Stranger to the System gives homeless a face and a voice

hen you see homeless individuals, do you sometimes feel that you'd really like to know who they are and how they came to be in their current situation, but you're extremely doubtful about so much as striking up a conversation, let alone asking them for their life's story?

Well, now Jim Flynn, a young New York City public school teacher, has done what many of us feel we can't. In 2001, he began getting acquainted with people who sleep on the streets around Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Over a period of two years, he taped hundreds of hours of the homeless telling their life stories. He collected twenty of these first-person accounts into a book titled Stranger to the System: life portraits of a New York City homeless community, illustrated by Nelson Hall and published by Curbside Press.

If you're looking for a scholarly analysis of the political and economic system that causes homelessness, you won't find it here. That's because Flynn's purpose wasn't to write about the homeless; his aim was to give homeless individuals their own voice, to let them tell their stories. In order to shape the narratives into coherent form, Flynn did alter the syntax and chronological sequence of the original recordings, but he made every effort to remain true to the spirit and meaning of each person's expression. Before the book went to press, he read each narrator the first draft of his or her chapter and changed it according to their wishes.

This anthology is comprised mainly, though not exclusively, of the stories of people who are visibly homeless - those whom we see sleeping in public places, sorting through dumpsters, or asking for money. Flynn makes it clear that they should not be taken as standing for all homeless people for, as he writes, these individuals "represent only a microscopic sliver of the homeless people living in New York City." They are not, for instance, the "untold thousands who successfully hide the outward signs of their dilemma while struggling to remedy their situation from inside the system."

One of the fascinating things about the book is the wide variety of backgrounds of the narrators. This is the cross section of humanity that we might find just about anywhere. As to their early years, we see everything from really average upbringings, to childhoods from hell. There is also a wide spectrum of personalities - withdrawn and gregarious, the truculent and the sweet natured, those who are intensely wound up and others who exude serenity. They were born in different towns and cities all over New York State and the nation, as well as on military bases in Australia and Japan. The oldest was born in 1935, the youngest in 1984. Some stay put and some travel around the nation.

As I read these first-hand accounts telling of what led to their becoming homeless and what it's like to be without a home, something I wasn't sure was possible in reading a book of this nature happened: I actually enjoyed it! Yes, there are heart-wrenching things, but there is a kind of factuality that made it not only bearable, but that kept me eagerly turning the pages to read more.

I respect Jim Flynn for wanting to compile this anthology and believe that not only did it take physical courage, but emotional bravery as well. It's impossible to work on a project of this kind without getting deeply involved emotionally, and many persons would not have welcomed that involvement with this segment of our population.

I also admire what he is attempting to do with the book, both in terms of enabling us to understand better who the people are that we see on our streets, but also trying to help provide homeless persons with a means to better their lives. From the beginning, one of his purposes was to supply jobs for the storytellers as vendors of the book. When he was unable to get any funding for the project, he took out a $10,000 loan and published it himself.

Now, vendors purchase the book for $2 each - the cost of its publication - and sell it for a suggested price of $10, or any other price they think appropriate. They keep the entire profit.

Anyone is welcome to become a vendor, providing that they follow certain guidelines, which are available on the Curbside Press website along with other information about the book and how to obtain it. Curbside Press now has seven homeless vendors who, as of the end of September, have sold 3,100 copies. What they've earned has enabled some of them to rent rooms and to make other positive changes in their lives.

To hear audio excerpts from Stranger to the System and read additional interviews that couldn't make it into the book due to space restraints, please visit www.curbsidepress.com.