I have been commenting about this book on my homeless blog as I read it. The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp is not a guide to help newly homeless females, it is a memoir. The title, however, is the name of a blog she started when she became homeless on February 26, 2009. The book was copyright by Brianna in 2011 which is a speedy route from homeless blogger to published author.
This might not have happened if she had not taken a friend's advice and gotten a Twitter account. A man from Scotland who had experienced homelessness picked up her homeless tweet and the rest, as they say, is her story. He had a homeless website ~ Homeless Tales. If you want details, you will need to read the book.
Brianna did not sleep on sidewalks or homeless shelters. She was lucky to have a 30' Recreational vehicle to sleep inside; the truck she used to tow it and a car. However, how she came to have those things has little to do with good luck. She parked the RV in a Walmart parking lot in an Orange County city; spending her days at Starbucks using WiFi to send resumes and do job searches from her laptop computer. She had income from unemployment checks.
Brianna was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. I did know a bit about the religious group. Yet I never wondered why they ate meat when they were prohibited against blood transfusions and eating foods made with blood. Brianna was taught that meat was injected with "meat juice" to make it look red and juicy. Her guy from Scotland pointed out that the meat juice and redness came from blood. So I now wonder why Jehovah's Witnesses eat meat and why I never made that connection prior to reading this book.
Brianna showered at a gym and says if we saw her walking down the street we would think she was just like us, not a homeless women living in a Walmart Parking lot. Well, actually, no, even prior to my homeless experience I would not think she was just like me. If I thought about her at all, I would likely assume: superficial, wealthy, OC snob. But I understand the spirit in which she said it.
Many, many of my homeless peers did not fit that a homeless image either. And they did not have the benefit of a roof over their heads when they slept at night ~ unless they stayed at a shelter. I was told over and over again that I did not look homeless. But that was in the early days before acquiring what I called the homeless shuffle and before bug bite sores and rashes became slow to heal.
Perhaps because I slept in an OC homeless shelter, spent many other days in an OC park, walked to Huntington Beach from Long Beach a few times, I was more aware of other OC homeless than Brianna. The Girl's Guide to Homelessness is less about homelessness and more about Brianna's horrid life. If you are interested in reading another abused child grows up to become abused woman tale, you might like the story. I got bored with it, especially the romance bit, even though my heart does bleed for her.
Brianna's does have some experiences or feelings common to other homeless people, but her story is not representative of the majority of us.
