Shelter

Bobby Burns arrived in Tucson, Arizona, with a few dollars in his pocket and no place to live. Without family, without a job, he had nowhere to go but a homeless shelter. How did a college graduate find himself so close to life on the streets? In a voice that is startling for its simplicity and utter honesty, Burns tells the story of how he slipped into homelessness, how he learned what it means to live in a place where nobody will notice if you disappear, and how he emerged to tell his story. Bobby's diary of 41 days without a home brings readers into the world of a homeless shelter. Shelter is filled with the sights and sounds of homelessness. Shelter life is patterned by meals provided by church volunteers, lines for soap and clean towels, the repeated meticulous washing of hands by an obsessive-compulsive resident, the rare pleasure of a fried chicken dinner, the illicit smell of marijuana within the shelter. Burns witnesses the residents' struggles with drugs, alcohol, and disability, and he wonders daily whether he will have the courage to emerge from this life. Bobby's diary expresses the full range of emotions of a homeless person: anger, self-pity, pride, humility, shame, depression, and optimism. These are not contradictions; taken together they represent the real feelings provoked by homelessness. But with rare inner courage, Bobby stokes the fires of hope within himself, marking the days in his journal to keep himself from sliding deeper into a spiral of despair. Bobby confronts his own stereotypes about the homeless and learns firsthand what it means to struggle daily for survival and for dignity. He learns greater courage and he learns greater kindness. He is given food and a bed for 41 days, but he finds shelter on his own, deep within himself.

Bobby Burns arrived in Tucson, Arizona, with a few dollars in his pocket and no place to live. Without family, without a job, he had nowhere to go but a homeless shelter. How did a college graduate find himself so close to life on the streets? In a voice that is startling for its simplicity and utter honesty, Burns tells the story of how he slipped into homelessness, how he learned what it means to live in a place where nobody will notice if you disappear, and how he emerged to tell his story. Bobby's diary of 41 days without a home brings readers into the world of a homeless shelter. Shelter is filled with the sights and sounds of homelessness. Shelter life is patterned by meals provided by church volunteers, lines for soap and clean towels, the repeated meticulous washing of hands by an obsessive-compulsive resident, the rare pleasure of a fried chicken dinner, the illicit smell of marijuana within the shelter. Burns witnesses the residents' struggles with drugs, alcohol, and disability, and he wonders daily whether he will have the courage to emerge from this life. Bobby's diary expresses the full range of emotions of a homeless person: anger, self-pity, pride, humility, shame, depression, and optimism. These are not contradictions; taken together they represent the real feelings provoked by homelessness. But with rare inner courage, Bobby stokes the fires of hope within himself, marking the days in his journal to keep himself from sliding deeper into a spiral of despair. Bobby confronts his own stereotypes about the homeless and learns firsthand what it means to struggle daily for survival and for dignity. He learns greater courage and he learns greater kindness. He is givenfood and a bed for 41 days, but he finds shelter on his own, deep within himself.

Publishers Weekly

This Bobbie Burns is no poet, but there are fine details and anecdotes in his thin and modest journal of 41 days in a Tucson, Ariz., homeless shelter. "Feeling like reading, I go to the library. I notice an old man reading a book in the corner. He's wearing mismatched shoes. I think this is all he can afford, but someone tells me the man refuses to wear matching shoes. No one knows why." An Army vet and college graduate, Burns gives us too-quick glimpses of the shelter, his background and how he painstakingly saves up his money from substitute-teaching--mainly at a reservation 50 miles outside of Tucson--to be able to rent his own apartment. (Unfortunately, as his epilogue tells us, on his own, he slides back into alcoholism before going to Alcoholics Anonymous.) Habitually cautious in his judgments of others, he tells of a shelter client who becomes infuriated about the theft of his watch. When the client offers a reward for its return, someone comes forward with it; the "finder" receives a handshake. This scene evokes one of Burns's rare but useful generalizations on the homeless experience: "Keeping time is what most homeless people do best--with or without a watch. Time to work. Time to find food. Time to find shelter. Time to move on. Time to panhandle. Time to drink away the pain. Time to stay warm. Time to ask for help. The homeless know what time it is. It's time to survive." While neither is as compelling or illuminating as Timothy E. Donohue's In the Open: Diary of a Homeless Alcoholic or Lee Stringer's recent Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street, Shelter is sincere and finally quite touching. 11-city shelter tour. (Oct.)

Bobby Burns lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he works as Assistant Director for an alcohol recovery program and teaches high school part-time. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Primavera Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group for the homeless, and is the editor of The Sojourner, a bimonthly newsletter for the Tucson NAACP. His writings on homelessness have been published in the Arizona Daily Star, the Arizona Republic, and the Tucson Citizen.