Without Keys: My 15 Weeks With the Street People

Rating:
Summary: Without Keys
Review: This book is a fifteen-week diary of the author's life experiences while she was homeless and living in shelters. It is easy reading and it grabs your attention so that you do not want to put the book down. It is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: Educated/Capable and Homeless
Review: This book is about a well educated and capable adult woman and her children, who was literally forced to be homeless by the court system. Given a similar set of circumstances, we could all be in her shoes! This book tells a straight forward story of how the author became homeless, what she did to cope, and how she dragged her family out of this overwhelming situation.

This book should be read by anyone, adult or teen, who has become too familier with the good things that many Americans feel entitled to.

Rating:
Summary: Without Keys: My 15 Weeks with the Street People
Review: When McDonough was still writing her book, she came to speak to my businesswomen's group about it--and gradually dressed, as she spoke, in the clothes she wore when she was homeless. There was a powerful impact in noting differences in how we "heard" her then, from how we'd "heard" her when she was seen to be "like us," minutes before. We averted our eyes. One member said it was one of the most memorable talks we'd heard in 15 years of monthly programs.

The book does that too; it makes it uncomfortable to see street people as "them" rather than "us." "There, but for a good break, go I"--not to mention the realigning of one's perception of "there but for the grace of God," for there are many excerpts in the book (from her journal at the time) that address the painful spiritual growth that results from such a wrenching experience. I no longer think that I could survive even a few days, if I suddenly found myself to be a baglady, yet I'd always thought of myself as resourceful, resilient, frugal, educated, middle class. Think again. I'd need a lot of help.

This country cannot afford to pretend that Americans who are (usually temporarily) indisposed far enough to have lost their living quarters for the moment are somehow different or "un-American." They are us. What we do about those of us with these problems--including the elderly and the ill--may someday become very personally relevant and (if we don't do better, faster) could become a big national problem. The housing situation in Minneapolis at the moment is veering sharply away from keeping some of us in affordable housing who used to be "the working poor" rather than "the homeless." The situation needs to be addressed by those in legislatures, healthcare, social services, volunteer groups. This book can help them to understand better. Very often the real view from the street is not understood by those who "help" them, as when the physician who treats the understandably ulcerated feet of those who have no place to sit down, let alone a sink with warm water, tells the patient to "soak her feet." Right. How?