche ends her book with a reminder from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" that is well worth repeating, especially now that so many of us are maxed out on our credit cards and one medical catastrophe away from being on the streets ourselves.
When Scrooge sees the Ghost of Christmas Present with two hideous children, Want and Ignorance, hiding under his robes, he asks, "Spirit, are they your children?"
"'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.'"
Thanks Pat LaMarche, for ending our ignorance about this important issue.